Esteban Kolsky's presentation at the Social Business Forum 2012 was meaningfully titled “Everything you wanted to know about Customer Service using Social but had no one to ask”. 

A recent survey by ThinkJar, Kolsky’s independent analyst firm, reported how more than 90% of the interviewed companies consider embracing social channels in customer service the right thing to do for the business and its customers. These numbers shouldn't be too surprising given the popularity of services such as Twitter and Facebook (59% and 60% respectively in the survey) among organizations, the power consumers are gaining online and the 40% preference they have to escalate issues on social services. Moreover, both large enterprises and small businesses are realizing how customer retention is cheaper and easier than customer acquisition.

Many companies are looking at communities and social networks as an opportunity to drive loyalty, satisfaction and word of mouth. However, in this early phase the way they are preparing to launch social support appears to be lacking at best:

• 66% have no defined processes for customer service over social channels
• 68% were not able to estimate ROI before deploying social in customer service
• Only 8% found the expected ROI
• Most of the projects are stuck in the pilot or testing phase

In his interview for the Social Business Thought-Leaders, Esteban discusses how to turn social media hype in business gains by touching upon some of the hottest topics organizations face when approaching social support:

• How to go from social media monitoring to actionable insights
• How Social CRM should be best positioned in regard to traditional CRM
• The importance of integrating social data to transactional data 

Conversations with customer service organizations points to 2012 as the year of "understanding what social means for supporting customers". Will 2013 be the year it all becomes reality? We invite you to listen to Esteban Kolsky's interview to understand how to most effectively develop cross-channel strategies that include social channels and improve both customer satisfaction and the overall customer experience.