When customers are unhappy about a brand’s offerings, they narrate their experiences on social media. They also expect the brand to reply to their posts and comments on a priority basis. 

As a brand owner, you must understand the common aspects of social listening and the customer experience. Customer experiences define a brand’s image and success. Social listening is used to track customer conversations. So, implementing a social listening strategy for customer experience management can be helpful in many ways. 

It is possible to enhance the customer experience through social listening. You can consider customer behavior and individual preferences while creating content strategies. You can also use these insights to introduce personalization into the customer experience. Now, let’s see how social listening improves the customer experience! 

What is Customer Experience Management (CEM)?

Customer Experience Management is often referred to as CEM or CXM. It is a process that involves several activities to engage with customers. The ultimate goal is to improve customer satisfaction and the overall experience. 

Various aspects of the customer experience can be identified through CEM. Social listening provides insights into the pain points, expectations, and preferences of customers. Using these details, you can create a better customer experience. 

What customers feel after using your products or services determines whether their experience was good or bad. Different aspects of your products and services are responsible for their overall experience. 

Suppose that you sell products online. In this case, the user interface of your app or website, product features, pricing, and other things can define the customer experience. 

Assume that your company develops software solutions. Here, the usability and functions of your software applications, after-sale services, etc. determine the final user experience. 

The valuable data that social listening tools provide can be used to improve your offerings. These tools help you determine your brand’s image and positioning in the market. Through insights obtained from social listening tools, you can create brand awareness campaigns.

Managing customer experiences is essential for any brand. If a majority of the customers get a good experience, it improves the CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value) of your brand. 

Customer retention rates can be improved by managing customer experiences. For example, if you sell agricultural goods online, your focus should be on providing multiple options for customers to buy your products.

At the same time, you must also allow customers to interact with your customer support executives through different channels. Latch on to an omnichannel customer experience management suite that lets you leverage several touchpoints to manage customer experiences. 

We will discuss more about omnichannel strategy and the role of social listening in the sections below. 

Best Practices for Integrating Social Listening with CEM

The data obtained through social listening can offer insights into your next course of action. To start with, create a social listening strategy to know the social platforms on which your customers interact the most. 

Understand what your competitors are planning. Try to cover as many social outlets and online communities as you can. Here are some best practices for integrating social listening with CEM.

1. Define Clear Objectives

To improve customer satisfaction through social listening, you must adopt a multi-layered approach. Start by setting clear objectives for your social listening strategy. 

If your goal is to improve brand awareness through social listening, you must gather details about top influencers. By collaborating with influencers, you can create better content strategies. With their valuable suggestions and support, you can try to reach a wider audience. 

However, if your goal is to enhance the customer experience, identify the lapses in your service. Use social listening to verify whether customers are satisfied with your technical support services or not. 

Use multiple touchpoints to offer customer service. If you sell products, you must allow customers to buy through a mobile app or website. You should also integrate direct purchase links into social media. 

Retail stores should be equipped with an online catalog. It will allow customers to explore products that are not in stock. By integrating such experiences at each level of a buyer’s journey, you can manage customer experiences seamlessly! 

Focus on what part of the customer journey you want to improve. Is it the buying part or the after-sales part? Do you want to integrate new communication channels or existing ones?

After finalizing these objectives, you can define clear search queries and keywords to track. Here are some common objectives of brands that use social listening to improve customer experiences:

a. Tracking industry trends

Tracking industry trends is essential to staying updated with the latest tools and techniques used to monitor customer conversations. It also reveals new and better ways to impress customers. 

Suppose that the majority of your competitors adopt a dedicated app to offer support services. You must latch on to this trend as early as possible. It will give you an advantage over competitors that lag in this department. It will also create an opportunity to interact with customers directly through calls, SMS, and WhatsApp! 

b. Monitoring events 

Monitoring events may be essential to understanding how customers react to live shows and seminars. If you offer business-class rental car services, you may indulge in virtual conferences frequently. 

Monitoring your customers/clients during live events will reveal important details about their preferences. You will understand how they respond to offers in real time. These details can help you organize better events or marketing campaigns in the future. 

c. Include personalization 

Personalizing customer communication can help in several ways. First, it allows you to manage customer relationships. By using specifics about their interests, age group, occupation, and more, you can try to pitch your products in a personalized way. 

You can use personalization while interacting with customers via different channels. To include personalization in your social listening strategy, you must track the biometric details of your customers. Observing their hobbies, interests, and buying preferences also helps understand their mindset. 

By using these details, you can offer a personalized experience to regular customers. You can offer them greater discounts and deals to convert them into loyal customers. Greater customer retention and CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value) can be achieved through this. 

2. Establish Listening Parameters 

Once you know what to listen to, you must establish ways to listen to customer conversations. You can use social listening to improve the customer experience only if you identify the right listening parameters. Set the listening parameters to understand these things:

• Are your customers happy with your products/services?
• What do influencers think or say about your brand?
• How much negative feedback or complaints does your support team receive every day?
• How is your brand’s reputation in comparison to your peers?

You can monitor social networking apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. to gather customer insights. Along with that, you can also track online communities and review sites. If you want to collect customer data, you can create notifications for specific keywords using Google Alerts. 

