Social Customer Service - A Completely Different Animal (Associate)?

This blog was originally posted on The Pace of Service.

For the last 30 years, traditional customer service recruiting, training, core skills and performance management have not changed dramatically. Service professionals and their management teams have been able to hone the delivery of customer needs through various channels. But are the same attributes that make a great traditional customer service representative applicable for Social Customer Service? Traditional customer channels & attributes: But are these the same attributes needed for superior social customer service?

Let’s look at responsibilities & qualifications of a social customer service representative.

Responsibilities:

• Monitor social media outlets/networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs.) for customer service related inquiries, complaints, concerns
• Organize customer service inquiries, concerns, and responses for record and reference track the types of questions that appear on social media outlets
• Distribute and/or partner with various internal resources to ensure social media generated issues are resolved and communicated
• Partner with various internal (possibly external) resources to update customers on promotions, technical advancements, general content, issues or changes
• Create, curate, and repurpose content to share with social communities
• Facilitate the Voice of the Customer (Social Media) to various internal departments and individuals to enhance the customer experience and product strategy

Qualifications:

• Excellent writing and phone skills
• Strong grasp of the structure, purpose, and tone of social networks
• Ability to think quickly, and formulate responses within a short turnaround time
• Ability to communicate on social networks in a professional, yet personable, way
• Basic understanding of Marketing practices
• Ability to work cross functionally
• FlexibilityComfortable presenting organization’s values, positioning and persona potentially to the entire social universe
• Able to "Exercise Responsible Freedom"

I think we are dealing with a completely different animal. So if we are dealing with something different, what should we consider changing?

• New job titles/roles/descriptions
• Recruiting – should it need to be socially sourced?
• On-board training – inclusion of marketing, product, service, HR
• Core skill development
• Career progression paths
• Performance Management
• Continuous education models

Since this is such a new arena, all comments and thoughts are very much appreciated.