WHITEPAPER
A Social Playbook
to Guide Your
Company’s
Social
Strategy
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WHITEPAPER
A Social Playbook to Guide Your Company’s Social Strategy
A Social Playbook to Guide Your
Company’s Social Strategy
The role of social in the customer experience journey continues to be a topic of great debate. Some practitioners and leaders claim that
there is not enough ROI to support investing in this emerging service channel, as it diverts resources that could potentially be allocated
elsewhere. (For example, 42% of contact center leaders think mobile support offers more value to customers than social.) Enthusiasts
argue that social’s ever-growing role in service interactions requires companies to get onboard, giving customers the opportunity to receive
support through their channel of choice. ICMI’s latest research study, done in partnership with Five9, helps shed a little more light on this
discussion.
Our recent survey showed that while over 68% of contact center professionals think social media is a necessary channel, less than 40% are
currently supporting social as a service channel.
Do you consider Social Media to be a necessary customer service channel?
Does your contact center support Social Media as a customer service channel?
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These results align with the general chatter we hear across the industry. Contact centers recognize that social, in various forms, is definitely
here to stay; and should at the very least be a channel to consider in the future. However, the increasing number of consumers actively using
social media means that delaying a social care strategy is risky. In fact, over a third of study respondents think they’ll lose customers if they
don’t have social as a service channel. When asked to respond to survey questions as consumers of social customer care, 50% of respondents reported
that they would switch to a different company if all things were equal but one company had your service channel of choice while the other
didn’t. What does this mean? Leaving social customer service to the “future” may cost their company customers and ultimately, money.
Do you feel you will lose customers without Social Media customer service options?
Would you be willing to move to a competitor for a product or service if all other things were
equal, AND you were offered customer service through your preferred channel?
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While the data shows that social provides value to the customer, just what that means and who should deal with them remains a debate in
many organizations. Almost ¾ of respondents indicated their company has a social media presence and as mentioned above, just under
half support social as a service channel.
Does your company have an active social presence?
We were surprised to learn that 52% of respondents who offer social customer care report that the contact center now owns or co-owns
responsibility. That’s great news as previous data almost always had marketing as the sole or primary owner. It illustrates a growing
recognition that customer care is best provided by agents who are trained and skilled in addressing sales, support and service questions
posted to social networks.
Who ‘owns’ social media customer service?
That’s not to say that marketing should be removed from the social response process. To the contrary, they should continue to play an vital
role by responding to posts that require a marketing response. For example, “retweets” or “kudos” don’t usually require an agent to respond
but could be automatically transferred to marketing so that they can track brand awareness or reply with a thank you message.
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Ask your organization this: Would you let the marketing department take over for your contact center agents? No! So why would the marketing
department own social customer service? The usual response is that since the marketing and PR departments started the company’s social
presence, they should field service inquiries and then funnel them when appropriate. The reality is, that there are too many cooks in the
social media kitchen and often no clear rules on who owns what. Social marketing campaigns bleed into social service inquiries and service
inquiries turn into opportunities to create ongoing social relationships.
This lack of clarity on ownership and engagement is exactly why companies need to create a social media playbook. Whether you’re just
starting to think about social in your organization and your contact center, or you’re already well on your way, you need a playbook. Read on
for ICMI’s guidelines on what should be inside your social media playbook to maximize its effectiveness!
Creating and Using a Social Playbook
While the social playbook and the rules of engagement contained within are written to help bring order to the company’s social approach,
the document shouldn’t be inflexible. It should be a living document created by a cross-functional team and updated at an agreed upon
timeframe (every quarter is generally a good rule of thumb). If your plan is to create a playbook and then stick it on a shelf somewhere, you
should just save yourself the time and hassle.
Below we outline the important parts of a social playbook to help you create the most valuable resource possible. Some sections are
broader in nature and are meant to apply to the entire organization. Other sections, (like section four), should be specifically tailored for
each department responsible for social care. Throughout the whitepaper we’ll also provide examples of an actual social playbook structure.
These illustrations are meant to act as guides for you to create your own individual playbook.
SECTIONS:
1. Social mission and goals
2. Social in the organization
3. Social Networks
4. Processes
a. Engagement
b. Workflow
c. Escalation
5. Reporting
6. Resources
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1. Social Mission and Goals
This section of the playbook lays the foundation and clearly defines the overall mission and goals of the company as it relates to social
media. Because these will apply to the entire organization it’s crucial to have cross-functional representation in their creation. This section
will need to be updated as the organization grows in its adoption of social. The first version may have a mission as simple as, “To create a
social presence for the company” with goals such as, “Research existing customer use of social and identify the top three social platforms
currently being used.” Remember, quantifiable goals are a must so that you can track progress.
