Ovum: Vendors, adopt better social tools or risk losing customers

Vendors must “step up” and add new analytics solutions, multichannel metrics, and better collaboration tools next year or risk losing business from always-connected customers.

So says Ovum analyst Aphrodite Brinsmead, who explains that enterprises must pre-empt customers’ needs if they are to survive.

In her report, 2013 Trends to Watch: Customer Experience and Interaction, Brinsmead predicts that social media response teams’ move into the contact centre will drive the need for better social media management tools.

According to the analyst firm, mobile self-service will become more intelligent, customers will have the ability to request a callback from within a mobile application, and it will become easier to transfer a query from a self-service application to voice, chat or email.

Additionally, she forecasts that traditionally siloed applications, including performance management, business intelligence, and customer feedback, will be merged into voice-of-the-customer (VOC) analytics suites.

Brinsmead says: “Enterprises need to support today’s customers by providing timely and accurate responses via mobile, web, and voice channels. In order to succeed, they must address customer needs at every stage of the customer lifecycle, and support and integrate data internally.

“It makes sense for enterprises to create collaborative customer experience teams in order to align technology and data strategies across product, IT, marketing, and customer support.”