As a board member of the Professional Association for Customer Engagement, the topic of social engagement caught my attention recently. It is one of several new “catch-phrases” that hopes to explain how companies, associations and organizations can better serve and support their customers, employees or members, with physical or online communities that offer support, information, FAQ’s, videos, photos, wiki’s and opportunities to seed, feed and weed conversations.
I believe that relationships are fundamental and In these relationships, what is most important is the opportunity for data mining to generate insights into customer likes, dislikes, employee attitudes, or issues that are essential to member needs and expectations. This intelligence is crucial to be in pace with expectations, issues and opportunities. A social community platform provides the organization with an opportunity to identify and address existing and latent needs; achieve an edge over competitors; and elevate brand values for lifetime longevity.
While public social engagement platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ offer a wealth of information on customer profiles, behaviors, perspectives and sentiments, private communities offer companies an opportunity to build FAQ databases, gather customer or member data and build a closer relationship via ongoing and frequent communication. Using a private community enables a quick look and sort of member profiles, past buying behavior and the opportunity for predicative analysis to market, promote and connect with members, based on their buying behaviors, or areas of identified interest.
With more information, such as profession and personal interests, organizations can tailor products or service offers accordingly; for example, a bank may use social data to create customized finance products or target highly relevant existing products to an audience. Knowing the consumer pulse helps create extraordinary customer experiences consistently. Credit Suisse recently conducted research to look at the regulatory issues. Check out their video here to see how engagement is changing in the financial services space: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rnf0eNxedw
Social engagement is breaking down the walls of conventional customer care and connection. Cross-organizational needs are addressed by social media data. Integrating voice of the customer concerns, offers companies greater business intelligence (BI) to develop and maintain complete customer profiles giving not only their personal details but also their purchase behavior, prevailing sentiment regarding the brand and other such (think Amazon’s intuitive mailing programs.
While we have focused on customer engagement, member and employee engagement is just as important. I believe that getting a 360-degree view of your community will help your company better understand customers, employees and members, to tailor marketing, messaging and customer service efforts accordingly.
