The sound of your customers is now everywhere for everyone to hear and see including potential customers, current customers, and your competitors. Their sound now lives forever as information on planet social media. Smart competitors will take advantage of your weaknesses or inability to provide acceptable levels of service and products. You can't hide anymore.
Editor's note: Peter Auditore is an employee of SAP. SAP is a sponsor of The Social Customer.
If you think you can provide what I call the LCD (the lowest common denominator) of products and services by short changing customers, I have news for you. And if you want to survive and remain profitable in these times of economic restructuring, the quality of your products and services needs to remain consistent or even get better.
In many ways the sound of the social customer emanating from planet social media can be eerie, bizarre and it is indeed otherworldly. But planet social media is alive with the sound of your customers and as I have said many times over the last several years of blogging this is a way to get closer to your customers.
Do you know what the sound of your customers is?
- Are they enchanted and wowed?
- Are they satisfied with your products and services?
- Do you and your employees know their customer experience from beginning to end?
- Who and how many are active social customers?
- Have they endorsed your products and services on the social net?
- Have they tweeted about their experiences?
- Do you listen to their sound on planet social media or ignore it?
- Do they love your Facebook page?
- Do they follow you on Twitter?
- Do you follow them on Twitter?
- Do you thank them when they give you a good social media review?
- Do you interact with them when they give you a bad review?
The Sound of Social Customers
Listening to and tracking these sounds is extremely important for all business today and becoming increasingly important for government. In my blog The Social Media Crescendo Effect I elaborated on the ecosystem of influence around the influencer, and how it's not the number of views that a blogger gets, but the endorsement of its content too others through Twitter and Facebook. This analysis was reinforced in the New Symbiosis of Professional Networks SNCR research. Twitter has become an extension of professional persona and is an access point/gateway to information and thought leadership on the social web, especially within shared networks. Again the sound of your customer is information, but guess what your customers are now the influencers in the world of social media.
LinkedIn has evolved to be the dominate platform for open professional networks and offers the ability for people to instantly evaluate the credibility of an individual based on expertise/experience. LinkedIn also and offers the ability for an individual to communicate to an entire community/group. Yelp and TripAdvisor are evolving in the much the same way. I posted a review of the Hyatt Regency Mission Bay San Diego last weekend after having a bad experience. And within 48 hours TripAdvisor sent me an email stating the 1164 people from around the world had read my review. An associate from Hyatt contacted me on TripAdvisor and assured me that he would contact management and address my issues, which included a disgusting experience with blood splattered on the inside of my shower curtain. Did Hyatt offer me anything to change my perception of their brand, not really and in my view this is big mistake because I am a very active social customer.
The Value of Social Customers
According to a recent study by Deloitte predicts that worldwide social media users will reach one billion in 2011, but what is interesting about this study is that they calculated the average revenue per social media fan would be $4 dollars. This is a panel discussion about this calculation. Although I haven't seen the entire report, I don't think it's just about the "fan value" of a social customer when you have social customer communities like Yelp and TripAdvisor. In fact I am not a fan of any brand on Facebook, but if you need Facebook fans go to www.muchmorefans.com, of course I am kidding. This site also says it will get you more twitter followers. Nice.
Net/Net
In the process of becoming a social customer over the last year I have done 56 restaurant reviews and 16 hotel reviews. I have had only two restaurant owners thank me for good reviews, several have replied to negative reviews and one, Bistro Ralph message me that I made up the whole experience according to the story made up by his staff to cover their butts. In the course of hotel reviews Hyatt did contact me, but Starwood really stepped up to the plate and made things right when they went wrong. In this period almost 3000 members of TripAdvisor and Yelp looked at my profile. I think this reflects two important insights, business still doesn't get social media and creating a Facebook fan page is not the easy answer. And the power of the community is the power of one. Until next time I wish you great selling and marketing in the millennium. And of course Happy 4th of July!