Why Social Computing will be Important for Businesses in 2014

“In 2014, we will see sentiment analysis to be done not just on social data but also data collected from e-mails, call center transcripts, feedback received in forms, surveys, and other forms of customer touch points”

Social Computing in 2014
- Organizations will shift from sentiment analysis to integrated social listening
- Social dashboards will equip businesses to dig deep
- Cloud based solutions will enable brands to augment social actions
- Organizations will need to marry social data with CRM transactional data 

The real benefit of social has for long been buried under the hype and promises of what social media can do for business. For too long, social has been equated with having a presence on Facebook, Twitter or other social networks; or getting a million likes and thousands of followers. 

Fortunately, there is more to social than these and hence social needs to be looked at holistically making the organization truly social internally and externally—being agile in sensing the mood of the market, responsive in responding to customers & market opportunities, being collaborative & weaving social into the way of doing business, interacting with customers, partners, employees and business processes. 

Twitter followers and Facebook Likes tie to your business
Organizations are beginning to ask the question “what’s next” after having acquired thousands of followers on Twitter or millions of likes on their Facebook pages. They are questioning how does all this tie into the business context and want to understand the implications from ROI perspective. In 2014 we will see organizations realizing the need to move from vanilla sentiment analysis reports towards integrating social listening and monitoring with existing systems and business processes. 

For example, sentiment analysis will be done not just on social data but also data collected from e-mails, call center transcripts, feedback received in forms, surveys, and other forms of customer touch points. We will see business stakeholders asking for social dashboards integrated with the existing quantitative dashboards that they use (example: sales dashboards). It will equip business users to dig deeper and see co-relations and patterns between quantitative and social sentiment data.

Adding a social layer to the existing loyalty programs is futuristic
We will see brands start to incorporate social loyalty into their existing loyalty programs. Many consumer facing organizations, such as retail chains, banks & airlines have loyalty card programs that reward customers for purchases. Now, a purchase is just one of the interactions that a consumer has with a brand. Example of other interactions are: recommending the brand or service to their friends, sharing of information about the brand with their social network, responding to brand communication, being part of the brand network on social etc. These touch points and interactions are as important in the long run as a purchase based interaction.

“In 2014, we will see the beginning of initiatives that integrate the social, behavioral data of customers with existing CRM data. If organizations are able to marry social data with already available transactional data from the CRM, they will get deep insights into consumer behavior to design more effective marketing programs”

Until now, the challenge for brands was to track and monitor such interactions and creating mechanisms to reward loyalty card holders for such social behavior. We will see adoption of cloud based solutions that will enable brands to configure social actions that they would want to reward their loyalty card holders with, track such actions & integrate with their existing loyalty program. 

Creating more personalized offerings to consumers is way forward
In 2014, we will see the beginning of initiatives that integrate the social, behavioral data of customers with existing CRM data. If organizations are able to marry social data with already available transactional data from the CRM, they will get deep insights into consumer behavior to design more effective marketing programs. Here are few examples.
- Banks can create a 360 degree view of its customers by identifying and analyzing social data. This data can be integrated with the CRM system and will empower the bank with a holistic view of its customers to deliver personalized content, recommendations, promotions, rewards, customer service, data-driven marketing programs, etc. creating must stronger engagement with them.
- As organizations create engagement with their user base on social, they can collect and analyze social data of participants in their campaigns and apps. This will allow the organization to review its engagement strategy, get insights about people participating across campaigns to sharpen and refine its future promotions.

Making all internal functions social holds promise
Until now, social has been predominantly managed and taken care of by the digital marketing function within the organizations. This creates complexities in adoption of social within the organization and brings lack of coordination within the internal functions of the organization. For example, there could be customers giving ideas on product features, which should ideally be routed to the product development team. Customers could be giving clues about competitors’ products, services and such insights need to be routed to the strategy teams. In 2014, we will see other internal functions in an organization asking for greater value from their social media teams to leverage social. We will see cross-functional social strategies being created & digital marketing teams taking on the responsibility to coordinate and ensure all internal teams are leveraging social in most effective manner.