I believe one of the main points of Experience Design is to meaningfully engage with real people so that we can make the products & services they use, and their experiences, better.
I love this quote from Brains on Fire.
Do you want your ideas and creative concepts to see the light of day? Then don’t start with the customer “in mind” but actually with the customer. Brains on Fire.
Social media listening is one of the best ways to get real-time insights into what your users and customers are saying. Not only can you listen to them, but you can directly engage in a conversation with them. That enables you to learn from each other and to build better relationships.
Social listening can be used to enhance the tools you already use as an experience design professional. For example, you can use social media to improve and enhance personas. You can combine the advantages of surveys with social to have a more robust voice of the customer program. You can use social media as an experience diary tool to capture insights over time.
Surveys like NetPromoter are good. They have advantages like asking questions in a structured way and you can get large samples. But, they are usually backward looking. By the time they are analyzed, the data can be old. And, there is often not a task to resolve people’s issues. The main issue, though, is that they ask people “what would you do?” such as would you recommend us or would you buy the product again rather than observing what people actually say or do.
Usability tests are also really good tools. Using a sample of people, you can actually see what issues they are having. And, using remote research and agile approaches, insights can be turned into fixes faster than ever. Yet, for most projects you can only run so many tests with the available user pool and staff.
Social media listening is always on. It captures what people are saying now. You can work with customer service teams to resolve many customer issues right away. And, with social listening, you can capture patterns or trends that can be used for longer term product and service improvements. Based on emerging trends, you can provide rapid-response content that answers common questions making your content useful. Jay Baer calls this Youtility content.
If your company and its marketing are truly, inherently useful, your customers and prospective customers will keep you close. Jay Baer.
You can start with a small social listening pilot test. Once people on your team see the value, they will likely demand to have social listening data included in their programs.
Social listening is a great silo buster and a great way to focus your organization on a culture of delivering great experiences. And that is really the key, aligning everyone around delivering great products and experiences for your customers.
Have you tried social listening in your organization? What benefits have you seen? How has it improved your experience design capabilities? Let’s keep the chat going. Post a comment or carry the conversation into social. You can find me on Twitter as @XDstrategy.
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