Social media listening for customer experience

The world of social media is not so far from the world of customer experience (CX) — social is just the ugly, untamed stepsister to CX.

People are constantly posting their experiences on social platforms, leaving online reviews, and sharing recommendations (and condemnations) in online forums. Social listening can be a logical and valuable extension of your existing CX tracking program. So how can we tame this unstructured beast?

Get to (really) know your customers

Some of the more sophisticated social listening tools can create a search based on a group of people who have mentioned specific terms, keywords, brands, etc. rather than just searching for those terms. Using people-based or audience searches, the data returned is anything that group of individuals has posted in the last 1-2 years.

This may be a bit of a twist on the traditional approach to social listening and online searches, but think about the potential to get to know these individuals. Now, you have a group of individuals who have posted about using your products and services — and you can see everything else they talk about online.

• What common interests do they have?
• What are they praising?
• What are they complaining about?
• How are they describing these positive and negative experiences?
• What other brands are they talking about?

There are almost endless ways you can use this insider knowledge to strengthen customer relationships and create better experiences.

Are you interested in appealing to a new target audience? People-based searches can also be formed based on geography, demographics, interest areas, etc. to help you identify a new group before spending any marketing dollars.

Understanding your role in CX

Typical CX programs implement several different pushes and pulls for feedback at key touchpoints along specific customer journeys. Imagine complementing that feedback with social comments and online reviews about experiences with your brand. Thanks to advanced technologies and text analytics, it's possible to bring these pieces of information together in a central location and structure them to work together to tell a complete customer experience story.

Structure can be added to both social and online review data in several ways. For example, retailers with physical locations may use geolocation data to categorize commentary by store locations, regions served, or other meaningful groups.

Adding a new dimension to typical CX

Text analytics can be harnessed to identify social comments that fit into specific touchpoints or journeys and give context to the comment — likely in terms of sentiment, emotion, and action. Overall, adding the social dimension to a CX program informs a more complete story and ensures that you are gathering all the feedback you need to improve your customers' experiences.

If you are interested in exploring ways Bellomy uses social listening to expand your CX program, please don't hesitate to reach out.