This is also where you communicate your brand personality for the benefit of both employees and customers.
An example of a playbook’s Brand Personality might look like this:
Brand Personality
WHO WE ARE
WHO WE’RE NOT
•Down-to-earth
•Irreverent
•Helpful
•Sarcastic
•Supportive
•Hipster
•Dedicated
•Disingenuous
•Accessible
•Patronizing
•First-name basis
•Elitist
•Friendly
•Judgmental
•Approachable
•Corporate-speak
•Personable
•Knowledgeable
Brand Personality
TONE
Conversational, engaging, open, enthusiastic, consistent
VOICE
First person, plural “We love our customers”
“We want to help” “We’re sorry you’re having problems”
BE HUMAN
Use a respectful, conversational voice, avoid scripts
and never use corporate doublespeak.
•Authentic
•Practical
As the company evolves its social adoption, the mission and goals will need to be updated to reflect that growth and the new role of social
in the company. If your company is already engaging in social then your mission statement should be more specific. What role does social
play in the organization? Is it to create customer connections? Drive customer loyalty? Increase brand awareness? Provide social customer
care? Prevent complaints from going viral? Once that higher-level mission is set the goals should be specific and quantitative, helping the
organization track progress and also prove growth and success to the executive team. This section can also include departmental goals if
your company is ready to tackle that level.
KEY PARTS OF SECTION ONE:
• Clearly stated mission statement of social’s role in the organization with agreement by the cross-functional team
• Goal statements that are quantifiable and reportable
• Specified term for how often playbook will be updated
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2. Social in the Organization
This part of the playbook should paint a clear image of all the parts of the organization that have a role in social care. “The social playbook
should include all responsible parties that handle social,” says Lance Fried, SVP of Social and Mobile at Five9. “Whether that be Marketing,
Customer Care, Brand Management, or Public Relations. All have specific goals and all interact with consumers on disparate topics/inquiries
so it is paramount to have continuity and a macro-strategic approach.”
AN EASY TO UPDATE CHART WITHIN THE PLAYBOOK IS HELPFUL:
DEPARTMENT
ROLE OF SOCIAL
KEY CONTACT
CONTACT INFO
PR
Promote press releases and company news
Sally Johnson
[email protected]
Marketing
Support and promote marketing and sales campaigns
Joe David
[email protected]
Contact Center
Respond to customer inquiries and service requests
Deb Jones
[email protected]
IT
Purchase and maintain social technology throughout
organization
David Erickson
[email protected]
HR
Recruit new hires and maintain awareness of employment
opportunities
Molly Anderson
[email protected]
Research
Use social data for market research and track performance
metrics for social interactions
Caitlin Marks
[email protected]
Executive Team
Provide budget, technology and resources for social
Joshua Davis
[email protected]
If you’re uncertain as to which parts of the organization should be involved, a great place to start is by listening to the current social
conversation. By conducting a simple social listening exercise you can understand how customers are talking about the company and
include those internal stakeholders who need to be involved.
In “Social Engagement for Customer Care” by Edwin Margulies, he recommends picking a recent and specific timeframe to study. He then
suggests categorizing all the social interactions into themes that can be placed into recognizable ‘buckets’ such as commentary, sales,
service, complaints, or endorsements.
In our research we were pleased to see that contact centers are already tracking these categories. To use Twitter as an example, 32% say
customers use it for commentary, 13% for endorsements, 11% for customer service, and 9% use the platform to complain.
How do your customers most use Twitter when interacting with your brand, product or company?
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Make sure you are listening to interactions from all applicable social platform sources such as Twitter, Facebook, community boards, blogs,
or LinkedIn.
Once you understand these categories and their associated volume, Margulies suggests making educated conclusions on what is relevant,
what is actionable, and what should be transferred and escalated elsewhere in the company. For example, is marketing responsible for
monitoring all brand conversations and then flagging relevant conversations for the contact center to handle? Or is the contact center
responsible for routing social posts to the marketing department?
Each stakeholder’s responsibilities must be outlined in the playbook and an example is below:
Post Assignments (Summary)
TEAM
TOPIC
RESPONSIBILITY
Social Media or
Product Marketing
Community and overarching industry conversations; Corporate and brand
communities, niche industry conversations; Company event-focused conversations;
Webinars, website content
Industry Discussion,
Company Content,
Company Event
Tier 3 Team
Customer Support, Technical Support,
Troubleshooting, Train
Support/Troubleshooting
Product Management
Enhancement recommendation
Product Review
Pre-Sales
Expressed need for a demo/to buy
Sales Lead
Executive Team
Financial, speculation of sale, high-level business
conversations, industry analysis
Industry Discussion
Human Resources
Recruiting, culture and company perception,
competitive hires
HR
PR
PR, press
Each section can then be broken out into more detail such as:
Post Assignments
SOCIAL MEDIA:
These folks are often the bridge between company and customer, and function like a facilitator and connector.
