Get Satisfaction is extending its customer engagement tools into customizable widgets that can be placed anywhere a brand wants to offer clients answers and input.

The San Francisco-based company that is already powering 65,000 online customer communities is launching this new adaptable widget with a small group of clients in a beta test and expects to soon roll out these offerings to all current and future companies interested.

As most companies thrust their brands and employees into the world of social media, there are a lot of issues that arise from bringing together customer service and the online platforms were people go to get more company information.

The concept of the service is rather simple; millions of times every month, people are already wishing their friends happy birthday on Facebook. With MyGiftWand they can now easily add a free or paid gift card from one of the participating merchants. “In just 4 clicks, Facebook members can give their friends a free gift with that birthday wish. It’s that simple”, added Roye. If they want to add some more money to the gift they can also make a contribution and increase the cards value, but the fun doesn’t end there; the gift gets posted to the recipient’s Facebook wall so their other Facebook friends can see what’s happening and join in the celebration by making a contribution of their own, turning it into a group gift. Friends can also choose to use the system to give them a different card of their own. “We believe our service is the perfect example of social commerce in action; true friend-to-friend marketing”, added Roye.

Indians are twice as likely to use social media to get a customer service response than their counterparts in other countries, says a survey.

"54 per cent of Indian have used social media at least once in the past year to get a customer service response, more than twice the average 20 per cent of consumers in other markets," said the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer.

Financial services provider American Express' annual survey was conducted in India and 10 other countries.

People in India who use social media for customer service are more willing than the general population to reward companies with both business and loyalty for quality service and end relationship due to poor service, the survey said.

The revamped loyalty card, which has the potential to be a game changer in the lucrative world of loyalty programs, includes a new discount proposition, my5, which will give FlyBuys customers an added incentive to swipe their card. It will give customers 10 per cent off five products of their choice based on an offering of 5500 products.

The prospect of bigger discounting has sent shivers down the spines of suppliers, caught in the crossfire of the fierce price war between Coles and Woolworths.

But, if Coles can pull it off and offer a better suite of options than Woolworths, it has the potential to spin the loyalty business off into a separate entity down the track.

The customer service best practices seminars will kick off on Tuesday, May 15, at the Union Square Marriott, 480 Sutter Street, in San Francisco, and will be headed up by Lonnie Mayne, chief experience officer for Mindshare, and Shane Evans, vice president of business solutions-retail for Mindshare. Both Lonnie and Shane will lend their expertise in VoC and enterprise feedback management (EFM) solutions.

We had a great experience with these seminars so far, and we’re excited to now work with organizations in the Bay Area and share with them the best practices for capturing customer feedback and making it actionable,” said Mayne. “We’ve designed these seminars to address some of the most common questions that often come up about customer feedback, and our goal is that each attendee will walk away with the know-how needed to improve customer service efforts for their company.

The first thing to be said — and important to note — is that this is not customer relationship management technologies (CRM), nor customer experience management (CXM) technologies; this Magic Quadrant is built around Customer Service and Support (CSS) problem management.

Gartner points out that customer service contact centers refer to a logical set of technologies and process engineered to support the customer, regardless of the channel.

Within this, there are CRM business applications that will analyze customer interactions, but there is generally more than that too; other functions include advisory services, problem diagnostics and resolution, account management and returns management.