September 9, 2010

Trends 2010: Listening Platforms

by Zach Hofer-Shall for Customer Intelligence Professional

Making Leaders Successful Every Day

For Customer Intelligence Professionals

Trends 2010: Listening Platforms

by Zach Hofer-Shall with Suresh vittal, Emily murphy, and michael J. Grant

September 9, 2010

Findings From Forresters Listening Platforms Wave Evaluation

ExECuT I v E S u m ma ry
We recently surveyed 153 listening platform customers about their vendor partnerships and Social Intelligence practices. Listening platform customers represent companies of all sizes and industries and utilize their listening platform partnerships in a variety of ways. They are mostly satisfied with their vendors, but as their Social Intelligence practices mature, vendors must improve their data quality to match customers growing demands. Conversely, listening customers must get back to basics and reevaluate how they actually use their listening platforms. Firms optimizing their vendor relationships must prepare their staff, identify their goals, and plan their everyday use of the tools.

TabL E o F Co nTE nTS

2 A Varied Crowd Buys Listening Platforms Social Intelligence Is an Emerging Discipline 6 Listening Customers Are Satisfied . . . For Now
rECommEnDaTIonS

n oT E S & rE S o u rCE S
Forrester interviewed nine vendor and user companies and surveyed 153 listening platform users.

8 Plan Beyond The Platform Partnership: Evaluate People, Purpose, And Process 9 Supplemental Material

Related Research Documents The Forrester Wave: Listening Platforms, Q3 2010 July 12, 2010
How To make Social media Data actionable april 28, 2010 Defining Social Intelligence march 12, 2010

2010, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester, Technographics, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. To purchase reprints of this document, please email clientsupport@forrester.com. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com.

Trends 2010: Listening Platforms

For Customer Intelligence Professional

A VARiED CRowD BuyS LiSTENiNg PLATFoRMS As part of our recent Forrester Wave evaluation of listening platforms, we surveyed 153 listening platform customers to better understand how they use listening tools to inform their business initiatives.1 These customers manage and learn from social media through the use of their platform partnership. Due to the diversity of uses of social media data, the relative infancy of listening strategies, and the array of business lines that must listen, there is little consistency between end users. Todays listening customers:2

Serve multiple functions. Thirty-seven percent of listening platform customers we surveyed

sit in the marketing department, 25% work in market research teams, 18% represent corporate communications or public relations, and 10% work for marketing analytics or customer analytics teams (see Figure 1). Although most listening platform vendors claim to target marketing buyers, each shared stories of successful implementations across the organization.

Work for B2B and B2C companies. Many of the uses of social media data center on consumer
discussion, but nearly one-third of active listeners work at B2B-focused companies (see Figure 2). Many brands easily identify with the B2C uses due to the large portion of online discussion run by consumers. But B2B companies adopt listening technology as they see great opportunities from social media data. For instance, a marketer at a B2B financial services company told us he uses a listening platform for competitive intelligence and brand protection.

Figure 1 Listening Customers represent Different Parts of The organization

What team do you work for within your company?

Other 10% Analytics 10% Corporate communications/PR 18% Marketing 37%

Market research 25%

Base: 153 respondents who use a listening platform Source: Q2 2010 Global Listening Platforms Forrester Wave Customer Online Survey
57802 Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

September 9, 2010

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Trends 2010: Listening Platforms

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Figure 2 both b2C and b2b Companies Listen

In your job, which of the following best describes the audience that your products or marketing are targeted to?

Combination of B2B and B2C 27%

B2B 31%

B2C 42%

Base: 153 respondents who use a listening platform Note: B2B represents those who responded Primarily businesses or Only businesses, B2C represents those who responded Primarily consumers or Only consumers, and Combination of B2B and B2C represents those who responded "Equal combination of consumers and businesses." Source: Q2 2010 Global Listening Platforms Forrester Wave Customer Online Survey
57802 Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

Social intelligence is An Emerging Discipline Most brands listening strategies still only use social media data reactively mainly monitoring brand mentions. Few have yet to take the next steps toward proactively using the data to inform their marketing and business decisions. As such, many of the early firms that embark on Social Intelligence initiatives blaze their own trails, setting industry standards as they go. The result is an inconsistent array of tactical application to listening technology. Todays listeners:

Staff a broad range of dashboard seats. Both small and large companies listen, but in different

ways. Not surprisingly, we found that enterprise-level survey respondents those with more than 1,000 employees are likely to have a greater number of seats than those at smaller businesses (see Figure 3). But 30% of smaller businesses license 10 or more seats because one factor drives number of seats more than company size: the scope of the firms Social Intelligence strategy. More teams adopting Social Intelligence means more employees with dashboard needs.

