Thanks for stopping by. I always get tickled when folks whom I love to read, share their thoughts on conversations I hope to start

I agree that customers do want to listen when it comes to feedback, and I was trying to elucidate that in this post. I think the key issue here is what you do after the listening. Creepy and spammy behaviors can quickly give all of us social media folks a bad name. So this was more of a cautionary tale more than anything.

I couldn’t agree more that listening is more than just monitoring and truly making it part of the culture, where you are letting go of control and allowing customers to impact your business more directly. I think the better word here is “hearing” – there’s a big difference between listening and hearing. Ooooh, I should probably write a blogpost about social media listening vs. social media hearing. Do you really empathize? Can you take yourself outside of your company bubble and put yourself in the shoes of the customer? What is she really saying? Or not saying? And right on with the service-orientation. But that’s really hard. Many co’s say they are customer and service oriented, but that’s not what I’m seeing as a customer. It requires a BIG cultural shift to BE that way.

And to the meat of your point – which customer are you listening to? I like Paul Greenberg’s definition that the customer is not just who gives you money today, it’s anyone who was your customer in the past, or could be a customer in the future, or an influencer of your customers. When listening for my job (and I monitor terms like “social media monitoring”, “scrm”, etc) – I listen to folks who aren’t necessarily gonna buy Attensity products, but who are influencers (gosh, I hate that word!) and thought leaders. What are they saying about the space? Can I read between the lines? Of course, I listen to customers and past customers (why did they leave?), as well as customers of our competitors (what works and doesn’t). Yes, definitely need to identify the right jobs and channels. Also, what your goals are is going to drive what you listen to. For example, our salespeople listen to different triggers and measure different indicators than I would – it helps them in their jobs. But at the end of the day, we have to work together to share this info, and more importantly act together, unified by the vision of an unforgettable user experience.

Also being able to prioritize and structure the unstructured is key. And how you prioritize is also going to be driven by the job you have to do. Tying it all together is very very hard, and you are right — there’s a ton of offline feedback too. How do you capture the offline and the online and emerge with a process? How do you design a feedback loop? Lots of work to do! I could ramble on forever – but I’ll stop for now

Cheers!

- Maria

In general I think Customers want you to listen, or at least they want you to do something with the feedback they provide. They probably even want you to thank them for the feedback and let them know what you’ll do or did with it.. at best through actions (because they count more than just words).

Does this mean it needs to be through personal engagement on every (social media) mention? Surely not… Of course, if we get a mention on our Twitter-team we answer.. but having a Twitter-team, does hardly make you a true listener. It’s really nothing more than a modern call-center, and it won’t be long until it gets treated that way by companies..

As you rightfully say, we are still in unchartered territory, although we do have common sense and social sensibility to guide us. I think this requires us to listen from the logic of service, not the logic of sales or transactions. And this implies that our actions should be aimed at service too (and I’m not talking the narrow sort of Customer Services here..the context of service is broader)..

The real challenge with Social Media monitoring lies not only in when to engage or not, and also not in analyzing all the data (people like yourself, helped by smart tools, will get better and better at that for sure).. The real challenge is about who do we listen to? Is it even Customers talking? Do we listen to influencers? or people easily influenced? Are we listing to profitable, or emergent customers, fans, advocates, superpromoters etc etc.. Who we need to listen to, will likely be different depending on the job you need to do, no? And what if they’re not talking on Social Media (yes they exist.. many of them)?

Listening to and mostly engaging with all the chatter on the Internet, might just become the most wasteful activity pr, marketing, sales and service have ever participated in, if we do not learn how to focus on the right customers, having the right conversations.. and through the right channels..for the right job..

So much to learn, and glad there are people like you out there learning and sharing.

Let me know what you think..

Great post! Thx

Wim