Over the last few years as social media has grown in popularity so has the social media command center.  Created in an effort for companies to monitor, engage and overall better understand their customers online, these command centers have helped companies interact with their target audience in more interactive and intimate ways than were ever thought possible.  Even with the revolutionary new technology, a major question remains: What department is responsible for customer engagement within the social media command center?  Marketing or Customer Service?

While the social command center may seem to be a straight forward customer service function, the confusion occurs when posed with the question of whose responsibility is it to respond to different posts submitted by online fans.  Should a response from a Facebook fan always be handled by a marketing professional no matter what or should a customer service agent always be the one providing responses online?

The answer to this newly formed question is both.  Social media command centers require customer engagement efforts from both the marketing department and the customer service department.  The idea behind this interdepartmental venture is that posts and questions relevant to the company’s overall marketing strategy can be targeted by the marketing department while customer service agents spend their time within the command center focused on answering frequently asked questions and resolving service issues online.  With this process, the correct information is sent out to the right people on social media, but as the frequency of social media engagement increases, how can a company keep track of, let alone automatically route, each conversation to the department capable of resolving their issue?

Behind the exciting exterior of the multiple flat screens and flashy lights associated with today’s social media command center is a social relationship monitoring platform connected to the company’s CRM which, among other things, monitors and routes social media posts to the correct department and agent that can provide the most relevant and helpful information as quickly as possible.  This is often done through the use of special indicators that track qualitative and quantitative aspects of the various social media posts that eventually help determine where a post should be routed to.  These monitoring platforms are also capable of generating detailed reports on demographics, trending topics online, conversation volume and more, providing both the marketing and customer service departments with powerful information to use moving forward.  Even with its reporting functions, the social command center is useless to the company’s overall customer service goals without integration within its CRM system.  As the frequency of social media interactions escalates, the need for a 360 degree view of your customer and the various interactions they have had with your contact center is extremely important and can only be done by integrating your social relationship platform and CRM to allow for multichannel customer engagement.

Like any other new function of marketing or customer service, the social media command center can only provide ROI when a deeper integration of a company’s CRM and social relationship platform is realized.  If you would like to learn more about social media command centers and the technology and strategy behind building a successful venture, you may be interested in our eBook below.

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