The Opportunity of Listening and Responding

A brand is no longer in charge of its own destiny. Channels controlled solely by the brand, like TV, radio and print, are the minority. New social platforms controlled by consumers are coming out day after day, and consumers are using these channels to share their positive and negative views of the brands they interact with.

This is not a new concept, but many brands are missing the opportunity and potential threat of this new relationship.

Consumers Want a Response

A study from American Express found that 50% of consumers use social media for customer service to get an actual response from a company about an issue. Nearly half do so to praise a company and share information about an experience with an audience. Users also use social media to vent frustration about a poor experience and even ask others how to get better experiences.

Consumers are seeking our help.

These quests for help shape brands’ online perceptions. They live on social networks. They pop up in organic search results, and more importantly, negative consumer experiences left unanswered mean more than just one lost customer. They could mean many, many more.

Many brands still don’t get it.

What Are We Missing?

Creating a branded social presence also creates an unspoken contract with customers that says, “We’re here to speak with you and to listen.” Too many brands focus on the ‘speaking to’ part of that contract.

The reasons for this are many. They may be spread too thin across multiple platforms and can’t deliver a deep experience on a single one. Or they haven’t made responding to consumers a priority.

A study from Satmetrix found that nearly half of companies do not respond to consumers. They don’t have a plan to respond to consumers, and many don’t have a plan to track conversations. These conversations are opportunities to not only retain customers who might be lost but also show their social connections the brand’s commitment to its customers.

Get On the Same Page

Consumers and brands are on different pages. Consumers expect help, and many brands aren’t prepared to provide it. This means the brands that do deliver will stand out, and the ones that don’t will be left behind. 

Consumer Content Reflects the Offline Experience

Consumers are talking, and it probably isn't a surprise that nearly every business across the board has come up in online conversation at least one time or another. However, it can be a bit of a shock to brands when they start to listen to these conversations. There's usually some positive conversation that makes them feel pretty good, but that usually isn't the case 100% of the time.

The power of anonymity and distance has encouraged consumers to share their opinions about brands, products and services without holding back. For too long consumers have been burned by poor customer service and relatively few outlets to vent frustrations. Now, their opinions are out there in all of their glory, and those opinions usually carry weight when others who are considering a purchase research.

It's easy to get defensive when these come up. There's a desire to try to explain why things are the way they are or why something happened. After all, businesses are made of people who, for the most part, are trying the best they can to deliver the best product possible. It can be easy to take negative opinions personally.

However, the real value of all content, negative and positive, is that it may reveal something a brand could never see about itself otherwise.

Online Content is a Reflection of the Customer Experience
Brands touch consumers in countless ways. Whether you are a store a customer visits or a product a customer uses at home, the motivation to post online starts offline. When products or services fail miserably or perform remarkably, they are deemed worthy of an online mention.

Offline action breeds online dialogue, which means the conversation happening about a brand in the social space is only the symptom of something much deeper. The tweet about long lines in the store may mean there are problems at the operations level. The review about the camera easily breaking might reveal faulty manufacturing.

Online consumer generated content doesn't come out of nowhere. It starts with the offline experience.

Inform the Business to Grow the Business
There are certainly actions that can be taken to help a brand's online reputation, but without an inside-out approach, these efforts don't lead to loyalty and only coverup problems that will resurface.

The true value of listening is using what is heard to inform action to move forward and get better. Honesty can be tough to take, but it's only through honesty that true insights can be revealed.