The Power of Social Media Listening
When organizations aspire to pursue stronger connections with their customers, it becomes essential to monitor the activities occurring on their social media platforms. Social media listening is the process of organizations monitoring the conversations surrounding their brand on various social platforms in real-time. This process equips organizations with an extensive understanding of their consumers, products, competitors, and industry trends. By integrating this approach into their marketing strategy, organizations gain valuable insights to form stronger strategic decisions.
Key Benefits:
1. Understand Your Audience:
Social media listening enables organizations to recognize the desires and expectations of their audience. Such insights allow them to enhance customer service and offerings. Organizations can discover the topics that captivate their audience’s interest, their preferred online communication styles, and how the brand resonates with them.
2. Business and Industry Intelligence:
Through social media listening, organizations gain insights into the challenges their customers face with their products and the products of their competitors. This knowledge deepens the understanding of what works and what doesn't. It serves as a catalyst for refining product development goals and customer service. Additionally, this knowledge keeps organizations informed of their competitors' activities, helping them identify new opportunities and potential threats.
3. Crisis Management:
Implementing social media listening allows you to monitor sentiment in real-time. This enables them to rapidly detect sudden positive or negative shifts in public conversations surrounding the brand on social platforms.
4. Customer Service:
Social media listening nurtures existing and potential customer relationships. By actively listening to customers' positive and negative experiences, organizations gain valuable insights into the quality of their overall customer experience. This knowledge empowers them to identify areas where they can enhance their experience.
Statistics Highlighting the Importance of Social Media Listening:
Over 1 million people view tweets relating to customer service, and 80% of those tweets are negative.
Customers who feel engaged by companies on social media will spend up to 40% more with them than other customers.
71% of social media marketers say that they can provide consumer insights from social media channels to other departments.
90% of consumers are likely to make a purchase when they follow you on social media.
Southwest Airlines Use of Social Media Listening
Southwest Airlines, one of the busiest airlines in the United States, receives over 2,000 social media mentions daily. These mentions vary from a wide range of inquiries, including flight information, complaints about delays, and ticketing issues. Southwest believes in the power of social media and has taken steps to ensure they leverage it in the best way possible.
To uphold their commitment to exceptional customer service and effectively manage this inflow of social media activity, Southwest Airlines has established a dedicated Listening Center for social media listening. The Listening Center operates with a team that diligently monitors real-time mentions across various social media platforms. In order to efficiently categorize these mentions, a color-coding system is brought into play to differentiate between positive and negative feedback.
Primarily focused on providing the best customer service, Southwest's Listening Center strives to promptly address any negative comments. Their goal is to respond to customers within a 15-minute timeframe. By consistently leveraging social media listening, Southwest Airlines ensures top-tier customer service by actively monitoring their social media channels.
By actively engaging in social media listening, they are also prepared to handle crisis situations at any given second. In one social media mention regarding a poor customer service experience and a miscommunication, the Southwest Listening Center resolved the situation within seven minutes of viewing the tweet.
This proactive approach fosters stronger relationships with their customer base, as it demonstrates their commitment to quickly addressing all inquiries and concerns. Their use of social media listening ensures that Southwest maintains strong customer service practices and stays consistently informed with conversations regarding their brand on social media platforms.
For more information regarding the key benefits of social media listening, click here.
