On the Social Customer & Obstacles to Engagement

CRM industry analyst and advisor Brent Leary just wrote about his initial findings from a recent survey, something he calls the Social Customer Engagement index this past week.

This came about from a survey that they asked TheSocialCustomer.com community to participate in in order to help them better understand how companies were using social technologies to support their customers. Also involved in the survey were customer care experts from the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals (SOCAP).

An overview of his experience below:

Seventy-six percent of the respondents came from companies employing greater than one thousand employees (46%), or fewer than fifty employees (30%). Says Brent: "it will make it interesting to compare and contrast philosophies and approaches big companies and small companies are taking with respect to integrating social media into customer service."

While 55% of respondents from companies with over one thousand employees spent less than $50,000 on their social initiatives, 18% spent over $100,000. Of those spending over $100,000, half of them are spending over $250,000 — or 9% of the total respondents from large enterprises.

He summaries the toughest challenges that came up from the participants in engaging customers on social networks:

-Getting management buy-in: (40%)

-Determining appropriate key performance indicators/metrics: (51%)

-Understanding customer expectations: (49%).

A whitepaper of the survey results is coming soon, which will provide an in-depth look at how companies are adopting and using social tools to better serve and support customers. Follow them along on Twitter as well.