There are still many out there who do not understand or appreciate the concept of Social Media Monitoring. For their benefit, just a quick introduction to the idea first.

Conversations are happening on Social Media.

A blog that talks about say, telecom issues.

Comments on that blog, from various people, about the blog, but more pertinently, about their preferences or prejudices, amongst brands, for example.

Or a discussion on a message board, about hosting service providers.

And several posts to the thread, indicating active participation, besides the much larger number, who just look and go away.

Or consider a Twitter stream about Digital Cameras:

Any such discussion can significantly impact your brand, your sales. Say, by driving away customers, on account of some negative conversations, or pushing business to your competitors on account of some flattering postings in their favor, etc.

In order that these events do not catch you by surprise, you are better off to do what is referred to as “Social Media Monitoring”. That process where you keep track of the social media conversations, related to your business. Typically done with a mix of software tools and some manual data clean up, this activity is emerging as an acknowledged and regular business process for many companies now.

And now that many companies are getting into such Social Media Monitoring efforts, we see behavior and response from people, based on their stage of evolution with Social Media monitoring. And what are some of these stages, then?

1. The discovery stage: typically from a company (or person) that has just started doing Social Media Monitoring. There is huge fascination usually, in discovering a host of mentions of their brand in Social Media. It’s almost incredible to them. Most of them did not imagine that people could be so animatedly talking about their brand. Here, the brands do not particularly go about investigating the details of what context the conversations are happening in. The discovery itself is the reward, at this point. That they are in the conversation horizon of people is a reason to feel satisfied.

2. The first stage of investigation: this is when the company goes beyond the fascination of discovery and probes a little deeper into the nature of conversation. And this is usually followed by a few rude shocks. When it is found that many of the conversations are critical about the brand. Yes, people share good experiences with fewer people, but bad customer experiences are broadcast to many. Also that, most people who “write” into the social media space have a kind of ‘activist’ profile. And they pick up the smallest of your mistakes and amplify the same via Social Media channels. This is when companies often get upset, ask for opinions about how to “shut these guys up”, or “is there a legal recourse to stop such postings”, etc.

3. The stage of understanding: here is where now, the company really gets serious about looking at the data that is coming out, and converting it into actionable pieces. Conversations can be about a variety of things related to a company’s brand. From quality issues, to customer service, to price, to product details, to wish-list for new services, to competitor comparison etc. Each of these needs a different handling, perhaps from different people in an organization. So now is the stage when a company starts tagging the conversations and distributing these to the right teams and people, and also starts figuring out a response mechanism, which is consistent across the organization, because finally, to the outside world, it is that “one company” only.

4. The final stage (as of now – this space is changing!): this is when the company has now got a real good picture of the social media conversations and their impact. That many a times, the mention of their brand is inconsequential and needs to be ignored. Sometimes there is a negative mention, but it is on account of some personal reasons and can be settled offline. Or that there is conversation that they are quite familiar with, and in fact, stems out of their own press releases, for example. But then to pick those few, which are from the real ‘influencers in the space’ and which give them new and very relevant information, and which they need to act upon, is the ultimate objective. This is the “smart” way of monitoring social media, and putting it to use. It takes a lot of effort to separate the wheat from the chaff, but this is indeed, the real thing.

I am sure, there will be even more sophistication that is evolving, but the above stages largely capture the experiences of most companies, currently dabbling into the space of Social Media Monitoring.

Questions, other thoughts, experiences? Please feel free to share below.

The title of this post might sound like it’s from a Dale Carnegie book. And sure it makes all the sense to listen well, in life. But here, I refer to the concept of listening in to the Social Media buzz. And the ample opportunity that it provides, to any brand, any company, any individual, today.

In our presentation (our own Social Media 101), we emphasize that the first opportunity for businesses on Social Media, is the opportunity to “listen”. It is an opportunity akin to eavesdropping the homes of your consumers, legitimately too

Listening enables you to get insights about your brand that you may not be aware of.

Listening can give you new product ideas, as you hear about the consumer’s wish list.

And many benefits of the kind.

And yet, as we speak about this, at events and to prospects, we have been asked questions like:

“Is it really worth it?”

“What do we do after listening?”

“Will it not be just too much conversation to manage and digest?”

