Is social media listening actually helping to improve customer experience?

Social listening is a great way to build customer relationships, gain a better understanding of your target audience and improve customer experience delivery.

Every organization wants to appeal to a wider audience while keeping its current customers. The traditional marketing and promotion strategies are being reviewed as the industry competition grows and digital consumers make their lives easier. 

Social listening is a great way to build customer relationships, gain a better understanding of your target audience and improve customer experience delivery.

Every organization wants to appeal to a wider audience while keeping its current customers. The traditional marketing and promotion strategies are being reviewed as the industry competition grows and digital consumers make their lives easier. 

This digital aspect of our daily lives is why tools like social media listening are so crucial in increasing customer advocacy.

Social networks, review aggregation, blogging sites, mainstream media, and specialist media are all part of a conversation about your company’s brand. Conversations are starting to take place at any of these platforms and continue to another. People share information and make statements. Some customers express their frustration with customer service elements which they consider to be their problem areas. 

Others share their reasons for being loyal to one brand or another, naming the products and services they enjoy the most and why. customers also have the ability to offer suggestions on how services and products could be improved, but you need to dig deeper. Customers also provide insight into the motivations behind customers’ needs and expectations.

They share their thoughts on which types of marketing and publicity are most relevant to them. Brands are also provided with information about their hobbies and other aspects, such as passions and identity.

All this information is just too valuable for organizations to ignore. Customers will be loyal to your company if they are satisfied with the service provided online. It can also turn loyal customers into brand advocates.

All it takes is social listening.

What is social listening?

First of all – it’s so different from spying! When people ask search engines “Can Google forms detect cheating?”, “Is facebook listening to me?”, “Can Zoom see me?” they think that all of that is described as a social media listening. In fact, those queries have nothing in common with reality. Let’s be professional here and define what it is for good.Social listening is also known as social media listening. It involves actively following all social networking conversations that affect not only the brand of an organization but the entire industry.

Social listening, when done properly and supported with the correct tools, processes, and methodology, can give powerful insights into customers’ feelings about brands and their products and services. It also provides insight into consumer behaviors, trends, and wider sectoral changes that could impact customer expectations.

How can social listening improve customer experiences?

Social listening allows an organization to openly hear and analyze all positive and negative conversations taking place on social channels. It can also be used to analyze any aspect of the organization’s operations as well as that of its competitors. Social listening should be a key part of business operations. It is powerful and inexpensive.

Social listening has been proven to improve customer service. It can identify paint points, underperforming channels, and customer service aspects customers appreciate. Social listening is a great way to identify brand influencers. It can even help you turn customer loyalty into customer advocacy.

What are the benefits of social listening?

One of the greatest aspects of social listening, however, is that it collects insights based upon data provided freely by consumers from all age groups. This also means that this data treasure trove is equally valuable to every organization in the same sector. It is important for brands to assume their closest competitors already use social listening and reap the benefits. It’s crucial to follow the lead of your closest competitors.

Social Monitoring vs. Social Listening

While they may appear to be closely related, the two are distinct. Anyone who has a social presence on social media and uses these channels as part of a multichannel customer experience approach should consider social monitoring.

Social monitoring can be considered as a metric such as customer happiness or net promoter scores. It involves monitoring keywords and hashtags along with direct brand mentions to determine the ‘buzz’ surrounding an organization. This allows you to see when customers are engaging directly.

Social listening is more thorough than social monitoring and allows an organization to take charge. It tracks more than just brand mentions. Social listening tracks all conversations related to a topic of conversation, to an industry segment, and to a specific brand and its direct competitor. Another difference between social listening and social monitoring is that the data captured is closely combined with an organization’s internal information sources. This data is analyzed in order to gain insights that will help with business decision-making. It is possible to make large-scale improvements to customer experience, that will delight a large number of customers. Because the brand’s customer experience has improved, this will increase word-of-mouth and encourage customers to endorse it.

So, social monitoring is reactive, while social listening ids proactive and can get you many benefits.

How to perform social listening?

  • Define clear parameters

Start fron a narrow topic to define what are you looking for. If you don’t find it – make the topic wider. Don’t atart fron all buzz at once – you’re definitely be overwhelmed.

  • Expand your vocabulary

When you search, look for everything related to the main topic you chose. Try other word matches, look what are the general terms for the field. It will give you more opportunities than just one direct query.

  • Choose the Right Social Listening Tool

Some focus on video, some on blog posts, others look for memes. The best way is to check all the sources simultaneously. If you don’t know how to work with all these platforms, it’s better to hire a team of professionals who are experts in social media listening.

  • Collect, Classify

Each raw of data should be arranged. Are there more positive or negative reactions? Are people talking about your customer service or the product?

  • Identify brand leaders

Who are people whose posts collects most of the attention?

  • Combine and Analyze

Define the essentials that connects with your brand, look for what audience is against and what they desperately wants.

  • Take Action on the Results

Convert your data to actions! If your audience looking for the shining shenanigan in the left corner of the site – add it and listen to media again.

Social listening is a great way to build customer relationships and provide a more detailed view of your target audience. It can also help you improve all aspects of customer service delivery. Additionally, social listening is a great way to increase the effectiveness and engagement of your marketing campaigns.

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Author bio:

Bronwyn Leigh is a content creator dedicated to educate the audience on marketing strategies and content creating. As a part of related to the education community she prefers to reach a wide audience when a lot of people can hear her.