Is Blogging Viable in the Contact Center?

Some say blogging is an effective tool for improving communication and customer service. Customers can interact and exchange thoughts in a "community" setting. Others feel blogging is detrimental to customer support. Which is it? Those in support of blogging point to the support it has received from many customer service companies. A recent trend has been for managers to allow individual customer support representatives to create their own blogs in which they can manage their own ideas and thoughts. Much of the feedback has shown it leaves a better impression for customers, who then find the company more "real" and "honest," according to industry experts. "Many feel that the company looks more real," says Duke Chung, CEO and cofounder of Parature. "It exposes a lot of the ideas that the company may want to share with their customers, and allows customers to give their feedback in a more natural medium." On the flip side, there are those who believe blogging exposes too much information that can be detrimental to the company or the customers, and can allow for the spreading of false or fictitious information. Additionally, companies could find it difficult to establish parameters to control such things. Many feel that in time, the popularity of blogging will pass. Chung disagrees. "I think blogging is something that's picked up not only in contact centers, but also within people's personal lives," he says. "Blogging will become a component for the customer support industry, in multiple variations. Blogging is another method of a new generation of Web self-service [that] will have customers supporting each other with their own thoughts."