This team pays attention to:
Compliments: Say thanks.
Complaints: Apologize, and help get them connected with someone on the support side that can
work to resolve their issue (work with customer service).
Inquiries: Help provide and connect customers and prospects with information on iContact, and work
with other teams to care for them appropriately.
Media opportunities: Connect with bloggers and journalists to build relationships and connect with
our PR team.
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Finally, Margulies recommends charting out all the listening interactions in order to properly scope the volume and the relevancy to the
contact center. This will lay your foundation for customer service.
KEY PARTS OF SECTION TWO:
• Description of the role of social in each specific department
• Results of social listening exercise
• The key social contact in each department
• Details of how each department handles social in relation to other departments
3. Social Networks
This section describes the various social networks and online properties that the company uses to engage with it’s customers and prospects
They may include such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Blogs, Online Forums and Peer-to-peer communities. It is then used to establish and
document policies and practices for responding to posts made on each network.
IT INCLUDES:
• General information on the platform
• Corporate policies for engagement by various departments
• Do’s and don’ts
• Tone and example posts
Every company’s approach to social should be customized and centered on where their customers are already within the channel. For
example, B2B companies may want to focus on Linkedin or online social communities while B2C businesses are likely to find Facebook and
Twitter to be more highly trafficked by their customers and prospects. Insight into where these conversations are occurring can be garnered
from the social listening exercise outlined in section two. Ongoing social listening is a critical part of any social strategy and is at the heart
of finding and connecting with customers. It’s critical to keep a strong pulse on where customers are talking and what they’re talking about.
For example, our research showed that B2C companies had much higher customer engagement through Facebook, with 56% of B2C
companies vs 40% of B2B businesses reporting high customer interaction.
Twitter also had discrepancies: 46% of B2B companies say their customers tend to retweet company tweets as opposed to only 16% of B2C
companies.
Our research suggests that B2B customers may find information shared by brands on Twitter to be more relevant to them than that on
Facebook. Or that B2B social users find the sharing of information to be easier or more impactful through Twitter.
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Once you’ve set up those proper listening channels as described in section two, it will be necessary to start filtering them. Filtering helps to
determine what is relevant and important and keeps agents from dealing with an unmanageable amount of spam or other non-actionable
content. Here is where text analytics and aggregation tools can really help weed through all the social noise.
“Understanding where your consumers are most active on social networks is just as critical as understanding general trending,” says Fried
from Five9. “Ultimately it is the social tool being used by customer care that will dictate a lot of this. Advanced solutions that aggregate
social networks into one unified feed and agent interface greatly advances initial listening approaches that were once manual in nature
and siloed by the social media feed.”
Margulies also has some advice if your organization doesn’t see the value in investing in social listening or social tools. “…consider doing
manual listening for social engagement or using tools that do not have spam filtering capability. In such a scenario, agents will spend
upwards of 85 to 95% of their time hacking their way through spam. That is without the proper, modern filtering technology, agents will
spend 85% or more of their time looking at spam instead of engaging with and helping customers.”
The Social Networks section should include enough information so that it can get a new agent up and running, but also serve as a reference
for more tenured users. Examples and response guidance is especially important, as one of the biggest challenges of social customer service
is maintaining an authentic voice across all interactions. “As you peel back the layers of the onion on social, the stand-out difference is the
public part. The words you as an agent use to respond therefore have the burden of being scrutinized by many, many people,” reminds Margulies.
Twitter Response Examples
EXAMPLES OF 140 CHARACTER OR LESS RESPONSES:
•Thanks for the shout-out!
•Glad we could help.
•Feel free to pass along any feedback you have.
•Sorry you’re having issues.
•Someone from our support team will be in touch shortly.
** After a mention, compliment, etc. make sure to follow (if not following already) from your company account
** These are examples of what can be said, please do not resort to “copy/paste” answers as every response is different and should be treated that way.
The playbook is a critical resource for helping customer care agents understand what responses look like across varying channels. Your
agents should use this section as a beacon to develop their brand voice across all your social platforms.
