Customer Conversation: Opportunities & Threats

The consumer’s interactions with sales & marketing are expected to resemble one-on one attention models even more, while most adaptive companies are seeking models that address the individual consumers need without a one-to-few workforce. What this means is, creating products and service’s that are flexible and configurable while at the same time, give analysts the ability to monitor customer experiences in an attempt to drive customization.

Customer Conversation will continue to expand in volume, as interactive and social media is used by every successive generation. As far as research shows, the entire generation born in the late seventies to mid nineties are the first to use interactive technologies – they will trade in their TV’s for the internet.

Research also shows Brazil, China and India having the greatest gains in blog and social networking use and it is expected that by 2015 there will be a global conversation explosion in developing countries. Americans will no longer lead in the category of early adopters in the social networking category.

Those up to date with new media trends and those seen several years from today, will have noticed the significance in the lives of customers for social and interactive media. Today, consumers have strength in numbers, when social media gives them a platform to raise their voice – and be heard. No more Stone Age procedures where the consumer was expected to provide enormous feedback to companies through phone calls/emails/letters in the past.

Barriers to group communication and organization have been dramatically erased thanks to socialization. This is bad news for companies as they are faced with the tasks of tracking an entire universe of customers and non customers in the form of critics, fans, and self-appointed journalists that interact with ease.

With threats, come opportunity, and if a company is smart enough, it will notice the latter as well. One of the single greatest business opportunities in consumer-facing business is capitalized by SeanJohn, Dell, eBay and Amazon.com – they utilize community dialogue to support and endorse the core of their businesses. A consumer is 3 times more likely to believe a customer review than a company paid advertisement. It is in this golden opportunity that generates an immense amount of free value through feedback ratings, wish lists, collaborative filtering, and recommendations that define much of the commerce experience at these four companies.

Now the community … is the consumer.

Tags: amp, attention models, Brazil, China, company, consumer, Conversation, customer, Customer Conversation, customer experiences, early adopters, global conversation, India, karachi, Marketing, mid nineties, social

Category: Industry News, Research