Zengage, The Zendesk Blog

Zen Masters Webinar Series – Peter Shankman

Wondering how social media fits into the customer service landscape? Look no further. Author, speaker and entrepreneur Peter Shankman is going to explain it all to you in our latest Zen Masters webinar this Thursday, January 19, 2012.

For those unfamiliar with Shankman, he’s the author of Customer Service: New Rules for a Social-Enabled World, and the founder of Help a Reporter Out (HARO) and The Geek Factory, Inc. He’s been blogging since the Internet was just a twinkle in your mother’s eye (1995), and he hasn’t slowed down a bit. Touted as a “spectacular example of what happens when you merge the power of ADHD with pure creativity and a dose of adventure,” you never know what he’ll say. But we know it’ll be enlightening and entertaining, and you can’t afford to miss it.

Register now!

  • http://www.facebook.com/fuzesocial Chuck Van Court

    I look forward to the webinar.

    I am hopeful that this does not just turn out to be yet another presentation where anomaly situations are pointed to.  You know what I am talking about?  Like all the vendors who have pointed to the United Air guitar guy — who himself is now making money on this gold rush –  to scare organizations into believing that they better provide fast and immediate service and support within social network sites, without any consideration to other approaches or how it scales within business objectives as volumes grow.

    In any case, the speaker is supposed to at least be pretty funny ;)

    • http://www.zendesk.com Dave, Zengage Editor

      I’m sure there will be a bit of that, but in our experience, we’re moving past extreme cases and into more regular usage territory.

      I could write a whole blog post on this, but the basic gist is this: We created our Twitter and Facebook integrations out of customer demand and our own desire to better monitor social media requests/complaints. Companies will take this on a case-by-case basis, but it makes sense for us to engage our customers in their channel of choice. I think many companies have come to the same realization, but there will always be cases where it needs to move outside social platforms either for privacy or efficiency concerns.

  • http://www.zendesk.com Dave, Zengage Editor

    Chuck,

    Check out these articles in this blog post:
    Why Social Customer Service Will Come of Age in 2012
    Social Media Replacing Customer Service Channels at Banks (report)

    http://www.zendesk.com/blog/hold-music-customer-service-links

    • http://www.facebook.com/fuzesocial Chuck Van Court

      Dave:

      Thanks.  I will read these a little later today.

      What I will be looking for is specifics on when it makes sense for an organization to consider social networks as a channel and when it makes sense to consider them access points.  Of course I will be looking for supporting rationale and discussions about how the channel implementation scales when people figure out the shortest lines always start from a social network sites.

      I sure hope that people who go into stores with megaphones don’t start getting the best service!

    • http://www.facebook.com/fuzesocial Chuck Van Court

      Dave:

      Unless I missed it, there is nothing in the articles you pointed me to that discusses the questions I am asking about channel versus access point and how the channel approach realistically scales with large volumes, which is vital to understand since realistically there is no turning back
      as people figure out that the shortest lines start in social networks. 

      Did I just miss finding those items?

    • http://www.zendesk.com Dave, Zengage Editor

      Hey Chuck,

      The articles provide justification for using them as a channel, which is our stance. We use it as a channel currently–all of our mentions go into our help desk, and we address them in line with other requests. That’s not saying that the shortest lines are in social media. Nor does that mean every company has it nailed, just as some companies have high customer satisfaction ratings and others don’t.

      Access point or channel is going to differ for each business depending on the complexity of their offering, the nature of the question/complaint, privacy concerns and ultimately the company’s preference. There’s no universal truth here.

      We view it as a channel just like we do email, contact forms, voice and others. Ultimately, businesses weigh the pros and cons and make a decision according to what makes sense. We address it with our customers on that level and provide options to let them choose accordingly.

      Because comments are getting to be pretty inefficient at this point, please email me if you have any further questions at editor@zendesk.com.

      Thanks,
      Dave

    • http://www.facebook.com/fuzesocial Chuck Van Court

      Dave:

      Thanks for engaging on this issue.  You did not have to and I appreciate it.

      This will be my last comment on this topic, since from my perspective your focus is to repeat Zendesk’s  marketing mantra and point to info written by people making money on this same manta, rather than discussing detailed facts.  No offense intended, but clearly that is your role with Zendesk and you do it rather well.

      In the end there are huge implications to a company for how they elect to extend support to users in social networks, which almost all will need to do one way or the other. 

      Further  debate sans the high-level marketing BS and including real business analysis by people with no biases either way is needed.  That also eliminates the staff building job security, if not empires, to “get social” with their customers.

      P.S.  Integrating in most social networks is easy with all the APIs provided and we will provide the same functionality also when it makes real sense.  But, I refuse to be driven by market need driven by marketing BS rather than real and scalable value.