If you have yet to incorporate social networking into your customer relationship management (CRM) platform, you are missing out on key opportunities to streamline communications, control your brand and monitor market perceptions. The good news is you can leverage call center software that can provide the necessary unification between your CRM efforts and your social media initiatives to deliver the best value from both platforms. In fact, this approach should be a requirement for your next call center software purchase.

Call Center Software to Monitor Social Media

When you think about the next application in call center software that you need to drive results in your environment, you aren’t likely to immediately think of social media. And, while the call center agent is still your most valuable asset, you have to be equipped to monitor what customers are saying in popular social media channels and to address their issues and problems through these channels. You may not think Twitter or Facebook should be a consideration in your call center software, but you’re missing a key point in innovation and current market trends if you do.

Call Center Software Integration with CRM

Traditionally speaking, CRM solutions provided a great and powerful database for customer and prospect information so that data could be harvested for lead identification, current customer support and so companies could grow the customer base. Today, call center software platforms are being used to capture pertinent customer information that can be easily plugged into the CRM platform. This heightened intelligence not only gives your company a leg up on the competition, it also enables you to be ready to defuse any customer scenario that can arise before it becomes a brand-harming problem.

Why Call Center Software is Important for Social Media

Your company established a call center to be able to quickly and easily respond to customer issues or problems. You should be able to leverage your call center software to do the same when information is captured through social media. If you have a unified communication solution within your call center software strategy, your 24-hour connected call center agents can readily respond to alerts from e-mail, instant messaging, phone lines and social media. Your call center serves as the starting point for customer interactions and these interactions are increasingly originating in social media platforms. Your call center software should be able to effectively monitor and manage these interactions.

Consistency in Call Center Software Matters

You know how important your brand is in the overall success of your organization. Your call center software should be able to extend the value of that brand, while also empowering your agents to deliver consistency. When your call center software is unified, you provide your agents with a consistent way to interface with all communication channels. This helps to streamline typical call center duties, and handle the increased connectivity that social media strategies demand. In addition, these platforms can ensure communication histories are linked through social CRM platforms so that all customer data and interactions/communications are captured in one platform that is easy to navigate and consistently delivers the same brand to the customer.