“Are there such conversations happening, really?”

And after voicing such doubts, marketers return back to look at their advertising budgets, and decide to spend some more, just to make up for their diminishing returns on the earlier budgets! The low-resistance option. The option where you can buy yourself one month, or maybe three, to figure out why sales are down.

While all the time, the reality is there in front of the eyes, but the choice is made to ignore the reality, as it might just demand a lot more work.

Like a lot more analysis. “Those four conversations that were extremely negative about the product quality – how do they extrapolate to the larger quality challenge?” for example.

Or to figure out the real impact of a tweet recommending a competing product, from someone who has 5000 followers. What is the real “reach” of that message, and can it cause damage to your market share??

Say you find a thread of a complaint against one of your salesperson at one of your outlets. Do you ignore it and wish it will disappear or be forgotten? Or is it a PR crisis about to blow in your face?

All of these are tough questions, really. And there are many more of the kind.

It is easier to get them off your mind, and sit with your Excel spreadsheets, and figure out more media buy and more budget allocations. And hope that, in doing all of that, there is salvation. And a recovery of sales and of market share.

The fact is that you cannot wish away reality.

That the game is changing. And changing rapidly.

Increasing amount of purchase decisions – be they products or services, be they B2B or B2C – are being influenced, if not actually being made, via Social Media.

“Which phone should I buy?”, “Can you recommend me a good lawyer?”, “What’s your opinion of brand xyz?”, etc. are questions that you see all day long on Social Media.

Likewise, it just needs a few tweets or a particularly critical blog post, or a ‘caught in action’ video to pull a brand reputation down. One which had been built at great cost and one which will take even more cost to recover!

There IS real virtue in listening. Listening to the Social Media buzz. Listening to conversations about your brand, your company, your vertical, your competition.

Yes, these will take effort. To go over. To classify. To figure out the genuine from the junk. It will need time to understand the game, to come up with methods and strategies for this new reality. But you need to start somewhere. And the more you put off that start, the more difficult it will get to catch up.

To answer a simple question that someone asked us, “do such conversations happen, really?”. Okay – what kind of conversation can you expect to see on social media?

Those kind that you’d have with a friend over a drink.

Those issues that you discuss at a Parents-Teachers meeting.

The watercooler ones.

The chat that you have with your golfing mate, as you walk on them greens.

That chatter that is typical at a party, or at a dinner with friends.

The calls that you make to seek advice – on anything!

In short, any conversation that was natural to do offline, will now find its way on to the Social Media space. So go figure! Does your brand get discussed offline at all? Then, you can be sure to find such conversations on the social media space.

And then you can find some more.

“Because in my offline network, I might have not had the necessary expertise for say, those exclusive, high-end speakers that I was considering to purchase, or that piece of European art that fascinated me, or about a particular University in Ottawa that my child was planning to go to.”

Where the offline network stops, the online one is still accessible and alive.

And then to answer the other questions, “Will there not be too much data? How do I find it? How do I manage 1000s of conversations that come up?”

Well, this is where tools and service providers come to help.

Take for example, the SM2 Techrigy social media monitoring tool. Available in a Freemium model, it is something that you can immediately experiment with, and it can give you interesting insights in next to no time. Put in a set of keywords / phrases, tweak it with some conditions (language, geography etc.), and it starts pushing back to you, conversations from blogs, message boards, forums, video sites, social networking sites, twitter, etc. etc. that match your conditional requirements.

AND it does more. It gives you a basic sentiment track on all the conversations, it identifies the ‘influencers’ from the set of conversations, it enables an actionable workflow where you can assign the conversation to a team member. And many other such interesting features.

And in case you do not have internal team resources to manage this, or you want a higher level of value addition, there are service providers who can offer you that. In fact, our company provides services of the kind, where we do a manual read of all the conversations, do a more accurate sentiment tagging, and further tag the conversations around your areas of focus, such as quality issues, price issues, competition, product features, etc. That way, when you see a report, it is immediately actionable, no matter the quantity of posts that have been generated around your brand.

A few case studies of such social media monitoring work have been showcased earlier, on this blog.

