Measuring Your Company's Social Care Efforts

2. Metrics for running an effective social care program. Metrics are an essential component when evaluating the effectiveness of a social care program. Traditional social media metrics such as "Likes" and "followers" are good ones, but they won't necessarily correlate to a successful social care program grounded in business goals.

Three key measurement categories are examined in the study: service, quality and effectiveness measures. Both quantitative and qualitative metrics are important elements in providing a balanced overview to social care effectiveness. Even though several metrics may be difficult to calculate, bringing social care into the framework of your support center will help solidify the channel as a valuable customer retention strategy.

3. Calculating ROI. Retailers know that social media can generate significant revenue. Dell, for example, made Twitter famous when it generated more than $6 million via the social network in just a few years. In order to get executive commitment for social media customer service, however, it's important to revert to traditional business cases and ROI calculations that examine gains from investment and total program costs.

Retailers should determine what it means to calculate social media ROI for their business, then invest in building an ROI framework that can evolve and improve over time as technology improves and additional data becomes available.

Al Rose is vice president of retail and internet properties for TELUS International, a provider of customer care and contact-center outsourcing solutions to global clients.