Social media could boost customer retention
Many companies are successfully using social media to improve both customer satisfaction and retention, and are deriving actionable marketing insights from Web 2.0 applications, according to a research report by Aberdeen Group and Awareness Inc.
The report, entitled 'Customer 2.0: The business implications of social media', outlines the organisational processes and technologies needed to produce meaningful consumer-generated insights to help drive both product development and marketing decisions.
Beyond simple satisfaction According to Aberdeen Group senior research associate Alex Jefferies, "Top performing companies have demonstrated that the benefits of social media extend well beyond a satisfied customer base."
The survey on which the report is based showed that best-in-class companies are driving product development and supplementing marketing campaigns with consumer-generated insights gathered from online communities. As a result, these companies are creating closed-loop marketing plans through which new products and services can be filtered directly back to the customer community that helped to develop them.
Business benefits Key findings from the survey included that:
- Best-in-class companies are more than 17 times as likely to improve customer satisfaction than are Laggard companies (89% compared to only 5%, respectively);
- Best-in-class companies are 8 times more likely than Laggards to be satisfied with their ROMI performance;
- 57% of best-in-class companies reported being satisfied with their current ability to incorporate consumer insights into future marketing campaigns and promotions, compared to only 33% of Industry Average and 28% of Laggard companies.
The report has been made available as a free download until 29th August 2008 from Aberdeen Group's web site - click here (free registration required).
For additional information: · Visit Aberdeen at http://www.aberdeen.com · Visit Awareness at http://www.awarenessnetworks.com