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Trends 2010: Listening Platforms

For Customer Intelligence Professional

Track an array of topics. The clients we surveyed reported that they monitor for a number of

different topics (products, competitors, industries, or other topics) with their listening platform. Like the number of dashboard seats, there is little uniformity between companies. Overall, 42% of listening customers track less than 25 topics, while 22% track more than 200 different topics. However, it is more likely that smaller companies track a greater number of products or brands (see Figure 4). One large consumer brand added color to this counterintuitive concept: We spend so much time just tracking our main product that we havent yet been able to track competitors. Enterprise companies require greater resources to manage the volume of data, while smaller companies are able to broaden their listening topics.

Manage young technology partnerships. A majority of the listening customers platform

partnerships are less than one year old (see Figure 5). Although some currently work with their second or third platform and maintain legacy listening practices, most began their listening with the partnering of their present platform. Many of the technology partnerships are young because for most companies, social media remains a nascent practice.

Collect social media insights for an assorted set of business applications. The diversity of the
active listeners jobs reflects the variety of use cases. For example, corporate communications teams track social media for potential crises, while market research teams collect social data to learn about their customers opinions. Listening customers from all business lines conduct a range of actions with social media, from reactive tracking tasks to proactive marketing tactics (see Figure 6).

Figure 3 both Small and Large Listening Customers License many Seats
Approximately how many dashboard seats does your company license for use from? ENT (company of 1,000 employees or more) 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% SMB (company of 999 employees or fewer)

One

Two

Three

Four Five to nine 10 to 19 20 to 29 30 to 39 40 to 49 50 or more

Base: 131 respondents who use a listening platform Source: Q2 2010 Global Listening Platforms Forrester Wave Customer Online Survey
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Trends 2010: Listening Platforms

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Figure 4 b2C and b2b Listening Customers Track a variety of Topics

Approximately how many dierent topics (products, competitors, industries) does your company track through the listening platform? ENT (company of 1,000 employees or more) 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Fewer than 10 10 to 24 25 to 49 50 to 74 75 to 99 100 to 199 More than 200 SMB (company of 999 employees or fewer)

Base: 144 respondents who use a listening platform Source: Q2 2010 Global Listening Platforms Forrester Wave Customer Online Survey
57802 Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

Figure 5 most Listening Customers Partnered With vendors recently

How long have you partnered with your current listening platform? 36% 29%

16% 10% 3% Less than Six months six months to less than one year One to less than two years Two to less than three years Three to less than four years 4% Four to less than ve years 2% Five years or longer

Base: 151 respondents who use a listening platform Source: Q2 2010 Global Listening Platforms Forrester Wave Customer Online Survey
57802 Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

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Trends 2010: Listening Platforms

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Figure 6 Listening Platforms Drive multiple actions

Please indicate which of the following functions you power with your listening platform. Competitor tracking Brand tracking Market research Crisis identication Marketing measurement Inuencer marketing Inform marketing messaging Brand protection Customer support Product innovation Lead generation Customer segmentation Sales Inform interactive buys 30.3% 21.7% 20.4% 15.1% 12.5% 68.4% 60.5% 57.2% 57.2% 55.9% 50.0% 46.1% 82.2% 80.9%

Base: 153 respondents who use a listening platform (multiple responses accepted) (Other and None of the above responses not included) Source: Q2 2010 Global Listening Platforms Forrester Wave Customer Online Survey
57802 Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

LiSTENiNg CuSToMERS ARE SATiSFiED . . . FoR Now As a whole, listening platform customers recognize the value of their listening platform partnership nearly all would recommend their platform to a friend or colleague. Multiple factors drive listening customers views of their vendors. Listening customers told us that (see Figure 7):

Listening vendors staff lead customer satisfaction. Listening platform customers report high
satisfaction with the human elements of their vendor partnerships. Respondents were most positive about vendor support with 85% reporting positively and were mainly pleased with the quality of consulting services (71%).

Dashboards and reports contain questionable data quality. Seventy-seven percent of listening
customers report positive experiences with the data quality the platforms provide, but when probed further, respondents reported less favorably across multiple data quality issues: the platforms ability to weed out spam, influencer identification features, and the accuracy of sentiment analysis. Listening customers like the way the platforms present data but not the data underneath the charts and graphs.

September 9, 2010

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Trends 2010: Listening Platforms

For Customer Intelligence Professional

Vendors deliver ample data sources. Eighty percent of customers reported positively to the

level of satisfaction with the number of data sources that the platforms feed into the tools and only 3% responded that they were not satisfied. Even though there are an ever-expanding range of social media channels constantly emerging, customers claim that vendors provide access to enough channels. But all of this data piles onto the data quality problem because customers are happy with the amount of data but not with its quality. Vendors must focus on refining their text-mining capabilities as they add future channels.

