New Partnership to Enable Enhanced Social CRM and Engagement Capabilities
Synthesio, a leading provider of global social media monitoring, analysis and engagement solutions, announced today a new partnership with Lithium Technologies, the leader in Social Customer Experience. The partnership aims to unite the unique strengths that each brings to the table, to deliver an enhanced Social CRM platform with industry-leading features.
Since 2006, Synthesio has focused on developing advanced global web monitoring technologies and services, providing brands and agencies with valuable data and insights to better understand their markets and enhance their bottom line – and with a rapidly growing client roster which includes the likes of Microsoft, Nissan, Johnson & Johnson and RIM, it’s clear that they have established their place as a leader in the space. In late 2011, Synthesio announced their arrival into the Social CRM scene with the launch of their social engagement platform – Unity. An ambitious, cutting-edge platform, Unity aspires to take Social CRM technologies to the next level by offering agencies and brands advanced collaboration capabilities coupled with the ability to directly engage with their audience in real-time, not only within Facebook and Twitter, but now also within the other two previously neglected key media types: blogs and forums.
Lithium is the standard for hosted communities and social customer engagement with a seamless experience across websites, mobile devices and the social Web. The Lithium Social Customer Suite grows brand advocacy, drives sales, reduces costs and accelerates innovation for over 300 iconic brands, including AT&T, BT, Best Buy, Sephora, Skype and Telstra. Lithium’s software allows brands to build vibrant communities that engage and activate their social customers to increase sales conversion by up to 25%, double customer spend and lower support costs by millions of dollars.
According to Thomas Le Gac, Managing Director, Synthesio France, “After 4 years working on Social CRM initiatives for Telecoms, I can recognize a powerful social engagement offering when I see it. At Synthesio, we work on Social CRM projects with clients of various industries from Hospitality, to Finance to Telecom, providing proven, tangible ROI, and we’re excited to collaborate with Lithium to further expand our capabilities and provide our clients with the best of our two companies.”
The partnership will aim to seamlessly integrate the Lithium hosted communities as an additional media type with which clients may engage within Synthesio’s Unity Engagement platform. The result will be a uniquely powerful, centralized platform allowing for direct engagement within Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums, Facebook FAQ and now Lithium hosted communities as well, along with Synthesio’s powerful enterprise-level collaboration, reporting features, and the valuable ability to integrate with 3rd party CRM platforms, such as Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, and even internal client-side platforms such as call-center-logs, surveys, etc.
Lithium’s Bruno Teuber, Senior Vice President & General Manager, EMEA, said: “While new social networks offer a host of opportunities for marketers, they also introduce unprecedented complexity. Brands require a selective and unified engagement solution that helps them engage with their customers. Synthesio Unity provides a powerful asset to do just that.”
“Lithium is pleased to be a key community platform integrated with Synthesio Unity. This approach has been requested and validated by several of our joint customers. Synthesio’s monitoring background ensures a high level of expertise for accessing heterogeneous sources including high-performance platforms like the Lithium Community Platform.”
Social CRM has been an increasingly hot topic in recent months, as more and more leading brands realize the value associated with direct online consumer engagement, and seek out the latest tools to facilitate their activities.
According to Gartner, a leading technology research and advisory firm headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, “Two of the four most critical new issues for customer service organizations in 2012 will be:
- How to harmonize customer service processes that sometimes happen with a human support agent, sometimes through self-service and sometimes by peer-to-peer community networks.
- Building competencies in integrating collaborative or social CRM into ongoing customer service workflows.”
Both Lithium and Synthesio have been embracing this truth for customer service by enabling direct interaction for brands and adding an additional level of value by leveraging online communities where users organically convene to voice their feedback. In addition to building a venue for effective brand-to-consumer communication, these communities are designed to allow members to answer questions on behalf of the brand as well. By empowering passionate brand advocates with a dedicated venue and encouragement to answer questions, Social CRM is converting consumers into advocates, and advocates into valuable brand ambassadors.
“With one award-winning client, we achieved a level where customer service only answers less than 10% of online questions; they merely monitor the rest and certify the best consumer answers, so future consumers may easily find their answers. The results are substantial with enhanced customer satisfaction, improved brand reputation, dramatically reduced incoming support calls and savings in the millions.” says Le Gac.
