Tool for companies to listen to their customers on social media
TAKE A LOOK: McCutcheon showing how the Social Media Analytics solution's user interface looks like.
By ZAM KARIM
PETALING JAYA: The rise of social media as another marketing medium introduces a different set of headaches for companies.
In the digital era, nothing can generate more buzz or focus more scrutiny on a company's reputation than comments in Facebook, Twitter and blogs.
Dermot McCutcheon, director of customer intelligence at SAS Institute Inc's South-East Asia centre of excellence, said what used to be hidden - such as customer complaints in e-mail systems - are now open for public display and comment via those channels.
"So companies cannot afford to ignore these implications," he said. "You are being talked about; you might as well join the conversations or at least learn from them."
He said companies should learn to use the information to their advantage, to generate meaningful customer intelligence like brand and market tracking, public relations and reputation building, as well as managing customer feedback.
"Also listen to what they are saying about your competitors," he added.
Some companies have set up their own social media analyst team to trawl such sites, looking for useful information.
"It is a time consuming process, inaccurate and quite mundane to do - and one which should be automated, thus freeing the analysts to do other important stuff," McCutcheon said.
To eliminate the problem of having to analyse social media data in a piecemeal and ad hoc fashion, SAS has introduced its Social Media Analytics solution to the Malaysian market.
It is claimed to be smart enough to handle the English, Bahasa Malaysia and even the slang used by Malaysians, to provide contextual translations.
A dashboard-type of interface provides users with customer sentiments, influences, activities and social trends. The data is displayed via two graphs and a list of tweets which are accessible from a PC or iPad tablet computer.
The company is working on an Android version of the solution, said McCutcheon.
With the tool, organisations can better understand the effects of such online conversations on specific aspects of their business operations, he said.
He said the businesses can then analyse and target the information for appropriate actions, such as funnelling complaints to a customer care centre; route needs to a sales person; and refer an influential blogger to the public-relations department. He added that the solution can be implemented as part of an SAS Customer Intelligence network or as a standalone module.
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