A lot of pundits have positioned social media almost as an alternative to feedback management for "Voice-of-the-Customer" (VOC) initiatives. And, especially so, when combined with text analytics solutions. Its always been my theory that social media and feedback management were entirely complementary technologies that when properly integrated would add real value for businesses, and especially for B2C businesses.
To my mind, for businesses, the strength of social media is its ability to "find" new customer populations, new needs for existing products, new problems to address, etc. And, to have those communities self identify their needs and wants. It gives companies a real-time mechanism to monitor opinions and ideas.
The challenge has always been in qualifying those needs, wants, issues, challenges, etc., as well as quantifying them within their prospect and customer profiles. i.e. Does a facebook fan's "like" really mean anything to the business.
QuestBack may have a solution to the qualification/quantification problems with social media. They have introduced a "Social Insight" product, which allows companies to combine social media and feedback management to collect structured feedback from within social media platforms. The press announcement can be found here: http://www.questback.com/about-us/activities/press-release-questback-launches-social-media-insight-tool/
Should be very interesting to see the effect that this product has on the market.
To my mind, for businesses, the strength of social media is its ability to "find" new customer populations, new needs for existing products, new problems to address, etc. And, to have those communities self identify their needs and wants. It gives companies a real-time mechanism to monitor opinions and ideas.
The challenge has always been in qualifying those needs, wants, issues, challenges, etc., as well as quantifying them within their prospect and customer profiles. i.e. Does a facebook fan's "like" really mean anything to the business.
QuestBack may have a solution to the qualification/quantification problems with social media. They have introduced a "Social Insight" product, which allows companies to combine social media and feedback management to collect structured feedback from within social media platforms. The press announcement can be found here: http://www.questback.com/about-us/activities/press-release-questback-launches-social-media-insight-tool/
Should be very interesting to see the effect that this product has on the market.
