The CX Blog

Jeremiah Owyang highlighted a recent study by his colleague Josh Bernoff of Groundswell fame at Forrester about the rise in social media adoption from 2007 to 2008.  No big surprises in a way, but very affirming: the wave is coming.  Bernoff points us to an online Groundswell tool you can use to look at various demographic groups for info on adoption.

Most of the discussion here is how to use this information for effective marketing campaigns, which makes sense.  My question is: how can we use this information to create better online customer experience, customer support, customer sat and feedback loops…and what new tools do we need to be thinking about in order to harvest this stuff better?

For example, say you are–like one of my clients–a hip new site that relies on the 18-35+ demographic, largely women, to enable a sort of auction-like environment of high volume sales direct to the customer in a DIY sales environment.  This is way past eBay, though it’s on a continuum.  But like eBay, a strong self-and-community help viral environment has sprung up around it.  They have the social media thing down. The twitter, they blog, they use social media like crazy. But how best to leverage that information and knowledge sharing, how to monitor or when to monitor, how to build on the best, recognize and minimize the worst?

And most important, how to be strategic in a brand-building way in creating and sustaining a great overall customer experience that involves heavy doses of social media and applies it, from registration to sale and beyond.