User reviews and feedback can be collected through app listing platforms like the Google PlayStore and the App Store. Comments can be collected by tracking brand mentions and specific buzzwords related to your industry. 

If you sell smartphones, you can track keywords like best budget smartphone, touchscreen experience, refresh rate, etc. Other businesses will have their own relevant keywords and buzzwords. 

By tracking these keywords and buzzwords, you can determine user issues. It will also reveal important details about the buying preferences of your customers. 

You can create a list of hashtags and search queries you want to track. Use the maximum number of keywords, hashtags, and industry-related phrases while using social listening tools. Through these phrases and keywords, you will be able to gather adequate data to detect customer experiences. 

You must study your social analytics to get a bird’s eye view of the audience and their behavioral patterns. You must analyze your products/services to see whether they meet the expectations of your target audience or not. This kind of approach helps integrate social listening with customer experience management. 

Eventually, you start getting familiar with the different types of parameters to use to obtain customer data. Sometimes, you may not get raw data and insights as per your expectations. You can narrow down these parameters and fine-tune your social listening strategies to align your objectives and data. 

3. Invest in social listening tools 

Once you know what to track, you must invest in some social listening tools. Choose tools that track customer conversations and provide insights into their experiences. 

Follow these steps to enhance the customer experience through social listening tools.

a. Choose a unified platform 

Use multitasking tools to develop a social listening strategy for customer experience management. They will help you listen to, analyze, and improve the customer experience without any issues. 

An omnichannel customer experience management suite like Konnect Insights can be the perfect solution for your needs. It not only tracks user data but also allows you to make data-driven decisions for improving customer relationships. You can integrate over 3,000 apps with this suite to manage customer data. 

b. Compare the features 

Before choosing a platform for improving customer satisfaction through social listening, compare the features of the top tools available on the market. The tools you use must allow you to collect customer feedback and surveys. 

It must offer crisis management capabilities along with a wide range of features to improve customer relationships. The tools must offer deep insights into your brand’s share of voice and allow you to monitor your social media campaigns. 

The platform should let you know about the negative sentiments of customers immediately. It should contain tools to classify the raw data as per customer demographics, interests, and preferences. 

The interface of the social listening tools must be smooth and user-friendly. It must present data in an uncluttered way so that you can retrieve insights without any issues. The tools you use must be backed by reporting, publishing, and data analysis capabilities. 

It must send notifications whenever there is an impending crisis for your brand. Choose a platform that unifies different channels and allows you to execute all your marketing strategies with ease. 

4. Actively respond to customer feedback

Improving customer satisfaction through social listening is not simple. Responding to customer feedback must be among your top priorities. Also, incorporate customer feedback into your marketing strategies. 

Using social listening to handle customer service would be much easier if you tracked feedback actively. also provides multiple ways through which customers can voice their opinions. 

Web chats are emerging as one of the most powerful means of addressing customer concerns and complaints. Calling has been the best way to get in touch with customers. Incorporating data from all your customer support channels is essential to seeking valuable details from them. 

Do not just study customer feedback but also take the necessary action. Answering customer queries on time is one way of showing that you care for them. It also helps you stay alert and prevent a potential crisis. Here are some ways to engage with your audience.

a. Be attentive 

Being attentive is as essential as being responsive. You must pay close attention to the concerns of your customers. Understanding their core issues will be much easier if you calmly deal with them. 

If you gain the trust of the customers while engaging, you can pitch your relevant products and marketing materials with ease. Do not make customers feel unwanted as it can create a negative sentiment around your brand. Make them feel special and show you are fully committed to solving their problems. 

b. Choose a social persona 

Using a social persona while interacting with customers always helps. You can use a friendly, calm, polite, or witty tone while interacting with them. The tone and manner in which you interact must depend on the situation. Your social persona must also match your brand’s values and history. 

c. Use positive feedback 

Social proofs help position your brand or products/services in the market. So, you must highlight positive feedback in your marketing campaigns and posts. 

5. Measure and track outcomes 

Implementing a social listening strategy for customer experience management is just one side of the coin. Your actual work starts when you start measuring and tracking the outcomes. Use these strategies while measuring and tracking outcomes.

• Develop new strategies

Find new ways to integrate social listening with customer experience management.

Marketing tools that use automation can drive your marketing strategies well. If the results are not up to expectations, you must redefine and re-invent your social listening strategies. 

• Use a unified platform

Improving customer satisfaction through social listening can seem difficult at first. However, things will fall into place if you use a single platform to track all your social accounts. 

• Create different customer segments

Create different segments of customers and make a unique plan to reach each of these segments. Send targeted messages by posting creative content through social media channels. Using personalized emails and messages should be a part of your customer experience management plan. 

• Use reporting tools

Choose social listening tools that have in-depth reporting capabilities across all channels. Dig into actionable insights and build a strong connection with your audience. Experiment with your content strategies and use social listening to improve your posts. 

Conclusion

This is how social listening improves the customer experience. Using social listening for customer service can be tricky for startups or new businesses. Yet, managing customer data and experiences would be much easier if you used the omnichannel marketing approach. 

Konnect Insights is a customer experience management suite that can single-handedly meet all your social listening requirements. It is integrated with advanced BI (Business Intelligence) tools, social CRM, and other features. You can handle customer data and manage the customer experience through this omnichannel platform. Check out the website now to explore its services!