Gone are the days of notice boards and corporate memos highlighting important announcements within organisations. Social media has become standard for organisations seeking to facilitate a more modern approach to sharing ideas and information. Employees are rapidly discovering their voices both internally (eg: yammer) and externally (eg: linkedin).
It’s not only employees who are engaging with organisations on social media. Customers past present and future are also quick to jump online and provide feedback online.
So what does this have to do with Service Management?
Remember, Service Management is about creating a more productive workforce through the use of Service Catalogues, workflow automation and consistent service delivery controls. Customer experience is improved and employees delivering that experience are empowered to do it well.
The keys to linking Social Media and Service Management are twofold:
1. A desire for self service
2. A single system of record
How does it work?
Let's take a look at the second piece first. At the heart of Modern Service Management is a Single System of Record (SSR) which provides the main authoritative source of information. The SSR is where your IT operations are run from – It provides the Central Station and monitors the day to day heartbeat of the organisation, the trick is to configure your social media tools back to your SSR. Social media for its part then is the ultimate self-service tool it seamlessly links users to campaigns and services encouraging:
Direct communication – by allowing employees to respond, comment and provide further insight and feedback into important activities that are ongoing on within the company.
Feedback Mechanism - capture Feedback, Trends and take-action on related threads, articles and feedback captured via internal social channels
Mobile Connectivity - stay in touch even when employees are mobile or with restricted access
Amplification of messages - like, share and contribute within specific communities or specific interest areas within the organisation, Network - Network with fellow workers, and follow what is posted.
Now let’s connect to external customers
One in seven of the world’s population is on Facebook, and according to statista.com 81% of the US population has a social media account. This is expected to rise as part of the digital revolution with most governments around the world mandating the continuation and investment within the digital landscape. (insert number here). With such global scale and attention, it is imperative for all organisations to devise a fit-for-purpose social media strategy.
So how can Modern Service Management benefit Social Media as a channel and create a great ‘customer experience’ externally?
Again, the key is based around an organisations ability to link individuals in this case customers with a modern ‘Single System of Record’ by tracking every interaction of a customer throughout the customer lifecycle, social media can help:
Execute marketing campaigns and communications,
Capture valuable feedback, respond to customers and allow customers to comment
Utilise back end integration through digital workflows
Automate simple customer forms and automatically direct them to the correct internal teams for action and follow up
Provide a modern front facing service catalogue and shopping cart experience
Review trends, capture feedback and provide valuable insights
In addition to the customer facing aspects, the backend of the SSR also ensures that the core customer facing services are stable via well-defined control processes.
These are just a few examples of how Service Management is modernising the workplace and in the coming weeks we will share examples of internal and external case studies that provide practical insight into how the convergence of Social Media and Service Management continues to provide value within the modern workplace.
You can find out more about how to simplify your workplace by downloading our latest FREE eBook ‘Top 10 tips for Simplifying the Workplace’ at https://www.servicemanagementspecialists.com/resources
Service Management Specialists is a boutique IT Service Management consulting practice. We work to overcome IT challenges and business complexities by applying our IT service management domain expertise, collaborative strategic consulting work style to form a simple, clear and effective approach. We help our clients navigate on their own improvement journey - with a high emphasis on knowledge sharing and close guidance.
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