Why Social Listening is a Necessity for CX Success

Social listening, as the name suggests, involves listening to the online conversations that are taking place about your company or brand. Listening to what your customers are saying online is becoming increasingly important in today’s society, where over 4.2 billion people worldwide use social media – that’s over 50% of the world’s population! 

Social listening tools are very useful in allowing companies to gather and analyse customer data from various social media platforms and online review sites. The insight gained can aid companies in improving their marketing strategies and business metrics. Companies that do not invest in social listening tools are missing out on huge pieces of insight and opportunities for improvement.

According to Gartner, 51% of market leaders worldwide get information about consumers via social listening platforms, while 67% of people across seven markets on Facebook say that their messaging has increased over the past two years.

Importance of Social Listening:

1. Become more involved with customers: Social listening helps companies to form a bond and engage with their customers. It helps them find out about what customers think and feel about their brand, which helps in increasing profits.
2. Discovering challenges: It helps companies to detect the pain points and strategies that are not working for them. This serves to be vital information, as these challenges can only be overcome once known.
3. Sentiment analysis: Social listening can be very useful in managing a crisis as it monitors the sentiment in real-time. 
4. Social advocates: Connecting with influencers is very important as they can have a strong impact on how their fan base feel about your product or brand. 
5. Lead generation: Listening involves a more personal approach as the company can directly respond to customers, which could help in lead generation.

Achieving the most out of Social Listening:

1. Acquire the most up-to-date feedback – this allows you to prevent crises and gain insight into your company’s current position. 
2. Stay on top of all your brand mentions – 54% of social browsers stated that they use social media to research products, so it is incredibly important for businesses to keep up to date with what is being posted online. 
3. Carry out in-depth market research, which would help in studying market trends and  formulating business strategies
4. Customer engagement is key to building trust and loyalty within your customer base. 
5. Identify social advocates who can promote your brand – 47% of people post reviews about their experience using a product and 44% read reviews before deciding to purchase one.

Different levels of social listening responsiveness: 

1. Apathy: This is when the company is indifferent and lacks feeling, concern and interest in relation to social and emotional situations.
2. Awareness: Companies in this category are aware of the benefits of social listening and are beginning to implement it for observation purposes. 
3. Conversational: Companies here capitalize on the nature of social media, find prospective customers to engage with and examine and solve queries carefully.
4. Reactive: For brands to be on top of everyone’s minds, companies have to take part in promotional and marketing events. This way they can gain insights from social listening and form business strategies.
5. Proactive: Here, companies have to be a couple of steps ahead and examine data collected with a scientific lens. No company waits for a reason to gather information, as they know acquiring the most robust information is vital to the organization.

Social listening can help companies build superior content, improve promotional campaigns and exceed customer experience and expectations. Opening the doors to influencers and social advocates can help brands build impactful relationships.