Are you really listening to your customers??

As I said in a post a few weeks back, I have recently made the move from an established software company to a start up company, that specializes in social media monitoring. It's a realatively new industry, commonly referred to as Web 2.0.

Social media monitoring, for the those who are not sure( me a few months ago!), is the ability to monitor comments, conversations, and feedback across the global landscape of the "social" part of the Web; namely, blogs, video, forums, micromedia like Twitter( check it out if you haven't seen it yet), and the like.

My company has figured out a way to watch for words of interest ( to our customers) being used during comments, conversations and postings, across this new area of the internet. So...imagine...your "brand" gets mentioned , either positively or negatively, in a blog...and we can pick it up, instantly, and track the response other people reading have post have to that very topic....
A few short years ago, this would have been improbable, if not impossible, for a number of reasons. Technology has made impressive gains, allowing companies like mine to "watch" an ever widening array of sites. As well, individuals and businesses alike are finding value in posting to, and monitoring of, the social part of the internet.

Why is this important to companies?- Simply put, people now view chat forums, blogs, and even video sites, as a viable alternative to gathering opinions and facts about products they either have now, or are considering purchasing.

Image, if you were able to eavesdrop on customer conversations, discussing your brand, or products you sell; people speaking candidly to each other, offering feedback, advice and reviews on your price, quality, service, and just about anything else to do with you and your company.
Well, this is happening everyday on the social media web; more and more each day.

And yet..many companies that I reach out to, just don't get it. They are stuck in a rut of customer surveys, tele-marketing campaigns, and trade show efforts; all customer outreach programs that not only hugely expensive, but are also yeilding lower positive returns evey year.

Meanwhile , companies on the cutting edge of technology utilization are waking up to this new way of listening and responding to their customers. One of our newest customers, a large computer manufacturer that I won't name( that starts with a"D" and rhymes with "bell"), is using our services to reach out to ANYONE that posts about a bad experience with their products. Agressive? Sure. But I think we now live in a society that demands instant gratification, and mostwill not see this as an invasion of their privacy. Alreay, they have recieved positive feedback about these efforts. After all, if you posted something on the internet, who did you think was going to read it?

Its a very exciting time to be in this field; I feel like the guy, who back in the early 90's, was going door to door in the business world, talking to people about this new fangled way of contacting people called "e-mail"....It's just a matter of time, folks..