The shift to the Web (Social) is ongoing and generations now would not know how to live their lives without it (amazing isn’t it how technology like cell phones are now indispensable)

With people now placing their whole life stories on the web, there comes an unprecedented opportunity to better understand your customer and clients.

This would include such areas as:

Customer Interests

• What sports team do I like?
  

Behaviors

• What places do I frequently visit?
  

Directly Marketing Ideas

• What interest do I have that you can provide me with something of need/desire for?

I am referring to this opportunity as the new “Social Customer Intelligence” or for those of us in the IT space who are driven by TLA’s (or Three Letter Acronyms like: SOA, EDA, MDM,…) – “SCI”.

What Is Social Customer Intelligence [SCI]

Everyone who sells or delivers a service has customers / clients and knowing more information about them (than your competition) puts you in a position to gain market share or lead the industry.  SCI, to this author, is taking all of the information on the web about an individual and marring this up with internal information about your customer to create a “bigger picture” as to how we can best serve our clients and dominate our market.

Taking data, resolving it and then mining and understanding customer feedback develops a powerful lens into the customer experience. The problem, however, is that while many organizations are just starting to listen 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.

Online client chatter is an unparalleled opportunity to identify and remove the obstacles to delivering superior customer experience. Social media analytics (or customer sentiment analysis) is a brand new tool in our IT bag to realize this unique opportunity in time (and space).

Unfortunately, most available analytic programs gravitate toward quickly available and “small” data such as ratings (stars, etc.), “followers,” “likes,” because they are rapidly attained but severely lack in the valuable information that provide for actionable analysis and provide the value executives need to drive business decisions.

Social business intelligence — or the intersection of business intelligence, social media customer feedback, and advanced “Big Data” technology — provides organizations with a data source of customer-specific desires which in turn are performance indicators and opportunities to grow your 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 the customer experience.

A true social business intelligence platform delivers many areas of actionable insight. Consider a bank that knows only that it has a customer with an age, the amount invested in it’s “products” and that the client just stopped direct deposit.  Using data on Linkedin®, they could determine that this customer has joined a new firm and solicit them for a rollover IRA.  Or if this client liked the Boston Red Sox, they could offer a signature “BoSox” Debit Card.  This individual would be much more likely to “want” this product and the bank would be leap years ahead of their competition.   Let us explore some of the areas where SCI has applications:

Social Customer Satisfaction [SCS]

Your customers are tweeting, posting, and blogging, about whether they like your products, will buy your product again, return to your store, or recommend you to their peers. As a result, it is critical for corporations 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 [SCI]

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 organizations to understand how the competitors’ products are performing relative to yours, and other items as defined by customers online.  With social competitive intelligence, we would analyze it so they have a clear and timely understanding of competitor strengths and their latest initiatives, your product weaknesses, and other areas.

Social Marketing Intelligence [SMI]

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? Most importantly, the wealth of information about important insight into your own products, how you can improve your products, how are they used (in a way that you did not expect or intend, etc.) and what innovations are being suggested by “savvy” consumers.

Analyzing online feedback gives organizations insight into the relevant customer impressions of their products or services and identifies and gives access to the most pertinent online influencers.  Did you know that a telecomm provider found out that highly connected individuals were 7X more likely to take their fellow callers away if they left?

Consider also that you can gain critical demographic data on customers online, engagement opportunities, and true voice-of-the-consumer insight. This new type of intelligence gives organizations the ability to measure the value of specific social media interaction, which is vital to developing online marketing strategies and informing ROI analysis.

Social Advertising Intelligence [SAI]

Every brand wants to capture new audiences, add revenue opportunities, and maximize the value of advertising while minimizing inventory. Mining and analyzing volumes of real-time, highly influential online customer feedback gives organizations 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 afterwards.

A Must Have in Today’s BNW

Alas poor Yorick, a comprehensive SBI program is a must-have in today’s Brave New World [BNW]. Just as replacing cash registers with POS systems in the late 90’s was required. Why, because the data coming from the POS systems provided insight into who was buying what products with what other products?   At Polo Ralph Lauren™, when I was the Sr. Director of Global Applications, I learned that white RL Polo™ shirts sold better next to blue dress pants.  I did not know why, but my BI solution found this trend.  The stores changed their planograms and sales increased.  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.

Parting Shots…

Consider the banking example I used earlier.  Their traditional or existing relationship of growth or customer up-sell and cross-sell or the growth of their business was limited to:

• Reactive campaigns
• Client directly expresses needs
• Broad relationship offers
• Traditional sales cycles
• Direct mail response rates

Now consider the brave new world of SMI.  There would be a vastly accelerated relationship growth if this financial institution used SMI and the information derived from these sources to grow their business by using:

• Predictive campaigns
• Expressed and inferred needs
• Determine service level needs on a client grouping basis (What min. client SLA’s are required)

Personalized relationship offers

• Red Sox Affinity Card offers
• Card discounts on Target® purchases as we learned via tweet that the customer just entered the store in NYC
• Real time sales cycle

Rollover IRA sales call based upon change in position in real time.

• Improved marketing responses

Yes, it is a brave new world and EMC is leading the charge (not the credit kind)…

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