To many businesses, social is still a campaign-based tactic, viewed and managed separately from business operations. This is flawed thinking. Social media marketing needs to be woven into the fabric of all marketing and communications channels, and strategically managed from a 360-degree perspective. Why? Because social communication has worked its way into most aspects of your customers’ daily lives. There’s no way around it—people who frequent social channels want the companies they deal with to interact with them on those channels.
Social integration is especially important around customer service, where the disparity between the customer experience in the social media channel and the customer experience in the traditional channel is a dangerous chasm. The result is a mixed message around customer service—an area where none of us can afford to be unclear or inconsistent.