Do you know who’s listening?

Listening to what customers are saying about you on social channels is a full time job, so it’s a pity that most retailers don’t yet formally commit a team to manage this. It’s an investment to be sure, but it must be worthwhile considering how reliant some retailers are becoming on social media data – whether to monitor their products and service, or to fire off promotions or simply to respond to feedback.

It’s an odd time in social media – almost everyone is doing it to a greater or lesser degree but very few people are yet convinced that it has strong business benefits, or that any benefits can actually be traced to social media. For big brands, it is simply a part of the marketing mix, and therefore doesn’t really have to justify itself on its own. For everyone else, it has become quite a big distraction – everyone wants to be a part of it, even if only to have an opinion – but there is a danger that the level of distraction will end up interrupting business as usual.

The problem is, when you can listen to everyone all at once, you are likely to go mad or deaf, with the traffic forcing you to respond this way and that way until you have no idea where you are coming from or going to. Retail in particular relies on planning and social media is largely interruptive. You can therefore choose to ignore it and yet, it is providing the very information that retailers may have spent many years trying to drag out of their point of sale and loyalty systems.

The trick now will be how to turn this new mass of data into profit. Listening in is just the start.