FARNBOROUGH, England, February 11, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

1^st CENTRAL, a leading UK insurance provider, is transforming its customer engagement programme by using Sentiment's social customer service application to increase visibility on its community, improve response times and strengthen advocacy and retention. The business is able to offer customers a choice of communication channels and a seamless experience, underpinned by greater social reporting and management control to ensure regulatory compliance.

Sentiment is a unique cloud-based social customer service platform for contact centres and social marketing teams. Leading brands across the globe use the application to deliver social customer service, and social marketing from a single, integrated tool. This unique functionality gives brands a single view of the customer and teams across the business are able to prioritise and purposefully engage with customers to deliver consistent service and a personalised experience at exactly the right time and contact point.  

The 1^st CENTRAL team selected Sentiment to power its social customer service programme after a competitive procurement review, designed to ensure the best fit with both current and future needs.  

Key priorities for 1^st CENTRAL:

Improve ease of access and centralise data 

Sentiment's unified software application enables the 1^st CENTRAL customer response team to work across multiple social accounts effectively, and sustain full visibility on comments and quick response times. Different teams across the business also use the application to get a clearer, panoramic view of its community.

Simplify agent inboxes 

On the busy customer service frontline, intelligent workflow and automations simplify agent inboxes. Noise and spam is filtered out and mentions are routed to the right person to action.  A single stream view of accounts also eases the pressure on agents by giving them one queue to work through.  

Enable swift replies to all customers who need a response 

The customer response team uses automations to prioritise and assign customer queries to an agent, or to redirect or remove posts. This ensures that the team focusses on the mentions which require a prompt reply and is not overwhelmed by other noise on its social accounts.  Access to full conversation histories gives the team information on previous interactions so they can get back to customers quickly.  

Provide command and control layers on agent activity 

Team administrators are able set up specific user roles to control access to functions, features and social accounts, based on the tasks and responsibilities of their response team.  

Enhance performance monitoring and reporting 

Approval functionality gives 1^st CENTRAL greater control over messaging. Agent responses can be routed to an approver to ensure only the correct messaging is seen on public platforms. The team also applies tags to mentions to analyse interactions and report on social conversations, and provide feedback across the business to improve the customer experience.  

Help internal teams to synchronize  

The deployment of the Sentiment application provides internal teams with enhanced visibility on all aspects of the social customer service experience, and the data can be easily shared across teams to help drive business improvements.

Maintain compliance with financial services regulations  

The Sentiment application also enables 1^st CENTRAL to satisfy the requirements of social media compliance, as demanded by the Financial Conduct Authority:

• Supervision/approval - systems and controls must be employed to ensure compliance and supervision of business communications. Interactive content and messaging must be monitored, employees notified of violations of policy and appropriate action taken.
• Communication archiving - all communications must be recorded and retained.

Provide a partner approach and robust customer success programme  

A key element in the successful implementation has been the customer success partnership with 1^st CENTRAL's internal team. This is built on strong relationships, a shared voice and supportive knowledge-sharing environment to enable and empower the customer response team to deliver consistent customer service, whilst maintaining compliance.

"Sentiment demonstrated a real desire to understand our needs and challenges, and this has enabled us to build a collaborative relationship," said Paul Dittmer, Senior Marketing Executive, 1^st CENTRAL.

Leon Chaddock, CEO at Sentiment commented: "Sentiment is proud to be working with such a forward thinking brand in 1^st CENTRAL. We will continue to work in partnership with the team to ensure they continue to deliver consistent social customer service and meet consumer demands for a flawless experience. Businesses are increasingly looking to social to enable them to enhance the customer journey, improve retention and provide valuable insights around customer behaviour."

About Sentiment 

Sentiment is a cloud-based social customer service platform that uniquely includes capabilities to allow customer service and marketing to work together. This has enabled 100's of major brands across the globe to deliver social customer service and integrated marketing from a single, integrated platform. It allows organisations to purposefully engage with contacts, to ensure that positive perception of reputation is extended beyond the social customer service function to the business as a whole. Sentiment focuses on driving value on behalf of clients, increasing operational efficiencies while minimising the cost of engaging through social.  For further information visit http://www.sentimentmetrics.com

PR Contact
Anita Matthews
Sentiment Marketing
Anita.matthews@sentimentmetrics.com
+44-(0)845-658-9945
@smetrics

SOURCE Sentiment