I’ve had a number of conversations lately, where I have explained my new job at Ant’s Eye View. Many people I’ve spoken to are interested in the technology used to listen for brand mentions and customer support needs. I am interested in the technology too. It’s often the starting place – the foundation to a good listening program. I have used a number of great tools that help weed through the noise and lead you to the information you need to read.
What I have learned is – online listening to your customers is about reading. There is no tool that is going to eliminate the need for you to truly listen to your customers. The tools just make it quicker, easier, and even a little fun! Listening only to influencers will not tell you what your customers are saying. You need to listen to all discussion on different media types (forums, blogs, tweets, tags). Forum discussions can give you a very different view than blogs alone. For example, forums can help you understand the pain-points for customers and where they are having to use the community to fill a void (questions not answered in user guides or problems with performance). A blog mentioning the same product might take a look at features and compare to competitor products. Both are valuable to someone in your organization. Of course, these media types are not restricted to these roles and reverse often, making it imperative to listen to discussion on all media types.
Comments are where a lot of the value resides – It’s more to read, but do not pass up on the comments. They are a huge indicator to what people are thinking. A blog post may (or may not) be influential, but the comments tell you what other people are saying – sometimes in large numbers. This is powerful stuff! While not always negative, the 1oo+ comments to: Thousands of Hotmail passwords leaked online indicate that people are genuinely concerned about the security of their accounts and they value more details on the issue. The post itself will not do that for you.
Lesson for the day: A tool is anything used as a means of accomplishing a task or purpose. Don’t expect a tool to listen to your customers without you.