On the 26th of May Accenture sponsored, in conjunction with TeleTrain, the first annual Customer Service Seminar.  The theme this year was to investigate and discuss the impact of new social media platforms on organizations and their interactions with the customers.

The day began with an introduction to the demanding and selective customers of today combined with a poll of the room to see how ‘social’ the audience members were.  After the short introduction the participants were in agreement to the challenge their organizations face and were ready with their smart phones to start filling up the Twitter fountain.  The day flew by as all 8 speakers provided their view on the challenge of today, and those challenges that are likely to arise.  Key ideas shared by the presenters are;

1. Tjalling Smit from KLM (@KLM): dare to experiment, go to where your customers are, and learn from them!
2. Xaviera Ringeling (@Contentgirl): it comes down to personality, audience, knowledge, & trust (P.A.K.T.)
3. Fred Zimny (@serve4impact): create time and space: access, connect, engage, collaborate, & customize
4. Arjen Hof from GovUnited (@GovUnited): putting government in the citizens’ pocket
5. Paul Honout from Microsoft (@Pauluz): best practice social media policy — “don’t be stupid”
6. Martin Visser from Salesforce.com (@salesforce): find flexibility and a quicker ’time to market’ in the cloud
7. Rahm Fehr from Verint (@Verint): don’t just hear your customer; make use of analytics to really listen to them
8. Kenneth Lim (@kennethlim): value lies beyond social media and customer service

On behalf of Accenture and Teletrain, I would like to thank all the presenters for their stories, views, and opinions.  The day was full of discussions as to how organizations need to prepare their business, and their employees, for the new challenges and demands the social customer will bring.  A special thanks to our highly interactive and ‘social’ audience which resulted in an interesting stream on the twitter fountain of more than 250 tweets.  Thanks for all your questions and comments and I hope to see you all next year at the 2nd annual Customer Service Seminar.

For a view of the individual presentations please visit the seminar webpage.