In conclusion, I must share a job post that thrilled me no end, earlier this week. Even as we have been working hard to convince clients about the benefits of “listening to the social media”, we were happy to see Kodak announce a position of Chief Listener! That is amazing foresight, and acceptance and understanding of the new ways of doing business.

Whether you appoint a Chief Listener or decide to outsource your listening effort, do make a beginning. You will not regret, I assure you!

So are you already there ‘listening away’? Or what are your views / plans on the same? Would love to hear from you.

Disclosure: Social PR Outsourcing Pvt. Ltd., the parent company of Social Wavelength, is an authorised reseller for the SM2 Techrigy tool, for India.

Executive Summary: Is Social Media Monitoring just an academic exercise, or can it lead to concrete benefits to the Brand? We conducted a Monitoring exercise to find out. The chosen domain was iPod and iPhone speakers and docks. To know more about what we found, read on. (Hint: It was the latter)

The method used for conducting this Social Media Monitoring exercise was essentially similar to the previous exercises carried out by us (Online Travel Sector in India and Hybrid Cars – Whats the Social Media Buzz). The study differed however, in that we completely focused on deriving points of action from it. We specifically chose this particular market  (iPhone and iPod docks) to conduct the exercise, because it was very close to another market/domain (iPods and iPhones themselves) which have a very high level of noise. We would have to ensure, therefore, that the search was very well defined, so that the number of irrelevant results retrieved would be kept in check. The entire exercise involved:

1. Identifying the appropriate search terms to enter into the Social Media Monitoring tool, so as to reduce the number of irrelevant results retrieved. (We restricted the searches to retrieve four days worth of data, June 12th to June 15th)
2. Running the searches, and allowing the Software to perform a first level classification of the results.
3. Our Social Media Executives cleaning up the results, to remove all the irrelevant ones.
4. Higher level, intelligent classification, categorization by our Executives.
5. Analyzing these results to extract points of action, and identifying influencers.

Our learning:

If I was a company about to launch an iPod Dock/Speaker system, what would be the features I would ensure that my product had? Apart from the obvious feature, viz. Good Audio output, our monitoring exercise revealed two features which were highly appreciated:

1. Compatibility with different generations of iPhones/iPods: What may seem to be an obvious enough feature, was not present in some models (eg. Bose SoundDock Portable). Conversely, whenever a mention was made of a dock which had this feature, it was highly praised (eg. GenevaSound Medium).
2. Ability to charge your device while music is being played: This feature, as well, wherever present was highly praised (eg. Harmon Kardon Go + Play). Yet, not all systems seem to have this feature.

On Social Media, Issues resurface, constant vigilance is required. The Bose SoundDock Portable, mentioned above, had a problem. Days after the 3G iPhone was released on 11th July 2008, people started talking about issues with the SoundDock Portable. While charging the iPhone 3G, the dock made a popping/clucking sound, every 5 minutes. This was reported on a particular thread on the Apple Support forums. We saw users helping each other, recounting  their interactions with Bose’s support  (which incidentally, did not reply in the thread). The problem was solvable, requiring the users to send the dock to Bose, who would modify it and send it back. As it happens, three new posts was posted on the the same thread, on 15th June 2009 (which is why the tool picked it up).  These people had the same issue, one year later, and still had to help each other solve it.

Action Required:

We identified results, which merited response as ‘Action Required’ results. They were further classified into ‘Action Required: First Level Response’ and ‘Action Required: Escalate to Customer Service’. Within these four days, we found three results on which we determined action would be required, in terms of escalating those three results to Customer Service. They were all related to the Bose SoundDock and problems associated with the same. The first Action Required result was about Bose SoundDock not being able to charge a users iPod Touch. The second and third results were from the apple support forums, with users talking about the popping/clucking sounds being made by the SoundDock Portable.

Influencer Identification:

From among the various sources where iPod docks were spoken about, Social Media Monitoring also helps us identify the influencers, viz. sources with the widest reach. While the largest number of reviews of various iPod docking systems were on the blog Smart Reviews Online, the popularity rating for this particular blog was 2 (out of a maximum possible rating of 10). On the other hand, the blog Geek.com, which did not always talk about iPod docks, had a popularity rating of 10 (highest rating possible). The only talk about iPod docks on geek.com in this time frame was about the passPORT home dock enables the Soundock to charge iPods while playing them. Another big influencer, with a popularity rating of 10 (source with highest reach or popularity) was, unsurprisingly Apple’s support forums, which had a single thread active, with only three posts during this time frame. It became clear, that frequency of posting (which may lead to a particular blog/channel being seen as influential) may not really be the most popular source.

