"Uh, What's up Doc?" We'll tell you what's up: take off the ear muffs and put on your listening ears for this! In the social media age, serving customers means listening to their complaints even before they knock on your door. Monitoring social Web channels for brand mentions has displaced the complaint department line-ups from your place of business to virtual environments. This means seeking your customers out to resolve matters before they hit a boiling point. Winning over customers in this manner translates into new opportunities for any community members who have their listening ears tuned to your timeliness, creativity and resourcefulness. Listening also opens up new possibilities when social media monitoring takes on a proactive role.
Reinterpreted from the cover of Looney Tunes #18 (Gold Key, 1975). All characters depicted are copyright of their respective publishers and Warner Bros Inc.

This includes the potential to keep a pulse on industry trends and conversations identifying the strengths and weaknesses of competitors. Following Twitter trends is one example where listening to consumer ideas and opinions does more than just keep you in the feedback loop, but crowd sourcing also works as an excellent temperature gauge to inform product/service concepts and ideas which haven't yet been road tested.

Where things get complicated is when larger brands have a tougher time managing the long line-up of complaints. We advise a depth of sourcing strategy that takes you to all the corners of the social Web where discussion about your business is happening. Strategies on engagement and outreach are a must and need to be abided by in order to keep things manageable and realistic. A reactionary approach that places emphasis on high bandwidth channels overlooks the importance of smaller, local online channels with audience membership gained through an evolved and tight-knit sense of kinship.

Brands appearing genuine and excited about opinion and feedback, especially when it emerges from micro-niche areas of the social Web stand a much better chance of witnessing the extinction of customer complaints and winning big in the customer loyalty department. Companies and brands having the most success in social media understand there is a contagious energy derived from social media relationships and what is born from positive consumer experience is this idea that change serves as an inspiration to other companies watching, studying and aspiring to do the same.

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