The digital revolution is over. The shift from analog to digital has happened—there’s no way to un-ring the technology bell.
Think about it. People everywhere are online, blending their work and personal lives while searching, reading, watching, playing, listening and connecting to share every minute of every day. Intimate and authentic conversations previously reserved for the water cooler or dinner table have moved to social media.
These are your customers and their move to social has fundamentally changed how they interact with your brand. Now they can share their thoughts, preferences and experiences at every stage of the customer journey. Could you be missing all of it?
Imagine getting an unprecedented view of your customer through unprompted, in-the-moment, authentic and emotional reactions to your brand and surfacing what’s important now as well as who and what is influencing them. Now imagine putting those insights to work to respond to your customers’ needs and shape their experience for the better, winning their approval and loyalty.
From a business standpoint, the possibilities are endless. Here are five opportunities that arise when you tune in to the conversation happening on social.
Measure satisfaction at each stage of the customer journey
Imagine following customers through the buying journey, with every step as an opportunity to gain insight into their experience. How great would it be to pinpoint customer entry points, identify influence factors or spot areas of friction?
Spot issues as they happen
Customers today are quick to signal both delight and disappointment with products and services. If you want to retain those customers, you need to be able to spot disappointment early and work to prevent the issue from becoming a crisis that sends customers running to the competition.
Identify unmet customer needs
By monitoring conversations you can quickly identify and capitalize on trends, opinions, and even negative experiences that people are having with competitors. With these insights in hand, you can then identify new ways of doing things or offerings that fill a customer need.
Discover the next big thing
With constant pressure to innovate, the ability to tap into emerging trends and predict the next big thing is the equivalent of gold dust. By listening to and analyzing the public conversation, your chances of getting there first increase dramatically.
Connect with customers on an emotional level
Humans are emotional beings and not surprisingly, that emotionality extends to consumers’ decision-making processes. Capturing reactions in the moment can go a long way toward uncovering the emotions that fuel the customer experience.
People around the world share hundreds of millions of Tweets every day, making Twitter a massive repository of human thoughts, experiences and feelings. By tapping into those unprompted, authentic, emotional, real-time and historic conversations, you can better understand the world around you and the people in it.
Marketers have an incredible opportunity to grow even closer to their customers and understand them on a deeper level. Your customers are talking. Are you ready to listen?
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Sonya Penn is the GM of Twitter’s data licensing and developer platform business where she oversees revenue, customer success and go-to-market. Twitter APIs support a wide array of third-party solutions that help businesses and researchers tap into the vibrant, public conversation on Twitter. Prior to joining Twitter, Sonya led business development for brands at Time Inc as well as two startups.