The above study is an illustration of how monitoring Social Media can very clearly be used to derive well defined and specific action steps. It also helps in identifying which are the most influential sources of information about your product or brand.

The categorization done by our analysts, opens up opportunities for some interesting insights. First let us look at what is the ratio of relevant to irrelevant results from the one’s extracted by the tool:

How do users percieve your brand? What are the thoughts, words they associate with your company? We can analyze the themes being touched upon on Social Media, when people are talking about your brand. In this example, we did this themes analysis on the entire set of relevant results, viz. across brands.

In the tag cloud shown above, larger the size of the word/tag, more closely it is associated with the brand (in this case across brands). The above cloud, for example reveals that the word ‘System’ is very closely associated with speakers/docks, something which should be considered while thinking of a branding strategy for your next product. The word ‘dock’ is individually bigger than ’speaker’, however, the word ’speakers’ also figures prominently in the tag cloud.

Now that we know the themes being touched, we want to see which domains have the maximum volume of conversations about iPod Docks and Speakers (a reminder, we are doing this study for the four day period from 12th June to 15th June. It can easily be conducted for longer durations, and on an ongoing basis). The most popular domains, which spoke about iPod speakers, were as per the following image:

If we look at the above graph carefully, we see that there are two posts on Craigslist. Which means there is probably a resales market for iPod docks. We classified these posts concerning resale, and now we can see, which brand has the most resale related posts  for the given duration:

These resale related posts were not restricted to Craigslist alone. Done on an ongoing basis, this can help identify the size of the resale market for a particular brand, or even a particular product.

In previous Social Media Monitoring exercises, we have seen some basic data analysis, including Ratio of Tone within brand, Tone analysis related to product etc. As we can see in this post, much more complex and insightful analysis is possible.

Your questions/comments are invited. What other insights would you like to be able to draw from Social Media?

If you wish to download the White Paper for this study (PDF), you can visit the Resources Page on our website.

Executive Summary:

People ARE talking about your Brand on Social Media. This much you know. Should you be tracking the conversations and interactions? Can actionable insights be delivered to you by monitoring Social Media for your brand (and that of your competitors)? In order to answer these, and other questions, about tracking the activity of your brand on this new media, we conducted a monitoring exercise for Hybrid/Electric cars. What follows is a detailed report of the same.

Contents:

• The Idea
• The Methodology
• Our Findings
  • Relevant/Irrelevant Ratio
  • Competitor Comparison related insights
  • Ratio of Tone, within brand
  • Product Related, by Tone
  • Price Related, by Tone
  • Buying Stage/Lead Generation
• Conclusions drawn/Learning
• Notes/Appendices

The Idea:

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We have previously performed Social Media Monitoring exercises on the Indian Elections 2009 as well as on the Online Travel Sector in India. We now shifted our focus to the worldwide Hybrid Car market. Our aim was to see if it is possible to get insights about a market, by monitoring the Social Media buzz around the same.

The Methodology:

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1. We used the industry leading Social Media Monitoring tool SM2 by the people over at Techrigy for the first stage of the process, viz. Capturing the data from across Social Media.

2. Since the study was to be about Hybrid/Electric Cars (as against elections), we decided to query the vast space using some well known brand names in the Hybrid/Electric cars market.
3. We used the SM2 to retrieve results over a 4 day period (12^th June ‘09 to 15^th June 09). This period gave us a total of 2822 results. SM2 did a great job of first level Categorization of the results.
4. Then, our team of Social Media Analysts swung into action. Using SM2, we first created a set of categories, which we believed would deliver insights into the monitoring effort.
5. We then analyzed each result, individually, categorizing it as appropriate. Humans, understanding Humans, as we like to say. We then sliced and diced the results, to get some interesting insights.
6. What did we find? Over to the next section.

