As Facebook increasingly becomes a channel for brands to interact with consumers, it makes sense for companies to tap into the social network to manage customer support. Salesforce’s Service Cloud, Get Satisfaction and a host of others have launched deep integrations with Facebook to allow companies to engage with the 400 million plus consumers on the social network. Today, Accel Partners-backed Parature, an on-demand customer service software, is launching a customer service product for Facebook Pages.
As customer conversations are increasingly taking place on the walls of Facebook Pages, Parature’s application allows companies to actually integrate a branded “Support” tab. Customers can post a comment to a corporation’s Facebook Support wall, which is then pushed into Parature’s software as a ticket with the Facebook customer listed on the ticket. And the customer service representative can push an update by responding directly on the wall.
Parature’s support app also allows companies to include a number of commonly asked questions about a product or brand. This allows a customers to search for a service answer from within the Facebook page. If a customers’ question hasn’t been answered, Parature’s technology will allows a user to create a ticket that will be pushed to a representative.
And as live web chats are increasingly becoming a common support technology to include on a company’s website, Parature allows the option for a customer to start a live chat with a customer service rep directly from the Facebook Fan Page. Of course, one of the goals of these features is to get the customer to share their positive support experiences with their friends through Facebook streams.
There’s no doubt that Parature’s move to integrate support technology on Facebook is the future of customer service. And the Parature, whose clients include Rosetta Stone, NPR, Turner and T Mobile, has been working directly with Facebook (both companies are backed by Accel) to develop an application that provides a comprehensive service application while still fitting seamlessly into the social network’s interface. This isn’t Parature’s first move to incorporate social media with customer service; Twitter support was recently added to Parature’s software as well.
