Social media management application provider Engage121 has broadened its solution to include 4 key capabilities for social customer service:

1. Content gathering: customer conversations can take place across a multitude of platforms include the most prominent social sites as well more specific review site and blogs — your company needs to gather the data from all of them in real time

2.  Real time case creation: Delivering the CRM part of the equation, translating conversations into cases that can actioned in real-time

3. Case Management and Permissions Management: Allowing for consistent cross team management of cases ensuring more complex problems are driven to resolution

4. Reporting: Delivering key metrics about everything from problem areas to demographics to Social Media platform activity levels.

Companies often take a wait and see approach to social media customer service, incorrectly assuming that they can wait to invest in infrastructure systems, after ensuring that business ROI is available.  But as the above list shows, ROI is only available when the infrastructure is there to support social CS efforts by ensuring a wide view of customer activity, strong case management and powerful reporting to support decisions.