Our Findings:

Relevant/Irrelevant ratio: (Back To Top)

Even with a very specific query, a large number of results, which had no bearing on the subject were recovered. During the human cleanup phase, these were categorized as irrelevant (What was classified as irrelevant?). These irrelevant results, are not considered while drawing further insights.

Of the total volume of 2822 results, the number of irrelevant results is 1837, the remaining being relevant. In terms of percentage, 65% were irrelevant, whereas 35%, relevant.

Types on insights available:

Competitor Comparison Related: (Back To Top)

If two or more brands of Hybrid/Electric cars have been compared, we marked the result as ‘Competitor Comparison Related’, while also tagging the result according to the tone it uses for each of the companies being compared. 37 relevant results were marked as ‘Competitor Comparison Related’.

Example: Is the Prius too mighty to take down?: (this was marked as being Neutral for both Honda and Toyota, as well as Price Related).

Summary: Among the results tagged as ‘Competitor Comparison’, the recurring comparison was the one between the Toyota Prius (entering its 3rd generation) and the first generation Honda Insight. While the sales of the Insight are said to below expectations and the Prius sales have also fallen, among the two, the 3rd generation Prius emerges ahead of the Insight. Examples: (1, 2).

Ratio of tone, within brand: (Back To Top) 

A brand has some chatter about it. But within this chatter, how much is positive/negative/neutral? How does the percentage of positive/negative/neutral results for a brand stack up against the same percentage for another brand?

Tone For GM: 78% Neutral Mentions, 13% Positive Mentions, 8%Negative Mentions

Summary: The Negative results for GM followed the announcement that GM canceled most of its Hybrid lineup, including the Malibu Hybrid 2010. Largely, the positive results were those which spoke the upcoming Buick having a Hybrid Powertrain.

Tone For Toyota: 78% Neutral Mentions, 19% Positive Mentions, 2%Negative Mentions

Summary: Negative results for Toyota came in the form of Tesla motors CEO saying that the Prius is not a true hybrid. Other negative results were about the Prius not being able to cross the 50 MPG average of fuel efficiency. Positive results for Toyota came from talk around the Prius, which people seem to be happy about, as well as reviews of the Toyota Civic hybrid.

Tone For Ford: 72% Neutral Mentions, 26% Positive Mentions, <1%Negative Mentions

Summary: The one negative result about Ford concerns how Toyota is beating Ford and GM, by employing lean business practices, allowing them to come up with innovate faster and cheaper as in the     case of the Prius. The largest number of positive results for Ford were around Senator McCain planning to buy a Ford Fusion Hybrid.

Product Related, by tone: (Back To Top)

When someone is talking about the features of your product (in this case, a Hybrid car), what tone does she use?

Take Toyota, for example. If a brand manager at Toyota wanted to find out, if someone has spoken on Social Media about the brand using a negative tone, this can be done. We can see all results with a negative tone, about its product (viz. The car itself, as against price, availability etc.). The following result matches the criteria:

Why is the Toyota Prius such a bore:

This result is ideal for posting a response to, and could have been escalated to the relevant department.

Summary: By far, the largest number of results for all brands are Product related. The Product related category is where correct Categorization can yield great results, as seen in the above example. The topics being discussed are by and large:

• People discussing news and events related to the brands (1, 2)
• Features of existing Products (1, 2)
• Upcoming releases (1, 2)

Price Related, by tone: (Back To Top)

39 results have been Categorized as ‘Price related’. Example: Honda Insight a Flop?

(This has been categorized into Honda: Tone Negative, Price Related)

Summary: Most price related results were about the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight. The Honda Insight is priced at $2000 less than the Prius, and in response, Toyota has slashed the price of its car by $1000. Despite the lower cost, the Honda Insight is likely to miss its sales target.

Buying Stage/Lead Generation: (Back To Top)

As we saw in the case of travel websites, listening to Social Media can be used as a method of lead generation as well.

An example of a result Categorized as ‘Buying: Early Stage’:

Summary: In the Buying Stage: Early category, people spoke about cars which they were considering as possible purchases. In the Buying Stage: Late category, most of the noise was around Senator McCain’s decision to buy a Ford Fusion.

