As companies continue to look for ways to save money, one area that is sure to go under review is customer service. While many would agree that customer service is one of the most important areas of a company because of the role they serve at the front lines, customer service is greatly under appreciated. It’s not he most glamorous role, but it is important.

With technology rapidly changing the way we do business much of what is heard around the business water cooler is how to increase efficiency. No longer is adding another employee considered the ‘right’ path to go down, but rather how to get the most of current employees. With that, we introduce social media and customer service.

The Role Of A Single Person

One of the unique aspects of social media that is garnering the attention of businesses is its ability to allow a user to communicate with many different individuals all at the same time. You can have one Twitter account for example, but be talking to 5 different individuals with just one tweet. Through multiple @ replies, you can answer a groups question. This new form of ’social multi-tasking’ is a concept that businesses see huge value in. By giving a customer service representative the ability to communicate with many different customers all at the same time creates a money making opportunity.

While it may sound easy to just tell a customer service rep to start up a Twitter or Facebook account, it can be quite tricky. Some factors that a business needs to consider are how to integrate social media into a current customer service protocol as well as knowing which personnel would be best suited in interacting with customers

It’s Not For Everyone

Just how Facebook or MySpace isn’t for everyone, social media might not be for every companies customer service. More often than not, it really depends on your market audience. If you are a bottle manufacturer for example, you’re target audience and end user is less likely to be on a social network actively talking about you as opposed to a yogurt shop which may have hundreds and thousands of customers chatting about them.

Some examples of companies that have effectively used social media to their advantage when it comes to customer service include Comcast, Whole Foods , and Best Buy. While these three are among the most well known companies to have used social media with their customer service efforts, there are many more that are doing a fine job. As consumers continue to trend toward online community sharing and engagement, more and more companies will look for ways to engage them. Further, this will mean that companies will begin transitioning their customer service campaigns over to social networks.

Remember, knowing where your customers is one thing, but knowing how to engage them is another. Make sure you are always looking for new ways to ‘join the conversation.’

Joseph Yi: Joseph is the Director of Marketing at Viralogy.com & works in social media & sports consulting. Read more about him at http://JosephAYi.com

Tags: customer service, Integration, Social Media