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Happy Holidays: Fonolo Reads Mean Tweets [Video]

By Fonolo Team on December 18, 2018

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We did it! We made it to the last blog post of 2018.

135 blog posts. Over 5000 Twitter followers. New initiatives. A new platform. New patents. New partnerships. New customers. It has been a busy, extraordinary year for Fonolo’s growth across channels and industries, made possible by the ongoing hard work of our dedicated employees, partners, and clients. What drives us is our deep belief in strengthening customer service and customer experience for call centers and contact centers across North America, and the knowledge that our solutions are making customers happier than ever.

We’ve worked hard, so we thought it was time to have a little fun.

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Inspiring Customer Service Advice in Less than 280 Characters

By Samantha Mehra on October 17, 2018

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As we transition into autumn, it’s easy for us in customer service to lose the steam, energy, and focus we coveted during the rejuvenating days of summer. This is certainly not ideal given that the late fall and early winter months are some the busiest for call centers and contact centers in many the vertical: Black Friday, Super Saturday, and most of the days book-ending December 25th see a dramatic upsurge in customer support requests, which accompanies a similarly dramatic upsurge in shopping on these days.

Customers also use social media as a preferred communications channel at this high-octane time, a public, digital soapbox upon which to shout out about frustrating customer service experiences (anything from being put on hold to never reaching a customer service agent). But while social media can reflect the negative, it can alternatively offer positive viewpoints and inspiring wisdom, often in 280 characters or less. Specifically, Twitter and LinkedIn have sprinkled throughout its many vestiges a series of short, sweet, thought-provoking tidbits from insightful customer service professionals that can dig you out of the winter doldrums, and catapult your customer support strategies into action. If you want to be inspired, invigorated, and ready for anything, read on and soak in the quick’n’dirty advice from CS and CX professionals and enthusiasts.

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Top 16 Contact Center Tweeters to Follow

By Daniela Puzzo on July 12, 2017

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From bloggers, to analysts, to contact center publications, there are a lot of distinct voices discussing the latest best practices and trends in the call center space. With so many influencers to follow, how do you pick the ones that will add the most value to your Twitter stream? Fonolo is here to help. These 16 tweeters crank out quality content that are sure to provide insight into the contact center industry.

While we definitely didn’t have room to include all of our favourite folks and organizations, we figured this would be an optimal list to get you started. If you value the content from an individual or organization on Twitter, make a point to show appreciation by retweeting or “liking” their posts.

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Twitter Still Wants to Be a Customer Service Channel

By Shai Berger on April 12, 2017

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What a strange place Twitter is in. Consider the incredible influence it holds in the daily news cycle. Newscasts and white house press briefings talk about “tweets” with a seriousness that makes it easy to forget that no one outside the early-adopter circles had even heard that word before 2008. Or consider how iOS treats “tweeting” as a system-level communication option, on par with email and text messaging.

And yet, the company continues to struggle against sluggish subscriber growth and impatient investors. There were rumours throughout last year, that a sale was imminent. Part of the problem is that Twitter, as a product is successful in a few different “roles”. It works as a PR conduit for politicians and celebrities; as a global chat system; and as a customer service channel. That last role gets the least amount of public attention, but the company’s recent actions show that it sees a real future in this direction.

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Dear New Owners of Twitter: Don’t Screw Up This One Thing, Please

By Shai Berger on October 11, 2016

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Right now, the only news story you’ll see about Twitter is speculation who will acquire the $16B company. (Latest rumor: it’s Disney or Microsoft.) Twitter hasn’t seen the user growth investors expected and, as a public company, its fortunes are at the mercy of those expectations. (Even though those expectations aren’t always reasonable or relevant.)

