Despite their best efforts to cut customer support costs during the last U.S. recession in 2001, organizations are looking to cut more. What’s different this time—thanks to technological innovation—is that they have more options. Instead of merely focusing on cost-cutting efforts that can harm customer relationships (i.e., decreasing call handling time or outsourcing customer service operations—effectively pushing the customer interaction to another company), today organizations can cut costs while providing deeper customer engagements. One of the ways to do this is to leverage Web 2.0 technologies, such as social media tools.
 
In today’s instant-gratification society, customers not only want to find information quickly, they want to share it. This gives customers a tremendous ability to quickly and easily influence their peers. However, it also gives a company incredibly valuable insight into customers’ thoughts and feelings about the company and its products or services. There’s no doubt that the companies that successfully leverage social media tools to better understand the voice of their customers will foster better customer relationships.
 
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