Jive Software has introduced Customer Service Solution, a product aimed at getting its customers up and running quickly on one of the most popular configurations of its enterprise social software.

"Out of the box, we're giving customer service professionals something they can use," said Chris Morace, senior VP of strategy at Jive. "We've watched how customers have used this platform and gotten the value out of it. We've taken all those portions and streamlined them, creating an end-to-end use case."

Jive is a leader in enterprise social networking, but it got its start as a creator of software for private customer communities. The Customer Service Solution takes advantage of both aspects of the Jive platform, bridging the two to allow customer service employees to collaborate internally on how to respond to questions, requests, and complaints on the external community.

It also adds features for:

-- Gamification, through integration with BunchBall, to reward active participation by providing engaging challenges (such as answering a target number of questions in a support forum) and point redemption.

-- Case escalation and management, through integration with popular customer relationship management (CRM) and case management systems.

[ Good customer service takes a team effort. See 7 Ways IT Can Improve Customer Service. ]

-- Facebook integration to connect a brand's Facebook fan page with information and conversations happening in the company's own customer service network.

-- Social media monitoring and engagement so customer service agents can proactively monitor conversations on the social Web in order to engage with customers who have issues, questions, or suggestions.

-- Mobile customer service, which allows customers and agents to access and post questions, discussions, knowledgebase articles, and other information straight from their mobile devices. Jive provides mobile Web support for iOS, Android, and Blackberry.

The Jive Apps Market also provides optional add-ons such as Lingotek automated translation.

Morace said customer service is already a big part of Jive success stories at companies like T-Mobile and StrongMail. The Customer Service Solution is partly a repackaging of existing software, but also adds some new elements, such as improved gamification support, he said.

Part of the idea is to help organizations get up and running quickly, without as much need for customization and consulting support. "We absolutely are targeting this at companies just getting into understanding how social can help their business," Morace said. "A business like that may not be as sophisticated about how to use all the parts--it just wants solutions."

Implementations of the product start at about $70,000, and more for more complex requirements, Morace said.

Follow David F. Carr on Twitter @davidfcarr. The BrainYard is @thebyard and facebook.com/thebyard

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