Sparing you a littany of marketing jargon, most of us agree in 2009 that a brand is comprised of the impressions and experiences a consumer has of a product, service, or firm, rather than the messages that you convey via product design and marketing communications. As a marketer who has invested in building many web and microsites for brands, I learned firsthand that most conversations about your brand don’t happen in the neat little environment you build for them, but instead out in the world where people gather, either virtually or physically, to share information. That insight has driven many companies to comb the web using services like Nielsen Buzzmetrics to track sentiment and conversations about their brands. Often findings from this type of research languish as companies struggle with how to react: what are the rules of engagement for communicating with customers who have not reached out to them? Should a firm “intrude?” Many firms simply aren’t structured to leverage findings across the silos of marketing and customer service.
Salesforce.com clearly understands these challenges. Their new product the Service Cloud allows firms to identify issues that customers turn to search, blogs, or forums to solve. This data is aligned with data collected in traditional service channels such as phone and email, and responses can be posted on the company’s own website for pickup by search engines and the company’s own service representatives. Sounds like a rather elegant solution, doesn’t it? It appears to navigate cleanly around the sticky issue of whether or not firms should “intrude” in social networks, forums, or other venues where customers are discussing their brands. Will the broader collection and response to customer feedback lead to faster development cycles for products and services that delight the customer? I look forward to watching this space.
