There's A Buzz In The Air

With Internet usage now being commonplace, it makes sense to look at online ways of measuring customer feedback on your brand, services and activities. One such approach is ‘Buzz monitoring’ – the online monitoring of brands or user generated content (UGC). This looks at any instances on the Internet where people are mentioning your company or brand.

• It can provide a more immediate and effective way of picking up feedback than traditional customer satisfaction surveys. 
• Acting upon the information it delivers can help you to enhance customer satisfaction, boost your profits and strengthen your competitive edge.
• It gives you a valuable insight into what is happening out there in real time – and enables you to pick up any early warning signs of problems (which makes sound commercial sense).

A useful tool
Of course, there are some potential drawbacks – for instance, this approach could be criticised for the lack of control samples, and the fact that the data gathered may not be from a representative sample. Having said that, buzz monitoring can at the very least provide you with some very useful and potentially valuable insights into how your company and its products are perceived in the wider marketplace.

Ultimately, you may not want to stop your existing customer satisfaction survey work, but you may at least be able to scale it down and use buzz monitoring as a complementary tool. In just a few years, the Internet has become a major force in sales and marketing. It could now prove almost equally useful as a quick and easy way of gathering customer opinions – without ever having to approach them.