CIOs must start to think about integrating social media into their service desks as the technology becomes ubiquitous in everyday life, according to analyst firm, Ovum.
In the report, The applicability of social media for IT service management, analyst and author, Mark Blowers, said employee demand for social media has driven an increase in its use at the service management level.
“IT users are coming to expect similar levels of interaction in their corporate lives as they do when conducting online life as private consumers,” Blowers said. “Social media tools can work well in IT service management, especially in bringing about improvements in the service provided to users.”
Bowers warned IT teams not to delay their adoption of social media, saying that more employees are seeing it as a “must-have”.
“Delaying an organisation’s participation in incorporating social media IT service management related functions could be a big mistake,” he said.
“As IT service desks increasingly move up the agenda in terms of importance for organisations, integration of social media will be seen by employees as a must-have, and a lack of availability could generate inefficiencies, such as workarounds, creating compliance issues.”
Bower took the argument for social media a step further, saying that IT managers should implement Twitter for customer support.
“Organisations should be taking steps such as integrating IT service management with Twitter feeds,” he said. “This allows business users to turn a tweet into a customer support ticket known as a ‘twicket’. When responding, the service desk agent can respond quickly to the Twitter account or privately using the Twitter Message facility.”
In a report also released recently by Ovum, Mobile social networking: services and monetisation, the analyst group said that while location based check-in services like Foursquare and Facebook Places are attractive to marketers, they have the potential to become all hype.
To date, the combination of advertising and technology has worked well, but expect to see consolidation said principal analyst at Ovum, Eden Zoller.
“We are witnessing a mobile social commerce gold rush but many of the companies coming to the market are doing so with ‘me too’ propositions,” he said in a statement.
“The wide availability of such undifferentiated services and growing competition could create fall-out.”
