Avanade warns against ignoring social media tools

While Canadian companies are fully aware that social media tools can improve customer service and increase sales, such tools continue to remain absent in the business space, suggests a new study commissioned by global IT consultancy Avanade.

According to the survey, “Sixty-eight per cent of Canadian companies view social networking as the next step in collaborative activities and technology for a business…Approximately 40 per cent of Canadian companies fear that they will lose customers to companies that are embracing the use of social networking technology.”

Roughly 78 per cent of Canadian companies surveyed believe social media tools are beneficial for improving feedback and reducing customer support time; 89 per cent feel such tools create the perception of a positive, forward-looking company.

Canadian companies also feel that social media tools will inevitably enter the workplace, whether welcomed or not. Of the companies surveyed, 87 per cent agree they will be “forced to increase the use of social networking media and technology” in order to meet the needs of younger employees. And 83 per cent say social networking, if not proactively managed, will “come into the business by stealth.”

Yet companies continue to resist incorporating them into the workplace. “Most companies have no formal plans to manage the adoption of social media (such as instant messaging, blogs, wikis and social networking) or leverage its benefits,” the survey reports. Only 16 per cent of Canadian companies “have a fully implemented strategy for integrating social computing for employees.”

Security (83 per cent), apathy (50 per cent) and unproven technology (61 per cent) are the top three reasons Canadian companies are resisting social media tools, according to Stéphane Gagnon, Business Solutions Advisor, CRM, Avanade Canada.

In a recent study on Web 2.0 tools used at Canadian enterprises for internal employee communication, Robert Half Technology also found the majority of companies surveyed do not use or have any plans to use social media tools in their workplace. Respondents to the Robert Half survey noted security, implementation costs, usage rates and difficulties in measuring ROI as their top concerns.

“It is difficult to relate what better customer service does,” said Gagnon. “You know the impact in the end because the company that constantly delivers better customer service typically will have better performance. At this point, these technologies are young and it’s hard to evaluate what these will be.”

One example of using social media to improve customer service is letting customers select their own technical support agents, Gagnon suggested. By providing specific information such as which agents are available, their names and their skills sets, companies can provide customers with a choice of who they want to talk to “either because they like that person or because they know that person is more skilled in the problem that they have,” he said.

Companies who embrace social media tools and do it right will gain some product differentiation on the market, said Gagnon. “The ones that are not doing it will be left behind.”

Smaller companies will embrace Web 2.0 tools faster than larger companies, according to tech blogger and futurist Thomas Purves. “I think you’ll start to see some differentiation between the companies that are able to embrace these tools and the ones who can’t figure it out.”

The Coleman Parkes Research survey, “CRM and Social Media: Creating Deeper Customer Relationships,” interviewed 541 executives in senior management, lines-of-business management, IT managers and sales and marketing executives across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.