Conclusions Drawn/Learning:

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About the Hybrid Cars Market, and related chatter on Social Media:

1. In terms of Social Media Volume the largest brands are Toyota, GM, Ford and Honda
2. The most discussed cars are Prius, Insight, Fusion and Civic
3. Smaller brands are also being spoken about on Social Media, with much lower volume.
4. The most discussed topics surrounding these brands and cars are the products themselves (features etc.), upcoming releases, price related issues, comparisons and news related to the brands/cars. There was also discussion related to the fact that despite the 24 hour production schedule of Toyota, there still exists a waiting period for the Prius.

About the Social Media Monitoring Exercise:

1. For any Brand/Company interested in knowing about the Social Media chatter surrounding them, this kind of a Social Media Monitoring exercise can deliver great value as well as actionable insights.

2. Such an exercise entails

• A Social Media monitoring tool, which can extract relevant data from across Social Media properties, based on the query that is set up.
• Setting up a Query, in such a manner that all possible relevant results are captured, while at the same time minimizing the incidence of irrelevant results being caught.
• Setting up of appropriate categories which will allow for better analysis of the data gathered. Both the above (query and category set up) are iterative in nature, with ongoing tweaking required.
• Beyond this, a layer of human intervention is absolutely necessary. The results retrieved by the tool need to be cleaned, by humans.
• To these cleaned results, appropriate rigorous categorization of the results must be done.These Categorized-by-Humans results can then be sliced and diced to derive actionable insights.

Your questions/comments are invited, of course.

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Notes and Appendices:

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NOTE: The above report is an analysis of the Social Media buzz around the subject of Hybrid Vehicles. None of the above statements represent any personal views of ours, on the subject.

NOTE: The numbers mentioned above, say for GM, are only of those results in which the brand name ‘GM’ (or ‘General Motors’ and its variations thereof) was mentioned. The same is the case with the other results as well.

What was classified as irrelevant? (Back To Top)

Two kinds of results were classified as irrelevant:

1. Results which were not related to Hybrid/Electric Cars: Many results talk about the different brands mentioned in the query and use the words ‘Hybrid’ and ‘Electric’ in a context other than the one relevant to the search. Example.

2. Results related to Hybrid/Electric Cars, which are irrelevant to people interested in monitoring the brand: Some results like link farms (blogs with only links pointing to other pages), many wiki talk pages (where the brand/product reference is not edited). Example.

[Edits: Tweaked the Title and the above notes]

[Edits 2: Changed graph style, formatting, added menu]

If you wish to download the White Paper for this study (PDF), you can visit the Resources Page on our website.

Having done an exhaustive Social Media Analysis of the the Indian Elections 2009, we shifted focus to the Travel sector in India. The focus of this monitoring exercise was to extract information and learning which might be useful to Travel Agencies as well as Travel Portals based in India. We wanted to explore Social Media Monitoring as a method of generating leads and identifying prospective clients. We also wanted to see whether it can be used as a feedback mechanism by players in this sector. For the purpose of this exercise, we restricted the search to the 5 day period of 1^st June to 5^th June 2009 (which is towards the waning end of the travel/holiday season).

Objectives:

1. Extract data related to Travel sector in India using Social Media Monitoring tools

2. Using human intervention, validate whether the search results are relevant/useful for travel agencies of travel portals.

3. Categorize the data in a manner which will make it easier to consume/easier to base decisions on.

4. Derive conclusions/learning, if any.

Process:

For performing the initial search, we used industry leading Social Media Monitoring tools. We set up queries for looking up some of the travel websites/portals from India (cleartrip, makemytrip etc.). Apart from this, we set up searches which focused on generic travel related words and phrases (‘travel’, ‘vacation’, ‘journey’, ‘trip’ etc.).

We then came up with a categorization strategy, with the focus being categories which we thought might be useful to the various Travel Agencies (online or offline) as well as Travel Portals.

As mentioned previously, we restricted the search only for items (content created) between the 1^st and 5^th of June 2009.

Our Content Analysts then looked at the data retrieved by the monitoring tool. The activities performed by the Content Analysts included:

1. Identifying relevant and non relevant items from within the returned search results, and classifying them as such.

2. Categorizing content on the basis of the source of the content.

3. Categorizing all the content pieces according to the categorization strategy mentioned previously.

4. After human intervention, doing a before-after comparison on the data.

5. Extracting conclusions from this higher quality data.

Results and Findings:

In the time frame of 1^st June to 5^th June, the total number of results picked up by the tool was 672. The first finding, of course is the number of relevant and irrelevant results. Fully 86.75 % of the results were deemed irrelevant, from the Point of view of value to travel agencies and portals. The remaining 13.25% of results were deemed to be relevant.

