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TouchSocial Simplifies the Social Media Connection

By Steve Anderson
Contributing Writer

Social media's ever-increasing importance in the customer experience means that getting a better handle on this communications tool is vital to the future of business. TouchCommerce wants to help make social media more accessible to users with its new TouchSocial solution.

TouchSocial gives companies the opportunity to develop a complete and unique online engagement platform, with a particular emphasis on improving customer satisfaction. The system uses a combination of shortlinks in social posts and application programming interface (API) tools to help drive several benefits for consumers directly. With TouchSocial in place, businesses will get a new slate of tools geared toward addressing issues customers may have before such can become the viral horror stories that can sink a brand. It can also help drive analysis of the customer and related opinion, make customer care work better and faster, and even help drive some of that positive word-of-mouth that can really perk up a business' numbers. TouchCommerce's RightTouch platform can then incorporate product information and any available browsing behavior to generate better responses, and offer this content through live chat or by other means.

80 percent of customers in a Brandwatch study said that they expect a response from social media questions within 24 hours, so speed of response will be vital to maintaining customer experience. That same study revealed that 50 percent want a response in just two hours, while roughly 25 – 30 percent want that response in under a half hour. It may sound unduly demanding, but there's a payoff: those customers who engage in social media commonly spend as much as 40 percent more than those who don't, and mean a 33 point higher Net Promoter Score. Engaging in social media, therefore, is key to accessing big spenders who talk up the brand whenever expectations are met.

This is where TouchSocial comes in. The service helps provide a rapid, streamlined response. It's easy to start up a Ryan Block-style furor around a bad customer service call when the company doesn't respond for a couple days, but when the company responds to issues within minutes, much of the viral punch about an “uncaring company” just doesn't land.

Still, some care needs to be taken here. A canned response likely won't help, and if too many of the responses start looking the same, that too could become a customer service issue. A little personalization is key, and responding to each customer personally will certainly help. TouchCommerce offers the tools to not only respond right away, but also respond the right way.