I love when online retailers allow for customer reviews. For me, details from consumers like me are way more important than any product details or photographs a vendor can provide. Very often, my purchase decisions will be swayed based on positive or negative product comments. Customer feedback is useful for customers and to organizations — but historically, there has been a disconnect between collecting customer feedback and actually acting upon it. Social media presents a whole new challenge customer feedback initiatives. Metadata, or unstructured data, is difficult for traditional analytics systems to evaluate or measure. And often, when social media data is analyzed, it’s on a statistical basis — and doesn’t get to the heart of what customers are saying. Leximancer, a young text analytics company, is hoping to remedy that situation with its Social Insight Portal product. Leximancer approaches metadata in a different way, and according to Neil Hartley, CEO of Leximancer, seeks the why behind customer sentiments. Hartley ventures to say that he knows of no other companies doing what Leximancer is with insights from social data. He does note, however, that the possibilities are tremendous. “Not only is there more direct feedback on micro- and social sites, but it’s a leading indicator of customer feedback,” he propones. “By the time feedback reaches [an organization] through the traditional method, it’s way too late.”
The company describes its product’s purpose on its Web site:
Through a rigorous scientific process, Leximancer drills into textual data: documents, e-mails, call center transcripts, blogs, Web sites, etc., and extracts the main concepts, themes and causal relationships to provide the information needed to make critical decisions.
The Concept Map is the heart of Leximancer. It presents your data in an interactive graphic map that clusters key themes together, lists all the key concepts identified in the data and the statistical co-occurrence of concepts. Leximancer automatically generates a thesaurus for each concept that then enables a powerful, implicit search (i.e. searching the corpus under investigation for the intersection of two thesauri rather than simply two keywords). The pathway analysis capability identifies root causes of specific events and provides provenance via the original text from documents that the pathway references.
Hartley says Leximancer’s methodology is scientific and mathematic as opposed to traditional text analytics methology, which is more grammatical. What’s complex to explain actually boils down to a simple, intuitive, and visual product. “The technology used to analyze what peope are saying has to be massively easy to use,” Hartley says. Below is the Leximancer Concept Map based on social insight gleaned from Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf reviews on Yelp.com. It’s easy to see what main concepts were addressed in the reviews. Hartley said a more interesting and useful example was done for Dunkin Donuts. When analyzing a review site, the concept map showed “Boston” and “line” in great proximity, demonstrating that people were complaining about long lines in Boston Dunkin Donuts stores. Hartley says all of this is automated and could add great value to a CRM system — or even to a social media platform provider. The company is currently exploring OEM partnerships and basically exploring its options in the vast social media landscape.
Leximancer Social Insight Graph for Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf
Synchronicity: Earlier this morning I was chatting with Paul Greenberg, and our thoughts turned to Microsoft Outlook, Windows Mail Live, and gmail. What we used, what we liked and didn’t like about each, and so forth. Shortly thereafter, I found this article in my reader. Taglocity socializes Outlook — in the sense of being social, not socialism — and I have to say the concept is pretty cool. Granted, it’s kinda sad that a communication tool like Outlook needs to have social interaction plugged in by a third party, but so what? As Avidian’s James Wong will tell you, most people (especially salespeople) work in Outlook already. Why not add some punch to Ol’ Reliable?
Microsoft Outlook isn’t a CRM tool — no email client is, not by itself. Still, integration with Microsoft Outlook is pretty much a requirement for being taken seriously in the CRM biz, especially for SMB products. Making Outlook more useful is not going to make anybody unhappy, and as long as the critical info gets into the CRM system, add-ons like Taglocity can improve the communication aspects of customer-facing jobs. Cool.
OK, that’s out of the way. To me, the best part about Halloween is that it marks the unofficial beginning of the holiday shopping season. At Macy’s in Herald Square, just a quick jaunt around the corner from CRM magazine’s office in Midtown Manhattan, you can already see Christmas lights being strewn up in preparation.
Not only are people getting a head start on hanging lights to spread holiday cheer, but they are also shopping earlier. With an economy that make many say “no, no, no” instead of “ho, ho, ho,” consumers are looking for the best prices as early as possible as their budgets for discretionary purchases continue to shrink.
With less than two months left until floors are littered with torn wrapping paper with images of sleighs, Charlie Brown, snowmen, and other images of holiday yore, many small businesses looking to cash in during this usually prime shopping season seem to be increasingly focused on shoring up the customer experience it provides to those poring through their shelves — or online catalogs. As my fellow CRMer Lauren McKay points out in an earlier blog post, the stakes are even higher this year for businesses because of the economic downturn.