KEY PARTS OF SECTION THREE:
• List of all social platforms used by the organization
• Breakout of each individual platform including:
• Basic overview (for newbies)
• How each departments uses platform
• Do’s and don’ts
• Tone and example posts
• Resource list
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4. Processes
Section four is where things should become more specific for each department and serve as a critical resource for your agents. Now that
they understand how social fits into the organization and where in social they should be looking, WHAT do they do? Once a post is spotted or a tweet comes in, what happens? Who is responsible? What happens if the post is just utterly horrendous, or if the problem doesn’t
seem to be resolvable? Social moves fast and agents need to know what to do next because, if not, split second decisions are made and
crises can ensue.
The first part of the section is the rules of engagement. An agent needs to know what warrants a response and what doesn’t. These rules
will obviously vary depending on your company’s social mission and goals, as well
Engagement
as which departments are active in social. Some companies set engagement rules
around the type of post or the influence level of the author.
WHAT WE RESPOND TO:
It’s also a good idea to include rules around the types of posts that the company will
• Mentions of company as part of presentations
or events
not respond to. There are too many stories of rogue agents who, while trying to be
helpful and proactive, open a Pandora’s Box that could have been avoided if they had
just left the original post alone. Again, the rules of what not to engage in should align
• Compliments of our product, service, or people
with the company’s overall social goals.
• Recommendations or referrals to company
• Customer Service/Support issues or inquires
• Sales leads
• Feature requests
Engagement
WHAT WE DON’T RESPOND TO:
•Sarcastic, snarky or potentially inflammatory comments
•Retweets of blog posts or news announcements, unless in low enough volume to respond individually
•Tweets from webinars or other online events
•Discussions/conversations between individuals that mention company in passing in which our involvement
could be perceived as intrusive (if there is a better way to solve a problem we will contribute; we also will
thank them for the conversation/promotion)
•Posts in a language that we don’t have the appropriate
understanding or resources to respond to
•Posts/forum threads that require membership to
respond to, unless it’s a customer service issue,
negative post or misinformation we need to correct
Engagement
WHAT WE DON’T SAY:
• Unwarranted public apologies
•Any details about future product enhancements
•Most announcements regarding technical difficulties
•Profanity or inappropriate subject matter
•Reference to partners, customers, etc. that are not
publicly known
•Any details or mention of a competitor
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It is also important to decide whether to respond to a post publicly or privately. According to ICMI research on Twitter support, most
customer comments using a company hashtag are responded to publically (80%), as are customer retweets (75%), customer raves (76%),
and customer favorites (74%). Split pretty equally between public and private responses are customer rants and customer care requests.
In which Twitter interactions do you respond to the customer? Publicly or privately?
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The next step is to outline a workflow. It’s important to make sure the steps for the expected workflow are clearly defined:
Workflow
CONTENT IS REVIEWED MANUALLY OR WITH
A SOCIAL SOFTWARE SOLUTION THAT CAN
AUTOMATICALLY, FILTER, PRIORITIZE AND
CLASSIFY POSTS IN TO RELATED BUSINESS
ISSUES SO THAT THEY CAN BE ASSIGNED TO
THE MOST SKILLED AGENT:
• What product are they discussing?
• What’s the theme of the conversation?
• Can they be added to our CRM system as a
contact/lead?
• What is the source, and is it considered influential?
• What is the general sentiment/tone?
Workflow
WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU’RE ASSIGNED A POST:
• If possible, try to understand the complete context of the conversation.
What has been said to the customer in the past? Was her problem
solved? Who responded previously?
• Review post and ensure that you are the right person to be handling it.
(If not, re-assign to appropriate person.)
• Follow the guidelines for responding publicly or privately laid out in the
Engagement section of this playbook.
• Make sure to clearly document your interaction with the customer so
that the next agent can review the interaction history and tailor an
appropriate response.
• Update “Engagement Level” to reflect the current status of the post
after your response/review.
• Respond and then properly disposition each interaction so that your
organization can track your personal and team performance.
It’s important to clarify the expected timeframe for posting types to move through the workflow cycle. Again, these standards will be set by
company goals and objectives, but it’s important to quantify them for tracking purposes. It also helps agents prioritize items in their queue.
Not every social post needs an immediate response and it’s important for them to understand what the organization’s
expectations are.
Workflow
RATING
DEFINITION
Low
Standard on-topic post, default setting, Interesting blog/forum
post, general comments
<1 business day
Medium
On-topic post about competitor’s business/complaints/compliments
<1 hour
High
Tech support, difficulties with the software
<30 minutes
Urgent
Potentially damaging, crisis
<1 hour
Workflow is also where tools begin to take center stage. “The effectiveness and ability for an agent following the playbook is completely
dependent upon the social media engagement solution and its capabilities,” explain Fried.