From the relevant results, we drilled down further, by the categories we had set up. The results are tabulated below:

Category	Number (percentage) of relevant results
Planning Stage of travel
Early	1 (1.1%)
Mid	1 (1.1%)
Planned (late)	1 (1.1%)
Promotions	10 (11%)
Prospects
India Travel	3 (3.3%)
International Travel	0 (0%)
Travel Reason*
Business	0 (0%)
Pleasure	1 (1.1%)
Religious	2 (2.2%)
Unknown	1 (1.1%)

*Travel can be for multiple reasons

Here are the snippets of the posts/tweets which were classified in different planning stages (early, mid and planned):

Finally, we did an analysis of how much is the chatter around various Online Travel brands in the Social Media space. Here are the results of that analysis:

Conclusions Drawn and Learnings:

1. The percentage of relevant results in the total number of results retrieved in 13.25%. Using search results (even from industry leading tools) without a layer of human intervention will not be very efficient, or even very accurate.
2. Realistic leads (at various stages of planning) can be generated from Social Media. While the percentage may seen small, it must be kept in mind that the search was restricted to a 5 day period, from 1^st June to 5^th June (which is towards the end of the holiday season.)
3. There is a large difference between the amount of chatter around the larger Indian travel portals in the social media space.

Comments are of course, invited.

If you wish to download the White Paper for this study (PDF), you can visit the Resources Page on our website.

** There is a website visibility blog series, which is in the working. Meanwhile, pitching in with this post. **

The inspiration for this post comes from some interactions with Indian brand managers, where we got a suggestion that Social Media may not be on their priority, simply because there isn’t enough of their target market, out there, just yet. When we talked about possible brand reputation risks, and suggested that at least a good social media monitoring exercise should fall in place (quoting cases like the Domino’s story, for example), responses suggested that ‘there have been numerous complaints of cockroaches found in Coke bottles, but that has not hurt their sales growth one bit’.

So why are we like this, in India? Why does customer service come low on priority?

I have personally had outstanding experiences with companies like American Express (for lost traveler checks), Southwest Airlines (for last minute change of bookings, etc.), Cort furniture rental (when I had a short 4 month stay in the Bay Area) etc. I have also heard / read stories of other customer-centric brands like Nordstrom.

But ALL of these are from outside India. I cannot think of one outstanding customer service experience that I would like to talk about, in an Indian context (perhaps, Orange County, Coorg might make the cut for me). Considering that I have spent far more time within the country than outside it, this makes for a generally pathetic state of affairs. Why so?

My analysis of reasons why Indian brands are not too concerned about customer service is:

1. There are just too many of us! When you have a bad experience at a restaurant, curse your way out and promise to never step in again, does that impact that restaurant’s business? Not by much. There are new suckers who are willing to try him out, each day, day after day. Think about a mobile phone or mobile service provider problem?! With millions of new users coming in each month, do they feel threatened by the dissatisfaction of a single customer?
2. Our ‘chalta hai’ culture. We accept mediocrity. Of ourselves. And hence of the service we get. We are a service provider (to an internal customer or an external customer) as much as we are a service consumer. And when we are prepared to accept mediocrity of ourselves as a service provider, the same comes back to us as a recipient of service. And in our true ‘chalta hai’ spirit, we accept it!
3. The slow legal system. So the automobile garage short changed you. You can even prove it. What good does that do? You know you do not have the time for the painfully slow courts of law. And other than taking the law in your own hands, you do not have any other resort. So you resign yourself to your bad luck while the garage continues to give shoddy service.
4. The lack of an effective consumer movement. Again, we have a more active consumer protection mechanism than earlier, but for the size of our economy, it is still too little, and too late. There is no serious case of ‘consumer backlash’. Even with the high media attention that the ‘fertilizer in Coke and Pepsi’ case got, I do not believe their sales were dented by much.
5. The lack of a strong, single point media vehicle that can go after these cases. Yes, when it suits them, mainstream media takes up some of the cudgels. But there are always other ‘breaking news’ fighting for the minutes or the column inches, and the brands at fault, just need to wait out the time. On the other hand, there has not emerged in the online space, any strong brand that can just work to take up the cause for the consumers. At least, none with a serious brand recall.
6. The freeloader attitude that many of us have. Why can’t a brand offer “30 days free replacement” in India? The kind that is a par-value service offering in the western worlds? Because it would be a disaster. Unfortunately, coming from a ‘shortage economy’ legacy that we do, we have a tendency to grab whatever is on offer for free. If there is a 30-days free replacement, you would find the longest queues for returning these, on the 29^th day, after using the items for those many days. Likewise, brands may assume that any leeway given in terms of customer service could end up getting abused. In a restaurant that I know, they will not allow on a single table, people having a buffet and a la carte meals. Because they fear that the smaller a la carte ordering folks, will end up sharing the one free unlimited buffet that is ordered! Unfortunate, but true representation of the average Indian L

