Scenario - bxp and Social Media

1 Intro

We have a step by step technical guide for setting up your bxp to use social media here.  
If you're technical it should make a lot of sense. Bxp_Social_Media_integration_setup

bxp software has the ability to read from and write to Social Media, through a number of mechanisms.

The most effective use of bxp and social media is in Case Management, where contact via the social media can be managed and reported on from within bxp software.

Social media contact can be difficult to manage when large volume is involved. Not any more with bxp. This guide takes the reader though a project setup, using bxp to manage all the social media for a sample company.

A full config has been completed for Linked In, Twitter and Facebook in under an hour.

2 Overview

This document demonstrates how to create a work distributing social media management solution for any social media source. The sections in the document each work as separate instructions as how to set up different facilities. The areas covered in the project are:

• Basic contact campaign setup
• Basic social media campaign setup
• Social media configuration
• Email account reading setup
• Reading emails into a campaign
• Setting up outcomes to respond
• Managing the work distribution
• Basic contact reporting
• Social media contact reporting
• Case management reporting

A social media campaign makes use of inbound and outbound contact to generate blended campaigns. Integration with external systems is easily managed using the bxp framework. Completely customisable content management enables complex solutions be created without extensive development. Prototyping solutions can be done in hours rather than weeks at a fraction of the cost.

The solution presented is built and available to test and view in your own bxp system. Please contact us for a login to see the solution in action and try it for yourself.

 

3 Scenario description

3.1 Clients challenge

Social media is a growing means through which customer relationship is managed. There is a need to embrace social media but not the usual large IT budget. Large budgets are not available to fund new solutions but the requirement for social media still exists. You can turn to an outsourcer but they will charge. Where you have multiple outsourcers already how do you manage the work and monitor the results and efficiencies? A solution needs to be found and sooner rather than later. It can be found in bxp.

3.2 Outsourcer’s challenge

An outsource contact has been asked to extend their contact management operations to look after social media. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. There are numerous requirements :

• The team has to be able to do traditional contacts and also adopt social media management.
• There are to be controls on the agent’s access as full access to the social media account is not ideal.
• Contacts are logged in a simple database or on Excel spreadsheet.
• There are numerous reports required for contact which take a number of person hours to generate.
• There is no budget for expanding existing solutions and IT has an extensive backlog of work which means critical work will be prioritised.
• The company has not really interacted with social media before and no investment in a unified communications platform can be entertained.
• Timing and work force planning need to be calculated but there are no benchmark statistics readily available that are reflective of the types of activity.
• There is concern that the client might be looking at alternate suppliers who can provide a solution

 

4 Solution outline

4.1 Overview

bxp provides a framework with all the tools to address all of the problems outlined. This document now demonstrates each step.

Strategically we need to get the contacts coming in and the process to handle them set up. We refer to this as Phase 1. At the end of this phase we will have contacts coming in and managed. The next part of the process is to refine the approach and to ensure we learn from operational challenges. Training, communication and process refinement are managed in Phase 2. As part of the on-going process of improvement and client added benefit delivery, in Phase 3, we look at ways of optimising the entire program and bringing even further benefit to the whole program.

It is feasible to see Phase 1 operational in two days, however staff training is situation dependant. Phase 2 is a process managed over two months, with operational goals also specific to client requirement. Phase 2 usually begins from the first second of contact management. Phase 3 is usually reviewed and implemented after the first couple of months of operation.

4.2 Phase 1

The first challenge is to create a campaign database to store all of the data. We will configure it to handle inbound contact logging first. With that in place we need to customise it for email management and social media.

To manage the social media, we convert the contacts to all run through email. Firstly we set up an email box to handle the social media contacts. Next we point our social media accounts to that mailbox. With the mailbox now filling with social contacts, we configure bxp to hoover out the emails and turn them into work items.

With the work items created we manage their processing. A number of contact processing engines are employed to speed up and optimise interactions.

Now with all of the contacts successfully managed we have reporting to analyse our work and help us even further refine how we manage our contact.

4.3 Phase 2

In Phase 2, when the contacts begin to come in we need to start extracting as much information from the contacts and real world interactions as possible. We need to begin to build consistency across our agent interactions and we build a program of training and development to ensure new agents are brought up as quickly as possible.

We begin with the ability to administer Net Promoter Score, Customer Effectiveness Scores or other customer grading to get feedback from our customers to ensure we’re doing a good job. Our customers are our best source of information.

We then plan and implement an evolving training program to refine approach and adopt best practices. A huge emphasis is placed on communication as most of the learning will come from chatting to customers or through feedback forms. Trusting the comments in the social media alone is not reflective of the whole customer experience, though it does feature as well.

