Social Customer Service is new. Social Media is the biggest thing happening to the customer service industry since the mid 1960s when modern day call centres were born. It is taking customers and organisations into untested ways of relating: transparently, collaboratively, instantly. The consequences of great and poor service are forever changed.

Customer appetite has promoted this form of interaction to the very front of a race to understand. How do digital brands and empowered customers actually behave?

Social Customer Service has become Marketing's R&D lab and a listening hub for the rest of the organisation. It is now where corporate reputations are most likely to be won and lost.

'Delivering Effective Social Customer Service' is a complete reference for achieving excellence in this new discipline. It caters to both novice and expert. It is perfect source material for service leaders and digital marketers to read together. Every CXO will recognise in the book a blueprint from which to build their next generation organisation. Even ambitious team leaders should snag a copy for instant subject matter expertise kudos!

The centre of the book offers an in depth self-assessment of the competencies that matter. The book is jammed full of strategic insight, action lists, best practice tips and interviews. All the resources anyone needs to build a solid strategy and roadmap.

Early adopter workshops based on the book have already taken place and will continue to be offered as another way of engaging with the book's key lessons. An online resource of the reference material is also provided. Options for an online community are under consideration.

This book is the first of its kind. A distillation of what has so far been collectively discovered. Then filtered and expanded through the collective experience of two leading authorities on customer service: Carolyn Blunt and Martin Hill-Wilson.

Carolyn Blunt and Martin Hill-Wilson are the top two 'Most Respected People in the UK Contact Centre Industry' according to readers of Call Centre Helper magazine. They have collaborated to bring you this resource for social customer service at a time when many organizations are crying out for help.

Carolyn Blunt is Managing Director of Real Results Training Consultancy, a people development company that specializes in contact centre customer service training. For the past decade, Carolyn has been writing, speaking and training on contact centre customer service, and has been observing the positive and negative impacts of using social media for customer service first hand.

@carolynblunt
Carolyn@real-results.co.uk

Martin Hill-Wilson is a customer service and social business strategist. His company Brainfood Consulting provides customer strategy services to a range of B2B and B2C brands. Martin is also a long-tern member of the UK customer service community passing on his expertise as a keynote speaker and blogger.

@martinhw
martin@brainfoodextra.com

Foreword ix

A Quick Introduction to Reading This Book xi

1 Where Were You When It All Changed? 1

2 Understanding Social Customer Behaviour 17

3 The Ecosystem for Social Customer Service 37

4 The Roadmap for Social Customer Service 61

5 Using Peer-to-Peer Support in Your Service Strategy 115

6 How to Use Facebook for Social Customer Service 145

7 How to Use Twitter as a Service Channel 165

8 Reputation and Crisis Management 185

9 The Legalities of Social Interaction 199

10 One Agenda: PR, Marketing and Customer Service Working Together 219

Ending or Beginning? 229

Index 231