Jive's Tony Zingale Makes a Case for Social Enterprise– with Actual Numbers (TCTV)

There’s been a lot of debate about how much Twitter and Facebook buzz can really benefit big companies, and even more debate over the value of so-called “social enterprise” software offerings from the likes of Jive, Yammer and Salesforce. So Jive commissioned a third-party survey of their customers to find out just what benefits they were seeing.

The results were pretty staggering. Internally, companies reported a 37% increase in project collaboration and productivity, 30% higher employee satisfaction and a 32% reduction in time to find answer. The most welcomed result might be a 27% reduction in email. Externally, customers reported a 31% increase in customer retention, 34% higher brand awareness, a 27% increase in new customer sales and a 28% decrease in call support volume. (For another view on how companies should use social media, check out Jeremiah Owyang on NBC’s Press:Here, which aired yesterday.)

Large numbers aside, I was skeptical about some of Jive’s claims– particularly around how their products lead to better customers service. I invited CEO Tony Zingale to the TechCrunch studios to talk about the survey, why we should take it seriously, and why with so many advances in customer-related software most of us still get such awful customer service.

Video below.