4.4 Phase 3

With an evolved management process and supporting documentation and training programs in place, we now seek ways of improving the entire program. We find ways of extracting performance data and customer behaviours to better analyse and feedback to marketing departments. We find further ways of enhancing training and development to get new agents operationally ready faster. We open up the evolution of our programs and future of our business to the staff to get their opinions and votes on where to take the business next.

4.5 Resource Planning

4.5.1 Assumed existing resources

Requirement	Cost	Frequency
An internal staff member comfortable using computers	€1800	per month
A computer for them to use with Internet access	€100 deprec.	per month
Subtotal	circa €1900	per month

4.5.2 Phase 1

Requirement	Cost	Frequency
A Facebook, Twitter and / or LinkedIn Account	Free	per month
An email box	Free / €20	per month
Tweety Mail	$9.99	per month
A bxp basic contact centre pack (15 modules / 50 users)	€750	per month
Subtotal	circa €780	per month

4.5.3 Phase 2

• No additional technical resources
• Contact management staff and computers with Internet access
• Further training staff to develop training materials useful but not necessary
• Further marketing / design staff to develop customised / marketing emails useful but not necessary

4.5.4 Phase 3

• No additional technical resources
• MetaData requires a technical person to use it effectively

4.6 Modules Used

4.6.1 Phase 1

Module	Title	Description
	System Access Management	Creating and managing users. Often referred to as SAM for short.
	Form Management	Creating and managing the contact databases and questions asked, outcomes used and contact flow.
	Inbound Contact	For handing inbound contact via phone or post
	Outbound Contact	For distributing work already logged in the system
	Data Profiling	For getting operational reports
	Control Bar	For optimising the user interface and getting access to reporting dashboards
	Case Management	Extended reporting tools for case management. Case management operational tools for managing SLAs.

 

4.6.2 Phase 2

Module	Title	Description
	Communications Centre	Group send text messages, emails or mail merge to customers and / or staff.
	Information Centre	Daily noticeboard with read verification to ensure agents read the notices.
	eCourse Management	Build training and support materials.
	eCourse	Module providing agents access to training courses and support materials.
	Conference Centre	Live messaging for groups that is secure to the company with full transcripts.
	Testing Centre	Deliver open or closed question tests to evaluate and support agents.

 

4.6.3 Phase 3

Module	Title	Description
	MetaData	Combine data from multiple sources and output to multiple sources in multiple formats
	LogicFlow	Logic branching training tool for use in training and call support roles
	Voting Management	For delivering questions to all or groups of staff and easily collating responses

4.7 Project Plan Outline

Express rollout is the approach of getting something up and running quickly. Whilst it is useful to be able to state that a contact management solution for social media can be up and running in under a day it is prudent to put as much development, planning and training time as is possible into the research of the area. This amount of time will depend on individual client resource availability.

This project outline is a guideline with one technically competent person, a simple social media management campaign and a view to evolving the solution with time as more and more requirements and operational experience is gathered.

All n One does not recommend rushing any contact with customers but where immediate response to customers is required, it can be provided.

 

4.7.1 Phase 1

8 hours = 1 working day

• Action Duration
• Have a bxp system built for you and get a login 4 hours
• Create the contact email account with login details 8 hours
• Add the email account details to bxp and test 1 hour
• Create the initial contact campaign 4 hours
• Log emails into the campaign 1 hour
• Configure Control Bar quicklinks 2 hours
• Create the social media accounts and configure them 8 hours
• Set up TweetyMail 4 hours
• Configure the outcomes for your processes 8 hours
• Establish initial reporting metrics 8 hours
• Total 6 days

Please note that the times given are for inexperienced staff. All n One can perform this entire function in a single day on your behalf if requested.

 

4.7.2 Phase 2

• Action Duration
• Create a conference centre to allow agents to confer 1 hour
• Build eCourse structure to reflect operation 1 hour
• Add and implement test information centre messages 1 hour
• Reconfigure script to link to training material 1 hour
• Create a customer satisfaction survey 8 hours
• Group email with clickthru to customers 4 hours
• Total 2 days

The largest and most time consuming part of Phase 2 is the creation of the training materials and how the company will manage interactions with customers through social media. This material develops over time and is generally managed by a training department in conjunction with operations.

 

4.7.3 Phase 3

• Action Duration
• Employ Voting management 1 hour
• Build a logic flow based on experience gained X hours
• Link numerous data sources for reporting purposes X hours
• Total X days

This phase time durations are limited by experience, size of organisation and desired direction of the project. After scoping and implementation of Phase 2 for approximately one month, these times can be guesstimated.

 

5 Conclusion

bxp using the experience of All n One can provide a multi agent support solution for handling all your social media and contact management channels. Give us a shout at support@allnone.ie or phone 353 4 429 4000 for more information.