Regardless, the company hasn’t stopped evolving its product. Lost in the buy-out chatter was an announcement that, I think, is quite significant: The introduction of specialized “customer service accounts”. This is the second time this year that Twitter has shown it recognizes its unique advantages in this area. It is willing to adapt to the needs of customers and companies who use it as a support channel and that could prove more valuable in the long-run, than all of its current schemes to goose ad revenue. Continue reading →

The Secret Behind Twitter’s Customer Service Superpower

By Shai Berger on May 18, 2016

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The burning questions for the customer service industry today are which channels of communication are currently most relevant, and which will be most relevant down the road. In recent months, the discussion has centered around Facebook Messenger and other messaging channels.Many people are debating whether any of these platforms (Messager, Snapchat, Kik, Line, etc) can “win” the B2C communication platform war. (See here, here or here.) The fact that WeChat has seemingly “won” China, and achieved near dominance of online customer service, adds fuel to this fire. (My take on that: Will the WeChat Model Work in the West?)

Then Facebook opened Messenger to automation, i.e. “Chatbots”, and the fire went supernova. (The role of bots in customer service is the topic of a live online discussion we’re hosting next week with a great panel of experts. Register here to join the Google Hangout.)

Lost in all this glare has been Twitter, which continues to be a powerful – and popular – channel for customers to interact with businesses. This is somewhat puzzling because, on the surface, it’s not really well-suited for this purpose. What’s the secret to Twitter’s enduring popularity as a customer service channel? Continue reading →

[Video] Top 10 Call Center Tweeters to Follow

By Nicolina Savelli on April 27, 2016

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320 million – That’s the latest tally of monthly users who are currently active on Twitter. It’s fair to say that the twitterverse is a mighty big place, with countless voices trying to get our attention. But some of those voices actually have a lot of valuable things to say! In this vlog, we’ve navigated the deep twitter waters to find out which contact center professionals are delivering informative content with every 140 character message they send.

Watch it now as we countdown Fonolo’s top 10 call center tweeters to follow for thought provoking content and up-to-date industry insights (You might even see your name on the list!). Continue reading →

How to Protect Your Brand from Angry Tweeters [OHW Offenders]

By Nicolina Savelli on April 13, 2016

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According to Twitter, in the past two years the number of Tweets directed at leading brands’ customer service usernames has grown by 2.5x and that number is rising exponentially every year (50% to be exact). In the same report, Twitter found that 85% of customers who have a satisfactory social interaction are likely to recommend the brand to others. So, when a customer turns to social to contact you, it’s important to do your best to resolve issues as timely and accurately as possible. However, if your company is doing a great job responding to customers, but you’re still seeing a plethora of angry tweets directed at you, maybe the problem is how you’re handling callers. Social customer service should work in tandem with phone, chat, mobile, web etc. – you shouldn’t have to choose to be good at one thing or another. Continue reading →

Chat vs. Messaging Comes Down to Who Owns the Channel

By Shai Berger on March 29, 2016

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Customers increasingly prefer chat over other communication channels, but chat suffers from an uptake problem, particularly on mobile.

On the other hand, messaging offers basically the same experience – asynchronous text-based communication – but has no problem with uptake. In fact, it’s burning up the charts: Messaging apps occupy 6 of the 10 top slots on App Store (the top 4 have 3 billion users). Granted, that popularity is driven by person-to-person rather than person-to-business communication, but many companies are betting on messaging making that transition.

So we’re at a crossroads: Will chat find a way to increase uptake rates or will messaging find a way to become a B2C channel?

That’s the topic for this webinar which you can watch on demand at any time. Continue reading →

Twitter’s Impact on Call Center Culture

By Shai Berger on October 7, 2015

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The relationship between Twitter and the call center industry has been fascinating to watch over the last few years. If you asked anyone in 2008 what impact the newly hatched “micro-blogging” system would have on customer service, you would probably have gotten blank stares. Yet here we are: 43% of the Interbrand 100 companies have dedicated Twitter handles for customer service (according to SimplyMeasured).

Meanwhile, the call center has been grappling with the biggest challenge it has faced since its inception: Learning how to interact with consumers on a growing number of channels. What makes this challenge really tough is managing customer interactions that span multiple mediums, often as part of the same transaction. More and more, Twitter is part of that cross-channel journey. Continue reading →