To help service businesses deliver a high-value customer relationship online, ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd., the premier provider of automated workforce management and optimization solutions for the services industry, has announced tight integration between Facebook (News - Alert) and its ClickContact self-service customer portal.

The customers, with this social media extension of ClickContact, can book and change service appointments directly on a service organization's Facebook page, receive reminders and notifications on the expected arrival time of the service engineer to minimize wait times.

"The most successful service businesses tightly link the human experience with the social web," said Simon Morris, Vice President of Marketing at ClickSoftware (News - Alert), in a press release. "Our social media extension integrates the ultimate customer touch point – the service call – with Facebook's 500 million active users, triggering the word-of-mouth engine."

With the help of ClickContact, a customer is allowed to book and easily reschedule a service appointment for themselves, without the intervention of any of the organization's customer support staff.

This approach of self-service empowers customers to get what they need faster, and dramatically reduces call center volume for compounding cost savings to the service organization.

"Over the past year, we have used Facebook to educate and service our customers, learn from them and collaborate with them on community projects. We have significantly grown our Facebook community and experienced its powerful business influence," said Josh Houser, Vice President of Service of APX Alarm, the ClickSoftware customer that helped drive the ClickContact social media extension. "We are looking forward to enriching our customer's Facebook experience with the appointment booking and self-service portal. Extending service management to our Facebook presence is a natural extension to the community we've created."

"Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools are the channels consumers actively use to broadcast their experiences - both positive and negative - with service providers. With this ClickContact extension into Facebook, service providers can activate this powerful broadcast engine to communicate the positive experiences they create through engineer appointments and notifications," added Mr. Morris.

As yet another interaction channel for ClickContact, Facebook can also integrate two-way communication with company web pages, automated voice calls, e-mail and SMS. The preferred channels of communication can be selected by the customer at any time, even for the same service incident.

In related news, ClickSoftware Technologies has enhanced its ServiceTycoon software to help small and mid-size service businesses deliver a high-touch customer experience with minimal cost and effort.