Cisco launches tool for "holistic" view of the customer experience

Cisco has unveiled its SocialMiner tool to enable marketers to respond to consumers in real-time when they post comments about the brand on social networking sites.

The offering enables users to search for public postings about products, services or areas of expertise using pre-configured campaign filters to weed out non-priority topics. If integrated with Cisco’s Finesse thin client desktop, which enables customer care staff to access multiple sources of information from a single interface, postings can also be routed to call centre agents, supervisors or experts such as account managers, enabling a number of people to work together to provide a suitable response.

According to tech publication InformationWeek, John Hernandez, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s customer management business unit, said: "This is not a point solution to just mine social media. It is a holistic view of the customer experience. Integrate social media with a Web 2.0 cockpit [aka the Finesse user interface] and you can identify who should respond, how, whether it should be escalated to voice or video."

SocialMiner also generates metrics on such customer care activities as well as producing campaign and team reports. It, along with Finesse, will be sold via Cisco’s partners as part of a bundled offering. No pricing information was given.