Cisco jumps on social media bandwagon

Cisco is launching Cisco® SocialMiner, software that enables companies to find and proactively respond to customers and prospects communicating through public social media networks like Twitter and Facebook, or other public forums or blogging sites.

Status updates, forum posts, or blogs from customers can all be monitored in real time, alerting enterprises of conversations related to their brand. Cisco’s social customer care solution enables companies not only to monitor the social Web in order to improve business intelligence but also to engage customers that require service.

According to Nielsen, more than one million Tweets are sent out every hour, while one in three people have used Facebook, Twitter or other social media to rant or rave about a product, company or brand. With more and more Web-based conversations taking place over these social platforms, it’s now more critical than ever that businesses are aware of what their customers are saying about them and are able to respond to general inquiries or rectify customer service issues so as to enhance and protect brand reputation.

Businesses worldwide use Cisco Contact Center technology to routinely handle millions of customer contacts a day, including voice calls, video, e-mail, chat and Web interactions. Social media is booming, but its use by businesses is largely ad hoc, unstructured, and unable to scale. Cisco’s expertise in operational excellence and network scaling technologies enable the company to offer businesses an enterprise-class solution for proactive social media customer care.

Cisco also announced Cisco Finesse, a web 2.0 collaboration desktop for customer care representatives that puts all the information they need in a single, modifiable cockpit enabling them to help callers faster, better, and with higher accuracy. This can help lower operational costs for businesses and increase the number of satisfied customers.