HP Helps Organizations Enhance Customer Engagement via Social Networks

HP this week released several enhancements to its customer relationship management (CRM) services that help clients engage in conversations with customers and influencers through social media channels.

HP Social Enterprise Services are now available tohelp organizations implement a social CRM program. The program leverages advanced speech and text analytics and data warehousing technologies—both developed internally and gained during HP's acquisitions of Vertica and Autonomy—for structured and unstructured data.

HP Social Enterprise Services incorporate social media channels into existing contact center channels to provide organizations with a holistic view of their customers. The program supports any social media outlet, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and countless other sites. "It will go across any platform," says Dennison DeGregor, HP's worldwide CRM executive, "and can scan the entire big data environment to bring a full 360-degree view into a single platform."

Part of HP Customer Engagement Management, HP Social Enterprise Services provide two service models: HP Agent Services to engage with customers in social media channels and HP Social Media Analysis to mine the social Web for information and insights on customers. Key features include the following:

• Listening Service, which monitors a client brand or product in social media channels to identify new engagement opportunities.
• Analysis Service, which leverages analytics to gain insight into client, competitor, and industry trends to refine the company's social media strategy.
• Routing Service, which directs engagement opportunities to internal stakeholders, such as customer service, marketing, sales, and product development for prompt action.
• Engagement Service, which leverages insights derived from analytics to respond to customer inquiries and comments in social media channels.
• Reporting Service, which provides daily snapshots, weekly summaries, and monthly reports of insights, analysis, and opportunities to measure program success.

DeGregor calls it "a very sophisticated set of tools" built around helping companies with sentiment analysis, brand defense, first contact resolution, and service-to-sales conversion.

"The purpose of the offering is to do sentiment analysis, scan the Internet for nuggets of data, and then convert it to actionable intelligence," he says.

According to DeGregor, the solution is not geared toward any specific vertical, but rather, targets "any B2B or B2C company that wants to capitalize on social media," no matter how far along its social media strategy is.

"Social media has become a game changer in company-customer interactions, and it needs to be integrated into an organization's contact center," said Danila Meirlaen, vice president of business process outsourcing at HP, in a statement. "HP Social Enterprise Services take customer relations to a new level with analytic tools that make it easy to engage with customers via social networks, turning those interactions into positive outcomes for both the customer and organization."

According to DeGregor, several Fortune 50 companies are currently using the service, either in pilot programs or as early adopters. HP Social Enterprise Services are now available worldwide. Pricing for HP Agent Services varies depending on client need. Pricing for Social Media Analysis Services is subscription based and depends on the volume of services selected.

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