Leveraging Cloud and Big Data for Social Media Sales and Support

In the Chat Communications Inc, a company that specializes in social media solutions for sales and customer insights, launched ITC Express, a cloud-based online platform to help companies communicate with their customers via social media. The ITC Express platform, released yesterday, uses advanced text analytics and a contact center platform to help facilitate sales and support for customers in real-time through social media.

For $350 a month per brand, institutions using the solution can delve deeper into social media beyond simply posting on their own sites or profile pages, John Huehn, In the Chat’s CEO and founder, says. “About 30% of the relevant mentions of a specific brand occur on their profiles, and the other 70% is out there in the ether,” Huehn notes.

Using the same text mining capabilities as In the Chat’s enterprise solution, ITC Express pools mentions in social media and uses analytics to determine which mentions are relevant and can be addressed by the bank. Those mentions are then categorized to make them actionable, Huehn explains, and staff can respond to those mentions and start a conversation with them that can be moved to a representative in the call center.

ITC Express right now is only hooked into Twitter, but Huehn says that other social media platforms will be added over time. Twitter is the most valuable social media site from a customer service perspective because it is the site that consumers most often use to complain about a bad experience with a brand, Huehn adds.

In the Chat also helps clients shape their responses to such complaints on Twitter. The company has a model for replying to mentions on Twitter that Huehn reports has achieved as high as a 60% response rate.

The solution also has reporting for social media interactions with customers that can help facilitate compliance in the social media channel -- a growing concern for banks given FINRA’s recent compliance spot checks. Conversations with customers are each compiled into a separate case and stored in In the Chat’s database, where it can later be referenced to help track compliance.

[See Related: Why FINRA’s Spot Checks Are a Milestone for Social Media]

Jonathan Camhi has been an associate editor with Bank Systems & Technology since 2012. He previously worked as a freelance journalist in New York City covering politics, health and immigration, and has a master's degree from the City University of New York's Graduate School ... View Full Bio