If you are unhappy with the service and product of any company, you will be angry. You might even consider tweeting about it, right. You obviously expect a swift response. Did you know that 40% of customers on social media expect the brand to respond to them within an hour?

For a company to genuinely offer a great customer experience, it is necessary to connect with the audience. The first aspect that needs to improve is social listening. Social listening is when brands are able to respond and engage with the audience using the right tools and practices.

What is Social Listening?

Social listening is paying attention to people’s comments, feedback, and questions and knowing how to respond to them, finding opportunities, and acting accordingly. Social listening monitors social media channels to find online conversations about the brand and derive insights from them. By streamlining social listening, you can find and create interesting content. It helps you find patterns and methods to understand customer sentiment.

Social listening can help you better understand customers, draw insights into their personalities, identify top social influencers, the audience’s thoughts, and discover more opportunities. Social listening helps you reduce costs as direct interaction improves engagement and customer retention. It is also a great way to get to know loyal customers as they will be able to help fellow customers with an issue they are facing.

Like what you are reading?
Sign up for our newsletter

How to Use Social Listening to Improve Customer Success

Social listening can improve the brand sentiment and perception of the brand by customers. Social listening insights will clarify what the next course of action should be. To improve customer success using social listening, you must keep certain strategies in place.

Have a strategic social listening plan

A good plan will help you know what to start with. You can know where customers interact and how. Know what customers want and their problems. A good social listening plan needs to include what competitors are doing, cover different channels and platforms. It is also important to investigate the general sentiment around the brand.

Choose what you want to track

You must also choose what to track. While it is wishful thinking to track everything, it is not possible. This is why monitoring exclusively what is important is vital. This can include-

• What customers say about the brand
• What influencers say
• What reviewers and critics say
• Goals and objectives
• Monitor customer complaints and feedback
• Monitor how buzzwords are performing
• Track tags, pages, hashtags, and more

Decide the content channels to track

Social listening also involves tracking content distribution channels. You need to know that different customers might choose different modes or channels. It is normal for a company to be active on all platforms. However, you need to choose the channel customers would frequent to vent. The way to do that is by studying customer segments and personas. For example- If you are selling a SaaS product, your target customers would be on LinkedIn. If you are offering a jewelry brand, then Instagram may be the perfect haunt for social listening. So, choose your channel wisely.

Stay updated about any conversations

Every social media channel allows to set up alerts and notifications. You need to turn these alerts on not to lose any conversations or comments about the brand. You can even create notifications and alerts for hashtags, brand names, keywords, etc. It is important to track these conversations and understand new trends.

Identify influencers

You must also identify the influencers in your niche. These influencers can be added to a list to keep track of their activity in the space. For example- Take the case of customer success. If you keep track of customer success with social media influencers, you know more about new trends and happenings. This can help you handle multiple conversations in the space.

Use tools and technology

Social media tools are a game-changer in social listening. To find untagged mentions and hashtags, you can use social media tools. To find all the details across news sites, search engines, and more, it is great to pick a social media tool. Some social media tools also answer queries and reduce time by automating most manual conversations. You can track customer opinion, customer sentiment, brand mentions, customer pain points, product features, and brand trends.

Respond in a personal fashion to the conversations

Social listening requires you to respond to customers in ways more than marketing messages, product updates, and brand messages. They expect you to respond to them on social media. If you choose to respond, ensure you do it in a personalized manner.

Social listening can be improved if you use social media service handles to connect with customers, communicate with them, share content, accept feedback, and proactively thank customers.

Monitor and track

The most important aspect needs to be tracking and monitoring social listening progress. You must judge how different channels and customers perform, evaluate the process, and compare with objectives. You can even set a bunch of goals or KPIs to track-

• Brand mentions
• Positive comments
• Response rate
• Issues resolved
• Number of product or company inquiries
• Customer age brackets
• Customer retention

These goals can be monitored to understand customer sentiment and feedback. Social listening can be improved if you use customer satisfaction surveys after the service to understand if the performance was effective or not.

Bottom Line

Brands need to develop a social media strategy that involves social listening. Today social media has become more than being a marketing tool. It has become vital for customer success since customers are digitally aware. You need to maintain a positive brand image, listen to customers, manage various channels, and evaluate progress. It is necessary to train your team to choose the right conversations and respond positively. You must also know what aspects can be automated to improve brand awareness.

WRITTEN BYStanley Deepak

Stanley Deepak is an accomplished sales and marketing professional with 15+ years of experience. He loves tech products and book reading. He writes on philosophy and culture on LinkedIn.

• 
• 
• 
• Copy link