A study conducted by RatePoint, a Needham, Mass.-based customer feedback solution provider for small-to-midsize businesses (SMB) finds companies are getting the message loud and clear:
more than 80 percent said business reputation and solid customer support impacts their ability to attract and retain consumers;
forty percent report they are hiring up to five new employees for customer support over the holidays to help manage inquiries, orders, and returns; and
most will spend an average of 10 hours monitoring their reputation to safeguard against any possible early warning signs of customer issues.
To Richard Turcott, chief marketing officer or RatePoint, this shows him many in the SMB segment are realizing the importance of forging quality customer relationships, as he says this is directly correlated with company reputation. He was particularly shocked by the second survey nugget, the fact that almost half of SMB owners say they’re hiring up to five new employees despite the economic environment.
While he admits the new hires may not all be full time, it is the principle that matters most. “The SMBs are sticking their necks out, providing exemplary support, and demonstrating they are customer-centric businesses,” he says. “These [new additions] are primarily part-time employees, but [nonetheless] provide a great view in which the small business community sees feedback and service as an important driver to helping them stay strong through this tough economic climate. These [organizations] are building equity rather than short-term hits.”
In a time when Web 2.0 technology is the soapbox du jour for many consumers sounding off about a company’s products or services, having a strategy to proactively cull and act upon customer feedback is even more important. “The prevalence of social media perpetuates the ease in which competitors and disgruntled employees can say negative things about a business,” Turcott says. “For small businesses, it’s more a necessity than a luxury to actively manage its online reputation. If they don’t know it now, they will very soon.”
For the SMBs — and also larger enterprises — out there gearing up for the holiday season, what strategies are you using to manage customer feedback and consequently improve the experience your shoppers have?
On Tuesday, we ran a news story about how marketers/businesses who have invested in online marketing and Web analytics are going to continue doing so. This, according to Jim Sterne, author of the report and founder of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit (eMOS), is a testament to the fact that those who are using these tools are seeing results and standing by them.
The Association of National Advertisers concluded its “Masters of Marketing” conference two weeks ago (Oct. 16-19) and it, too, launched a survey to its attendees. Though this one captured a much wider audience (approx. 1,400 attendees comprised of marketers, analysts, and agencies), results still point to a similar conclusion — marketing budgets, in general, aren’t plummeting as much as everyone had feared, as long as they’re showing the numbers (and the money). In fact, BtoB magazine will be hosting a Webcast tomorrow where Stefan Tournquist, Research Director at MarketingSherpa, “explains why cutting budgets in a tight economy may be a shortsighted approach.”
Check out the survey and results after the jump, as well as a few words from Barbara Bacci Mirque, executive vice president at the ANA.
There are just some things that you wish to keep personal and out of the public eye. Thanks to the amassing of information on the Web, community forums and wikis, and even social networking, social engagement and the quest for knowledge is able to be done behind a computer screen and anonymous, if the user so wishes.
Take Ask.com’s most recent adverstising campaign, for example. The search engine is taking the approach that you can ask virtually any question you want online, from whatever identity you choose.
At last week’s Teradata Partners conference in Las Vegas, a rep from retail store JC Penny presented on the benefits of online communities. When JC Penny launched its newest –and the biggest private brand launch for the Penny Co.– lingerie brand named Ambrielle, the Customer Relationship Marketing team wanted to create better brand recognition than it has with its existing lingerie brand Delicates. The team decided to launch a community site for Ambrielle to engage customers with a forum, feedback outlets, and news and promotions specifically for those community members.
The campaign began with trigger postcards, inviting recipients to visit the Ambrielle site, give feedback, and opt in for the Abrielle “Advisory Team” — a group in which, the presenter, admits they hadn’t really formulated. 65 percent of those who visited the site, opted in to join the team — a whopping number. Perhaps that shows that the topic of lingerie interests women; however, isn’t exactly a topic they would want to contribute about face-to-face.
What I’m getting at here is that social media and Web 2.0 are breaking barriers with customers. Companies are now able to communicate and converse with them about subjects that might have been taboo or just too personal in the past. Look at online dieting sites. The traffic is immense and the marketing targeted and valuable. User participation runs wild. Why? It’s a subject people care about, but need the shield of a computer screen to feel comfortable contributing.
