It’s happened to most of us; we mention a brand somewhere on the Intertubes, and soon find ourselves on the receiving end of an email/blog post/twitter reply from the company.
It used to be a little spooky; now it’s fast becoming an expectation. Given the customer conversations happening right now on social media, this news was inevitable: hosted CRM powerhouse Salesforce.com just integrated Twitter functions into its “Service Cloud” product:
Salesforce.com lets you answer customer complaints on Twitter » VentureBeat
Most people on popular microblogging site Twitter (which just turned three) have probably seen customer service-type queries from other users — questions about how to make a product work, or complaints that it’s broken. I have even posted some complaints of my own. That’s one of the reasons companies like Google have created their own Twitter accounts, and its why Salesforce.com is adding Twitter integration to its customer service product, which it calls the Service Cloud.
This is the kind of integration that can only help make engagement via social media tenable in the business world – a social media force multiplier that might protect marketing & service budgets from the skyrocketing costs of monitoring and stuffing a myriad of social media channels.
Lowering barriers to customer engagement can only be a good thing – though we note the other barriers to engagement remain in place (corporatespeak, hype, indifference, inauthentic behavior, etc).
I like this move, but have to wonder why it’s still so damned hard to get two-way integration between email service providers and CRM solutions. One step at a time.
Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.