NETTING IT OUT

Radian6 is the name of a company (which is a division of Salesforce.com); a brand; and a social listening, analysis, and service platform. Radian6, the social-service platform, has components for monitoring the social web, analyzing the monitored results, and engaging with and delivering customer service to social web users.

Organizations purchase subscription licenses of the Radian6 platform for cloud deployment. To date, Radian6 claims that more than 3,000 customer organizations have licensed Radian6.

Radian6 earns good grades on the Customer Service Report Card for Social-Service—exceeds-requirements grades in analytic functionality and company viability and meets-requirements grades in customer service integration and product viability. Note that the component that provides customer service integration, Radian6 Social Hub, is new.

Radian6 is an attractive and useful social-service offering. It’s easy to learn, easy to use, and fast. Its tiered pricing, modular packaging, and cloud deployment let any organization of any size in any industry monitor the entire social web. Its integration with Salesforce Service Cloud delivers case and management and account management capabilities to the social web.

Radian6 Analysis Dashboard

(Click on image to enlarge.)

© 2011 Radian6, a division of Salesforce.com

Illustration 1. This illustration shows an example of the Radian6 Analysis Dashboard.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

Answer Customers’ Questions and Solve Customers’ Problems

Customer service products help organizations deliver answers to their customers’ questions and solutions to their problems through their case management, knowledge management, account management, and social network management capabilities--capabilities that support self-service, assisted-service, and social-service channels. These products help answer and solve customers’ questions and problems about products and services; about business policies, processes, and practices; or about the elements of their customer relationships such as accounts, bills, orders, and contracts.

Customer Service in the Social Cloud—Customer Social-Service

These days customers spend much of their time online in the social cloud. Some of that time is spent on the products and services 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 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 in the social cloud.

It certainly follows that suppliers should deliver customer service to the social cloud. How? They must be aware of customer conversations about them and their products. They should try to ensure that the answers and solutions that customers receive from their peers are correct. They should deliver the answers and solutions themselves. And they must try to interact with customers publicly or directly to help customers find correct answers and solutions.

Social-service products help suppliers deliver customer service to the social cloud.

RADIAN6

Radian6 is the name of a company, the name of its brand, and the name of its social listening, analysis, and service platform. Radian6, the social-service platform, was introduced in October 2009. The firm claims that more than 3,000 B2B and B2C organizations of all sizes across many industries have licensed it. A bit more specifically, the components and the capabilities of the Radian6 platform are...