SUCC ES S S TORY
Vodacom Uses Genesys Social Engagement
to Manage Growing Social Media Presence
AT A GLANCE
Vodacom Group Limited
http://www.vodacom.co.za/
Industry:
Telecommunications
Revenues:
More than USD$ 6 billion
Number of Employees:
7,000+
Number of Agents: 3,000+
Number of Dedicated
eServices Agents: 140
Number of Customer
Interactions:
>16 million/month
The rapid success of its social media presence left Vodacom with the challenge of how to
handle the growing number of postings that required responses from customer support. To
resolve the issue, the company implemented Genesys Social Engagement — a key
component of the Genesys Digital Customer Service solution — to automate and integrate
social media interactions with their contact centers, including Twitter and Facebook. Now
Vodacom can use existing routing, reporting, and agent desktop technologies to handle social
media as part of cross channel conversations with their customers. This automated approach
offers better scalability than manual methods, all while enhancing the customer experience
and helping Vodacom create a new customer conversation.
SUCC ES S S TORY
Vodacom Group Limited / page 2
CHALLENGES
• Integrate social media
with existing customer
service and contact
center processes
• Manage customer interactions that span social media
and other channels
• Eliminate manual routing
and tracking of social media
interactions
• Gain insight into interactions
and queries coming from
social media channels
• Support ongoing collaboration between marketing
and customer support
Committed to Improving the
Customer Experience
As the largest mobile communications
provider in South Africa, Vodacom must
differentiate itself in a saturated, competitive
market. The company has made a strong
commitment to improving the customer
experience, with the stated vision of “Making
every customer smile” as part of its
corporate strategy.
Vodacom’s marketing department developed
a social media strategy with the objectives
of providing customers with relevant information, engaging customers in
conversations, and answering customer
queries. Starting with Facebook and Twitter
accounts, and with support from the highest
levels of the company, Vodacom now has
the largest social media following among
South African companies.
While it has been very successful from the
marketing perspective, the social media team
quickly found that many interactions require
prompt responses outside of their expertise.
They brought individuals from the customer
service organization to identify Tweets or
Facebook postings that required responses
from customer service agents. The team
then manually created service requests for
each of those postings, distributing them to
the right people.
Vodacom recognized that this manual
approach was at best a stop gap effort. As
their social media presence continued to
grow, manual efforts would not scale, and
the company risked missing important interactions. With a rapidly growing base of online
followers, Vodacom needed more automation
around responding to social media interactions. Vodacom set to work looking for a
solution that could automate the handling of
social media interactions while meeting the
reporting and analysis needs of the
marketing team.
Says Eben Dreyer, Solution Development
Manager at Vodacom, “Ultimately, social
media is just another channel; all the benefits
of real-time reporting and skills-based
routing apply. A posting on a Web site may
be only part of an interaction a customer is
currently having with our company, so we
need an integrated approach to handling
these interactions.”
Vodacom’s contact centers handle more than
16 million calls monthly, using the Genesys
Customer Interaction Management (CIM)
platform. Blended e-services agents within
the contact centers handle non-voice interactions such as chat, SMS, Web call-back,
and e-mail.
As the company evaluated different social
media monitoring solutions, it wanted the
ability to apply uniform routing, reporting,
and management across all channels. Says
Dreyer, “It’s important that social media be
integrated into the greater contact center
system, so that we can apply the same
business logic and rules to social media as to
other channels.”
Specifically, the company wanted to integrate
social media interactions with:
•
•
•
•
Skills-based routing
Case classification
Escalation rules to manage SLAs
Reporting and business intelligence
Genesys Digital Customer
Service — An Intelligent Solution
Genesys Social Engagement offers both the
automation and integration that Vodacom
needed. Genesys Social Engagement analyzes
social media interactions and applies intelligent
routing and business rules to align interactions
with the right resources in the contact center,
marketing department, or other groups.
Integrated reporting delivers insight into
business outcomes and effectiveness.
Genesys Social Engagement also provides
out-of-the-box integration with Genesys CIM
and with Twitter and Facebook, which are
Vodacom’s primary social media channels.
SUC C ES S S TORY
Vodacom Group Limited / page 3
“I hope that being an early mover will give us a competitive
advantage. No matter how our customers choose to interact with
us, we want to provide the best possible service. Genesys Social
Engagement and Genesys eServices are helping us do that.”
DIGITAL CUSTOMER
SERVICE SOLUTIONS
• Genesys Social Engagement
• Genesys eServices
EBEN DREYER,
SOLUTION DEVELOPMENT MANAGER,
VODACOM
BENEFITS
Vodacom worked with partner Dimension Data in South Africa to define project
requirements and implement Genesys Social Engagement within the Social Media group.
Genesys Social Engagement routes social media interactions requiring customer service
intervention using skills-based routing to the right agents handling chat, e-mail, and other
digital media. Interactions requiring Marketing responses are sent to the marketing team.
Explains Dreyer, “We now maintain a universal queuing strategy, with a single view of the
customer and consistency across channels. Genesys Social Engagement extends this
universal queuing strategy to social media.”
Using Genesys Social Engagement, the customer services team has real-time visibility into
customer interactions across touchpoints, and the ability to move interactions started on
Twitter or Facebook to other channels. If an interaction begins on a social media channel,
agents can offer Web call-back or e-mail to deal directly with the customer, without losing
context or data.
The same business rules and processes apply to these interactions, and customer
interactions initiated in social media can become part of the customer record.
Contact center agents use the same interface for social media interactions as they do for
e-mail, chat, and other support functions. This makes it easier to use blended agents for
optimal efficiency and consistency.
Lessons Learned: Collaboration Counts
The social media experience has brought home to Vodacom the importance of
collaboration across groups. Marketing needed education about customer service, and
customer service needed insight into marketing.
“Customer service has to be very careful about what it posts in the social media channels,
as they could potentially post something damaging to the company,” says Dreyer.
“Now marketing and customer service are working collectively to service the social
media channels.”
By responding promptly and consistently to social media questions and complaints,
Vodacom can improve market perception, reduce customer service calls through deflection,
and improve customer loyalty.
• Improved efficiency in responding
to social media queries
• Consistent business rules applied
to social media interactions
• Ability to use blended agents for
social media interactions
• Expanded choice of channels for
customers
• Better scalability for growing social
media presence
S UC C E S S S T O R Y
Vodacom Group Limited / page 4
Next Steps
With the initial implementation proven, Vodacom plans to extend the downstream integration of
social media interactions with the customer record/CRM. For example, they want to integrate
Facebook accounts and Twitter handles in customer records, where possible.
Longer-term, the integration of social media with customer service channels supports the
company’s strategy of creating a culture of online engagement with its customers. Beyond
offering self-service options, Vodacom wants to “put the power of the Internet in people’s
hands.” This means being willing to engage online with its customers to improve its overall
customer relationships and develop strong customer advocates.
Genesys Social Engagement can help the company along this path by automating, reporting,
managing, and optimizing online interactions. “In many ways, social media is just another
channel for engaging with our customers — all of the benefits of skills-based routing and
real-time reporting apply to the social media environment,” concludes Dreyer.
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