It is for all these reasons that we do not see brands and companies getting particularly aggressive towards excellent customer service, and we continue to suffer, as consumers.

Moreover it is for these reasons that companies often do not much care about Online Reputation Monitoring, as they figure that it does not matter!

However I strongly believe that brands and companies are missing a trick, as they ignore this Online Reputation monitoring effort, and believe that it does not matter in India.

1. Online memory is longer. While stories that came in the newspapers or on TV are fresh only as long as the stories are alive, online, these stories do not die. They are searchable, they are accessible, and they can haunt you at the least expected moment of time!
2. Snowball effect. What could start as a whimper or one dissatisfied voice, could soon convert into a community of dissatisfied users, and then become a snowball. Dissatisfied customers in Cochin, Mangalore, Patiala, Lucknow, Pune..wherever.. are now connected. By the medium known as Social Media!! And in size, their voice is amplified and the whimper can become a big holler!
3. When social goes mainstream. Domino’s went from YouTube to the New York Times in 3 days. When such transitions happen, God help your brand. You do not really want to wait for that to happen. Stem it while you can, should be the mantra.
4. You may have many customers, but you have few bankers, investors, joint venture partners. Once you slide down the reputation path, and have tons of bad press (well, more like bad ‘web-content’) , then you may just find it getting tougher to get bankers to trust you, to have investors putting in money or giving you a decent valuation, or to get joint venture partners. Because of our population, customers may still come, but margins may go down, as the premium factor disappears!
5. And what about people? Good resources do not want to work with companies having bad reputation. Not when they have a choice. If you choose to ignore the complaints, customers will write, blog, tweet, shout. And these noises will keep good talent away from your company!
6. This can haunt you at the most unexpected and inopportune moment. When you are going for the IPO and your papers are filed, your competitor might just pull out all that dirt from the web and social media archives, and ensure that it gets the maximum visibility. Since content does not disappear here, you always carry this risk!

It should be clear then, that even if you are selling in a seller’s market, reputation matters today! And especially online reputation or reputation being created via Social Media conversations. It is important to monitor Social Media for social chatter about your brand, your competition, your vertical, and be alert on any unusual developments.

Of course, it is critical that the company gets customer focused in the process, and does not allow much customer ire to happen, in the first place. In many cases, these may be a significant cultural change to bring about!

Do you think Social Media will impact our attitude towards customer service? What is your opinion on Social Media’s role as a reputation builder/breaker? Looking forward to a great discussion.

** Social Wavelength offers the service of Social Media monitoring. Social Wavelength will use industry standard software tools to tap all conversations around a brand. This can generate a very large amount of data, though. Our social media executives then work to ‘clean up the data’ and tag the conversations on various parameters, enabling effective and actionable reporting to clients. In cases where brand reputation sensitivity is extremely crucial, Social Wavelength can also offer 24×7 Real Time Online Reputation Monitoring and Reporting. For more information, please email info@socialwavelength.com. **

At the siliconindia Digital Media Conference held on Saturday, 23rd May, Sanjay was one of the panelists. The topic of the panel discussion was ‘Social Media – What Next’ and this is the presentation we made for the event.

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