Saturday, 12 November 2011 17:33
Manolito Tayag, Todd Wagner and Joe Hughes / Accenture
WE
should all now be somewhere between “aware” and “immersed” in the
sharing and consumption of vast amounts of information about friends,
acquaintances or indeed complete strangers that is social media.
According to ComScore, Social networking on the likes of Facebook,
Twitter, Friendster and MySpace now leads the share of time consumers in
Asia spend on the Web (9.5 percent). Its closest competitor is
Entertainment (9.1 percent) and staples such as e-mail and search come
well behind (4.1 percent, respectively).
However, studies have
shown that 70 percent of consumers worldwide have used Social Media to
get information on a product, brand or company. And the Conference Board
found 77 percent of adult Internet users considered blogs a “good” way
to get information. So as social-media platforms evolve from being a
means of sharing “stuff” to being part of the fabric of consumers’
day-to-day life, they are presenting huge opportunities to deliver value
for enterprises.
So
far, Social Media has brought opportunities such as “crowdsourcing” of
new ideas, to “word of mouth” marketing channels, from “assisted online
customer service” to “cloud recruiting.” Starbucks
crowdsourced 80,000 ideas from which 50 became new products, eBay users
engaged through social media spent 54 percent more than other users,
Dell made $6.5 million in incremental sales from Twitter discount
coupons alone, and 28 percent of LinkedIn’s users are “hireable” senior
executives.
Fundamentally,
Social Media has brought interactions and inter-connectedness between
consumers to a new level—everyone, everywhere, anything and anytime.
All
this opportunity has come with its challenges as consumers raise their
voice and businesses see their ability to influence fall.
Consumers
now have the means to educate themselves about your product, prices,
functionality, warranties, etc., long before they come into contact with
agents or stores. They can access this information from home, from
work, while out shopping and can instantly compare prices with local and
international competitors even while they are browsing in a store or
talking to an agent.
The
traditional “company to consumer” dialogue used by marketing for
decades has shifted to a “consumer to consumer” dialogue that disrupts
the clean, controlled flow from you to the market. Forrester Research
found nearly half of online users say information provided by other
consumers is more important to them than data given by marketers of
products and services.
The
speed at which customers and their opinions are moving as a result of
social media means companies must be able to adapt not just their
offerings but their formats and processes based on what they learn from
observing customers.
Not
all consumers are “social media-enabled” so you cannot drop existing
means of servicing customer to fund new ones. You will have to find ways
to operate differentiated customer experience.
The
shift of power to the consumer means customers are co-owners of your
brand, significant influence lies within individuals within the
“community,” the lines between marketing, sales and service have
blurred, and data and technology have become essential enablers.
Our experience suggests that the following three essential elements will help you execute a successful social-media strategy:
Observe—Establish
the ability to observe and interpret what customers are doing, and
importantly, saying. Social-media monitoring tools can also glean both
quantitative and qualitative responses to advertising campaigns for
promotions, illuminate opportunities to improve one’s brand, uncover
significant unmet customer needs, and identify people who may be highly
predisposed to a brand or product.
Embrace—Embrace
and do not try and control all the tools and social media that your
customers are using and just join the conversation. This can start by
simply “experimenting” with different customer experiences to discover
those that resonate the most with each segment.
Evolve—Social-media
activities may originate in one department but as your adoption of
social media grows to include sales support, product development,
customer service and e-commerce, the operational complexity increases.
Establish a governance framework that engages and establishes a common
set of guidelines for each of the internal stakeholders and establish
the forums to enable the organization to develop collectively.
But
don’t hang about—the competition has already started. According to
Edelman Digital—Maxis has shown one of the biggest climbs in terms of
mentions on social-media sites in 2010 and look set to continue. AirAsia
has already established a team to engage and respond to customer
complaints on Facebook. And while Facebook remains the No. 1 choice of
social channels for consumers and companies, Twitter reached news levels
as the “buzziest channel” for brands in Malaysia.
Social
media has clearly disrupted our traditional modes of doing business but
it is clear that companies that embrace it will be positioned to have a
much greater influence on the dialogue with consumers.
•
(The authors are the country managing director at Accenture
Philippines, senior executive for crm practice for communications and
high tech in North America and senior executive for global systems
integration practice and leads the global customer service and support
and integrated desktop offerings for electronics and high-tech industry
group, respectively.)
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