Figure 7 Listening Customers are Satisfied With most vendor offerings

On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being extremely satised and 1 being extremely dissatised, please rate the following attributes of your listening platform provider. Satised (response of 4 or 5) Quality of support sta The amount of data sources the platform feeds in The quality of the data the platform delivers Usability of the dashboards Quality of strategic and consulting services The total cost of the platform The platforms ability to weed out spam The inuencer identication features The platforms international oerings The accuracy of the automated sentiment analysis 55% 55% 50% 45% 29% 62% 24% 25% 33% Neutral (response of 3) Not satised (response of 1 or 2) N= 85% 8% 8% 3% 80% 17% 77% 76% 71% 15% 8% 15% 8% 17% 12% 145 148 150 136 136 143 143 126 100 140

29% 10% 20% 21% 17% 26%

Base: listening platform customers (percentages may not total 100 because of rounding) Source: Q2 2010 Global Listening Platforms Forrester Wave Customer Online Survey
57802 Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

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Trends 2010: Listening Platforms

For Customer Intelligence Professional

r E C o m m E n D aT I o n S

PLAN BEyoND THE PLATFoRM: EVALuATE PEoPLE, PuRPoSE, AND PRoCESS

The findings from our survey represent only one-quarter of the Social Intelligence process: platform. Firms must also evaluate their strategys people, purpose, and process dimensions.3 Without a trained team, measurable goals, and a planned-out process, Social Intelligence will fail, regardless of the listening platform partnership. To get the most out of the listening platform, firms must:

only staff seats with those prepared to use them. many firms we surveyed license 10 or
more seats, but from our interviews with customers, we found most of the listening functions come from a few individuals. as Social Intelligence spreads across the organization, more and more employees will require dashboard access. but to get the most out of the technology, firms must train employees and ensure that they understand their goals for using the platform. The leading vendors understand this growing demand and offer an array of training modules included in their partnerships, from online videos to in-person workshops, to teach end users their products.

Avoid overloading the listening dashboards. more than one-third of the customers we
surveyed track more than 50 topics with their listening platforms. The unfocused nature of this listening will lead to data overload, making it nearly impossible to measure the success of any Social Intelligence goal. In order for firms to see real success in their Social Intelligence practice, they must start small, tracking a manageable number of topics, and tie them back to a specific business purpose. For instance, instead of monitoring for its popular consumer brand, one CPG company tracks a few isolated products. This gives it the opportunity to connect its recent campaigns to the volume and sentiment of online discussion, to understand how its messaging resonates with customers a nearly impossible task if mixed in with the volume of conversation about its larger corporate brand.

Plan data management before diving in. Combining hundreds of searches across dozens
of end users is bound to create problems with data management. Listening platforms aggregate hoards of social media data but rely on customers to take action. For firms to move from passively collecting social media to acting on the data, they must instill a formalized process for managing incoming data, identifying insights, and escalating the insights into action. one agency we spoke to conducts listening strategies for many of its clients. It employs a team responsible for managing the data. multiple employees monitor the everyday conversation and escalate important discussion to a team leader, who in turn writes summaries and directs campaign improvements for the client.

September 9, 2010

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Trends 2010: Listening Platforms

For Customer Intelligence Professional

SuPPLEMENTAL MATERiAL Methodology Forrester fielded its Q3 2010 Listening Platform Wave Customer Online Survey to 153 individuals who are current clients of the vendors included in our Forrester Wave evaluation. Each vendor supplied a minimum of 10 customers. For quality assurance, all respondents were required to provide contact information and answer basic questions about their firms revenues and budgets. Forrester fielded the survey in May 2010. Respondent incentives included a copy of the published research. Exact sample sizes are provided in this report on a question-by-question basis. Respondents are not guaranteed to be representative of the population. Unless otherwise noted, statistical data is intended to be used for descriptive and not inferential purposes. ENDNoTES
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Listening platforms evolved from reactive brand tracking through social media into advanced analytics infrastructures that firms harness to inform their marketing and business decisions. In Q3 2010, we evaluated the leading vendors in the listening platform market, determining their strengths and weaknesses across a multitude of practical business applications. See the July 12, 2010, The Forrester Wave: Listening Platforms, Q3 2010 report. Consumers online conversations give firms the opportunity for Social Intelligence strategy the act of turning social media data into actionable business insight. See the March 12, 2010, Defining Social Intelligence report. Technology platforms are only one aspect of a Social Intelligence strategy. Each firm embarking on Social Intelligence requires all four Ps: people, purpose, platform, and process. See the April 28, 2010, How To Make Social Media Data Actionable report.

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September 9, 2010

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