Social analytics is sexy but does it matter!

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Traditional analytics is changing & has the power to bring in reams of Social data! But for that to happen the Analytics professional has to change & move from the familiar transactional data to newer pastures! Social analytics is sexy but it needs to integrate with the rest of the customer data to make business impact happen!

Seventy-eight percent of Analytics professionals surveyed by Forrester said that they “collect customer feedback or listen” to social media. But far fewer integrate that data. Forrester calls this Social Intelligence — “the management and analysis of customer data from social sources, used to activate and recalibrate marketing programs”.

This is definitely not easy in a corporate setting where often- Customer Care is looked after by a Customer Service department, Social listening is done by PR or corporate communications, analytics by a centralized Business Intelligence unit & Market Research and Advertising is a part of traditional Marketing. And to top it all, Call centres that offer companies daily opportunities to create meaningful connections with customers are run completely independently without leveraging all the social intelligence that is getting created.

Is it possible to tear down these Silo walls? Companies remain trapped by passively collecting social data but not using it effectively. Few actually integrate Business data with Social Intelligence. Only such integration will help drive marketing and business strategy using the data that social media creates. Today, companies underutilize social data and often leave it sitting in its own silo.

Forrester makes an important point: “Today, most organizations remain trapped in listening mode, passively collecting customers’ online conversations and focusing on the qualitative side of social media”. How many companies actually use this Social listening to create new product & service opportunities or even “consumer insights” that are used to impact business.

Can Analytics professionals play a wider role in their companies by bringing in Social data? Here are some ideas:

1. Enrich social history of Existing customers:  This can give you tonnes of insight, if you could reach into their social personas! Companies should consider the simple way of acquiring social data by simply asking customers to include Twitter handles and other social identifiers when they are registering for a product or service. Harte-Hanks works with Hyundai on its Facebook presence and created a fascinating consumer application. By inviting Facebook fans to play with its application — in exchange for their basic social profile information — Hyundai was able to collect and match customer information with its existing database.
2. Integrating customer databases with Social insight: Unique identifiers, most often the customer’s email address, allow Analytics teams to match records in their customer database to online conversations. This approach does have privacy concerns but has proven effective for many brands. Through data-as-a-service companies, such as Fliptop, Full Contact, or Rapleaf, Analytics teams can export their databases and append records with social profile information for customers who used the same email address in each registration.
3. Focus on creating the single-customer view: For years Marketers have spoken about this “holy grail”. But here is some insight that shows just how imperative this is: CustomerThink, an online community, recently completed a survey of U.S. consumers and found that 80% had experienced what it calls “touchpoint amnesia,” a term that refers to that experience when a returning customer calls a company with a problem and is treated like they’ve never been heard of before. Of that 80% from the survey, 50% said they were less likely to recommend the company and between 24% and 35% were less likely to actually make a purchase because of it.