Social CRM has invaded the conference scene. I can’t seem to get away from the topic — And I don’t want to. It’s fascinating and frankly, quite exciting. Last week at Gartner Web Innovation and Web Portals, Content, and Collaboration, enterprise 2.0 worked itself into quite a number of sessions. It comes as no surprise that Oracle OpenWorld is giving a shout-out to Social CRM, too.
Oracle’s Anthony Lye gave an “unplugged” session with the press this morning, reviewing the vendors social CRM standpoint. More on Oracle’s social apps to come. (I smell a destinationCRM.com story in the works). Oracle seems to have its eye on the prize when it comes to integrating enterprise data with social networking applications.
Throughout my travels, I have had some pretty interesting conversations revolving around the social Web and what social networking means for business. Most conference attendees I have come across seem to be very in tune with what’s going on. However, I did have lunch with some people last week who went on and on about the evils of Facebook. Both were IT workers for fairly large companies and both had blocked Facebook, MySpace and Flickr from employees. I nearly gasped when I heard this. “You’ve got it all wrong!” I wanted to shout.
Blocking Facebook will inevitably drive your employees to another social site because let’s face it, there’s no way to avoid Enterprise 2.0. If you block Facebook, shouldn’t you also block Wordpress and Blogger? Those are both social Web sites. What about Amazon or Digg? My point is, there’s no clear distinction when it comes to social networking. While Facebook might not be as relevant of a marketing tool for a financial firm as it is for say, an entertainment business, it’s still possible to gain business benefits from it. Take, for example, another conversation I had last night with a PR exec. He said he can barely deal with email anymore. His inbox gets so bogged down, if people really want to reach him, write on his Facebook wall.
According to an Avanade white paper, which is an IT consultancy based on Microsoft technologies, with research provided by Coleman Parkes, 58 percent of companies agree that senior managers do not understand the potential that social networking offers both for employees and customers. This disconnect is a real problem, but with software vendors diving into social networking, hopefully the value will come to light for disbelievers.
**Bonus points for anyone who can tell me in what movie the phrase “get socialized” is referenced.
**Speaking of social apps, if you haven’t checked out Josh Weinberger’s tweeting from OpenWorld, you must do so. The man doesn’t eat. He doesn’t sleep. He tweets.
In a fast-paced presentation here at the Gartner Web Innovation Summit in LA, marketing analyst Andrew Frank lead a fast-paced session about Brands in Social Media.
“I think you need to think of social media as a truly global phenomenon that’s applicable against different groups,” Frank says. He affirms that companies need to participate in social media — whether they want to or not.
As Phillip Britt reported for destinationCRM.com last week, new research shows that the majority of a company’s marketing budget is now spent towards online efforts. Frank echoes the research, sharing the fact that GM now spends 50 percent of its marketing budget on the Web. He says that businesses market in three areas on the Web:
Search and performance [i.e: Google]
Media brands [ex: Fox or Espn.com]
Virally [Facebook or YouTube]
Frank shares five goals of branded viral content:
1. Get awareness: Frank uses Burger King’s Subservient Chicken to demonstrate. (If you haven’t seen this already, please visit and request “The Worm.”) 2. Engage people with the brand: A perfect example is creating your own M&M representation. 3. Collect data: Sephora.com often does instant polling of its site visitors, gaining both market research and customer data. 4. Extend a service: Providing value through widgets is a great way to do so. (“Widgets are the glue or the content that pulsates through social networks and creates these experiences,” Frank says.) Betty Crocker, for instance, provides a daily recipe gadget for iGoogle.
And the ultimate goal remains to….
5. Foster community loyalty: Nike+ not only allows you to monitor your training, but also lets you connect to a community of users who might be participating in the same events as you or are engaging in the same type of training.
So it might not be big news in the CRM industry, but I think you might want to have a look at this AM New York article and interview featuring our own Chris Musico. I don’t think I realized until now just how hard he works for us before he even gets to work — I’d be a telecommuting ghost around here if I had to do what he does.
Also, I will be appearing on Brent Leary’s radio program, Technology for Business Sake, in the very near future — we record it on September 29 (the other participants are Rob Bois of AMR Research and Ginger Conlon of 1to1 Media). Self-promotion aside, anybody who wants to get a handle on CRM and social media from a small-business point of view could do a lot worse than listening to Brent and/or reading his blog. The man has been around this stuff for a while, and he knows what he’s talking about. He’s also got a sense of humor and a down-to-earth approach — totally worth your time.
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