• by Ashish Gambhir , October 20, 2011

Mining and understanding customer feedback creates a powerful lens into the customer experience.  The problem, however, is that while many brands are listening to the online chatter, too few are deciphering what they have gathered in a meaningful way. In fact, a recent survey by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services found that while more than half of the surveyed companies are using social media, less than one-quarter (23%) are using any form of social media analytical tools and only 5% are using some form of customer sentiment analysis. 

Diving deep into online customer chatter is an unprecedented opportunity to identify and remove the obstacles to delivering superior customer experience. Social analytics is an increasingly used methodology to achieve these goals. Unfortunately, most available analytic programs gravitate toward tangible metrics such as “followers,” “likes,” or star ratings because they are measurable but severely lack the actionable analysis and value executives need to drive business decisions. 

Social business intelligence -- or the intersection of social media customer feedback, business intelligence, and industry-specific technology -- provides brands with clear industry-specific performance indicators and opportunities to grow their business. By capturing and aggregating a complete view of social media feedback and synthesizing it into customer insight, social business intelligence turns volumes of unstructured mentions online into a real-time performance indicator dashboard that provides clear opportunities to improve customer experience.

A true social business intelligence platform delivers four key areas of actionable insight:

Social Customer Satisfaction:

Your customers are tweeting, posting, and blogging, about whether they will buy your product again, return to your store, or recommend you to their peers. As a result, it is critical for brands to not just resolve the existing issues, but to be proactive in averting future issues that may come down the pike.  Advances in analytics -- including sentiment and credibility analyses -- give marketers the power to drill down into the most relevant customer feedback and identify ways to enhance the overall customer experience.

Social Competitive Intelligence:

In today’s socially connected, consumer-led world, there are few places that are more effective at helping companies gather a goldmine of information than social media.  Social competitive intelligence enables brands to capture competitor performance, as defined by customers online, and analyze it so they have a clear and timely understanding of competitor strengths, weaknesses, and the latest initiatives.

Social Marketing Intelligence:

With the rise of social media, how do marketers better understand when, where, why, and how consumers choose to engage with their brand? How do they know what social media channels are most effective?

Analyzing online feedback gives executives insight into the most relevant customer impressions of their brand and identification of and access to the most pertinent online influencers. Brands also gain critical demographic data on customers online, engagement opportunities, and true voice-of-the-consumer insight. This level of intelligence gives marketers the ability to measure the value of specific social media interaction, which is vital to developing online marketing strategies and informing ROI measurement.

Social Advertising Intelligence:

Every brand wants to capture new audiences, add revenue opportunities, and maximize the value of advertising inventory. Mining and analyzing volumes of real-time, highly influential online customer feedback gives advertising executives the intelligence they need to learn from and transform messaging campaigns. Armed with this direct social media feedback, retailers can easily measure the efficacy of campaigns during and after their run! 

A comprehensive social business intelligence picture is a must-have. By mining and analyzing customer feedback intelligently, organizations gain the depth and breadth of customer insight needed to leverage social media for a true, bottom-line competitive advantage.