NETTING IT OUT

Oracle Service Cloud Social Experience is Oracle’s application for social customer service. “Social Experience” monitors customer posts on the social web, analyzes and reports on the content of those posts, and provides facilities that let social customer service agents interact with social posters. Social Experience is an integral feature of Oracle Service Cloud, not an add-on. Oracle Service Cloud cases and contacts can be created and managed from social posts automatically or manually, and Facebook users can access the Oracle Service Cloud knowledgebase.

The capabilities of Social Experience are included in the Enterprise and Enterprise Contact Center packages of Oracle Service Cloud. Businesses and government organizations purchase subscription licenses for those Oracle Service Cloud packages for cloud deployment. To date, we estimate that approximately 50 organizations, all Oracle Service Cloud customers, have deployed the Social Experience features of Oracle Service Cloud.

Oracle Service Cloud Social Experience earns a good report card—Exceeds-Requirements grades for Customer Service Integration and Company Viability and Meets-Requirements grades for Monitoring and Product Viability. We gave Monitoring and Analysis a grade of Needs Improvement, improvement in the breadth of monitored social sources and the depth of its analytics.

Three factors differentiate Oracle Service Cloud Social Experience. They are drivers for its selection:

• Integral component of Oracle Service Cloud in packaging, pricing, and functionality
• Monitoring and analysis of the key social networks
• Cloud deployment with Windows clients

Social Experience can be an excellent choice to help businesses deliver social customer service, especially businesses that have already licensed Oracle Service Cloud.

Social Monitor Search Results

© 2013 Oracle Corporation

1. This illustration shows an example of the Social Monitor search results report for Custom Channels.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

Answer Customers’ Questions and Solve Customers’ Problems

Customer service products help businesses deliver answers to their customers’ questions and solutions to their customers’ problems. These are questions and problems about a business’s products and services, policies, processes, and practices, or about elements of their customer relationships such as accounts, bills, orders, and contracts. Customer service products also help create, manage, and resolve cases for customers’ questions that have not yet been answered and customers’ problems that have not yet been solved. Customer service products have case management, knowledge management, account management, and social network management capabilities. They deliver those capabilities across self-service, assisted-service, and social customer service channels.

Customer Service on the Social Web—Social Customer Service

These days customers spend so much of their time online on the social web. Some of that time is spent on the products that they use in their lives or that they use to do their jobs. They want help from their peers to learn about those products and help from the products’ suppliers, to get advice on purchasing decisions, and to get answers and solutions to questions and problems in installing and using the products. In other words, customers get customer service on the social web.

It certainly follows that suppliers should deliver customer service to the social web. How? They should:

• Be aware of customer conversations about them and their products.
• Try to ensure that the answers and solutions that customers receive from their peers are correct. Deliver the answers and solutions themselves.
• Try to interact with customers publicly or directly to help customers find correct answers and solutions.

Social customer service products help suppliers deliver customer service to the social web.

ORACLE SERVICE CLOUD

Oracle Service Cloud is Oracle’s cross-channel customer service application that deploys in the cloud. The offering is based on technology that came to Oracle in its January 2012 acquisition of RightNow Technologies, Inc. when it was known as RightNow CX. Oracle Service Cloud is not simply a rebranded RightNow CX. Since the acquisition, Oracle has taken the product through regular, new, quarterly releases and has made significant improvements in each release including enhancements to its social customer service capabilities and its integration with Oracle Fusion marketing, sales, and financial applications.

Three “Experiences” organize the capabilities of Oracle Service Cloud...(more)

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