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India Co-creates > Simplify360
Younomy brings you latest news, interviews, analysis, case studies, and industry reports on how Indian companies and organizations are co-creating value by tapping the wisdom of crowds using social technologies.
"Become a Part of Customer’s Day to Day Conversations"
A recent study by McAfee says that India Inc stands at third when it comes to adoption of social media. However, it appears that there are not enough Indian social media marketing, listening products or digital/social media service providers to help India Inc make the best use of social media. Your comments?
Yes, the trend in product adoption is low in India compared to other regions. But we are seeing a change in that front. Agencies, media houses and corporations are realizing the importance of social media listening and management tools. Currently, the market is still in the evaluation phase where people have either adopted some global tools or are seeking to adopt one. Further the use cases of social media listening tools are evolving. India does not have product culture so there aren’t much product companies. This field is no different. But the enterprises and agencies are looking for local partners, and there are few players actively serving it. Foreign companies find it hard to adjust in the Indian market due to diverse local market and work culture and it works in our favor. We are having exciting time serving the Indian clients. Our localized product, ability to provide custom analytics and dedicated support services have won their goodwill.
People usually assume that companies did not engage prior to social media. This is not true. Companies have always invested huge amounts in trying to engage with their customers through advertisements, surveys, road shows, feedback forms, customer meets, and customer support centers.
What social media has done is completely different. It has allowed customers to interact with each other. Now this is a new phenomenon because prior to social media you and I as a customer would hardly come across 10 or 15 other customers in one place. Now you can find millions of customers of a same product meeting and interacting! That is a paradigm shifting change. So to put it simply, I think it’s worth measuring how much your customers are talking with each other than how much you are talking with them. A brand which is more engaged would have more people talking about it with each other. The goal is to become a part of customer’s day to day conversation.
Just like your website or your present communication lines, social media too can make it easy for your customers to find their way but in a more meaningful way.
We help organizations in many ways, depending upon which state they are in. Starting from strategy building to implementing the strategy, setting up listening platforms, training social media team and helping companies along the way. When it comes to actually measuring the activities in social media, we believe there isn’t just one way. Hence for each different purpose and scenarios we suggest different reporting structures. How do you help companies act, based on what have they listened or analyzed? From product perspective, we have a strong engagement console build in. Companies can integrate their social media profiles and use the system to send messages and interact with customers. In terms of high level reporting, our research report always starts with a strong business case. This make every element of our reporting aligned with the business need and self explanatory. There is no second layer between our research reports and business case. For example, we have worked with top brands to provide insightful findings from social media buzz that have helped them make key business decision. We have also implemented the product successfully for customer support companies, who are closing their customer issues in near real time. So based on business cases, there are many ways we have helped companies accomplish their goals. One of our customers has brought down response time from four days in email or phone to four minutes in social media. The cost reduction in solving each issue came down by 80%.
When it comes to social media listening or scheduling, there are many free tools available. Why should customers come to a paid service?
Interesting question and the most asked questions. Free tools are fairly basic. We don’t compete with them. Customers enter the industry with free tools and when they realize the value they come to us. Free tools can serve a hobbiest but not a full time social media marketer or a researcher. They are too limited in terms of product features, analytics capability, work-flow and business relevance. How does your listening product compare with the offerings of other leading companies globally? What are your product USPs? Our USP is analytics. Our focus lies in social media innovation with intelligent systems and metrics. Some analysts have benchmarked us among the top ten. Customers too share the same feeling.
We also work with Social Wavelength who are the largest social media agency in India. Leo Burnett and SMG are a part of publics group, 3rd largest media agency group in the world.
Besides Agencies, we also work with Software Integration companies like Accenture. As of our main corporate customers, we work with Café Coffee day, the largest coffee chain in India, Mom and Me, part of Mahindra Retail. In terms of global market reach, we have recently started our US operations in Austin and have partners in Netherlands and Malaysia. Our services include social media monitoring, social media analytics reports, brand audit reports and multiple services through our partners’ network. |