Managing the assignment of posts and tracking their journey through the contact center is wholly dependent on quality tools. Tools help
ensure that the workflow is easily managed and pertinent information can be appended to the CRM system. The tools you use can also
help track data that will be used in reporting which is discussed in section five.
The final part of the Processes section should arm the agent with knowledge on escalation procedures. It is inevitable that at some point,
there will be social posts that need to be escalated and arming agents with necessary information is crucial. This is the perfect opportunity
to work with your creative department and develop a succinct flow chart that highlights when a post should be escalated and who should
be involved.
KEY PARTS OF SECTION 4: • Rules of engagement • Workflow • Escalation
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5. Reporting
The final section of the playbook should focus on reporting to ensure that the organization and the individual departments are tracking
the progress of their goals. This is an especially important section for the contact center which has traditionally relied heavily on metrics to
track the performance of their agents. There is still debate among the industry as to which metrics should be tracked for social service performance. Some contact center leaders believe the metrics should track as closely to regular center KPIs as possible, while others contend
that the metrics need to account for the unique nature of social. This is another area that will depend on your particular organization. The
popular metrics many contact centers are using are:
• Time to response (36%)
• Net Promoter Score (41%)
• Gratitude (30%)
OTHERS INCLUDE:
• % of instances handled in social (no transfer to another channel)
• % of social conversations added to CRM system
• % of social conversations that led to new sales leads
• Number of social inquiries closed per agent
• Time to resolution
At the very least, customer satisfaction should be tracked. Unfortunately less than ½ of contact centers (48%) are currently measuring satisfaction with social media customer service.
Do you measure satisfaction with social media customer service?
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For those that are, the traditional method of end-of-interaction CSAT surveys are used by 46%, while 44% track satisfaction through
comments or responses on other social media platforms. Over a quarter (29%) track discussions on customer forums and communities to
gauge satisfaction with social support, while 27% have agents proactively place outbound follow-up calls, emails, or social interactions to
ask about customer happiness.
How are you currently measuring satisfaction with Social customer service?
Again, the list of metrics to track will depend on the organization. The important part is to be sure that they are clearly defined and are
updated as necessary. A cross-functional team meeting should be set to review each department’s performance and make sure that
everyone is tracking toward the broader organizational goals.
KEY PARTS OF SECTION 5:
• Clearly written, quantifiable goals
• Cross industry
•Departmental
• Timeframe for updating reporting
• Timeframe for cross-functional review of performance
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6. Resources
The final section of the playbook should list both internal and external resources that will help new and long-term users. Are there case
studies of companies that the organization considers aspirational or inspiring? If so, include those. Have you found a book that does a great
job of describing the role of social in the contact center? Include that too. The resource list should include references at both the organizational and departmental level.
KEY PARTS OF SECTION 6:
• Organizational level resources
• Departmental level resources
At the end of the day, the playbook is the living, breathing document that will help guide the organization through the evolution of being
social. For the contact center, this document becomes the training guide and resource for all agents and managers who are working with
social service. “Perhaps the most important aspect of a social media customer service playbook is the rules and best practices that apply
across the board to all of your customers,” says Margulies.
Unleashing agents to the world of social without a guide is a costly risk for any organization. If the idea of an organization-wide document
is too daunting, at least start creating the sections specific to the contact center. Arm your agents with the best information to ensure the
best customer interactions. As Margulies iterates, “The media type is secondary – the spirit of engagement and willingness to help a customer is primary. The social media playbook provides that.”
ABOUT THIS WHITEPAPER
This whitepaper was made possible by the underwriting support of Five9 (www.five9.com). ICMI research sponsors do not have access to
research participant information, including individual survey responses
ABOUT ICMI
The International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) is the leading global provider of
comprehensive resources for customer management professionals - from frontline agents to
executives - who wish to improve contact center operations, empower contact center employees and enhance customer loyalty. ICMI’s experienced and dedicated team of industry insiders,
analysts and consultants are committed to providing uncompromised objectivity and resultsoriented vision through the organization’s respected lineup of professional services including
training and certification, consulting, events and informational resources. Founded in 1985,
ICMI continues to serve as one of the most established and respected organizations in the call
center industry.
ABOUT FIVE9
Five9 is a pioneer and leading provider of cloud contact center software, bringing the power
of the cloud to thousands of customers worldwide and facilitating more than three billion
customer interactions annually. With extensive expertise, technology, and an ecosystem of
partners, Five9 helps businesses take advantage of secure, reliable, scalable cloud contact
center software to create exceptional customer experiences, increase agent productivity and
deliver tangible business results.
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