NEW YORK – Given the explosion of social media onto the public scene, and the considerable buzz about its adoption for business purpose, you might think companies are busily finding a way to use social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter to get customer feedback and improvement customer satisfaction. But you would be wrong.

A new study released by MarketTools, a provider of software and services for enterprise feedback management (EFM) and market research, has found that 94 percent of companies do not yet use these kinds of social media channels to gather customer feedback, despite consumers’ growing engagement with these mediums.

Indeed, the study, part of the MarketTools EFM Marketplace Report, found that the most common ways companies gather customer feedback are: email/online surveys (51 percent), formal phone surveys (28 percent), and informal phone calls (28 percent).

“Despite the fact that social media channels represent a rich, continuous stream of customer feedback, few organizations are equipped to take advantage of this channel,” said Justin Schuster, vice president of enterprise products for MarketTools, Inc. “Although traditional methods of gathering customer feedback including online surveys and phone surveys are core to most voice of the customer initiatives, organizations that use enterprise feedback management solutions to incorporate feedback gathered through social media channels are able to uncover richer insights to help them improve customer satisfaction.”

That’s unfortunate, because social media can be a good way to find out about bad news before it gains traction. A growing number of consumers are turning to social media channels to share unsatisfactory customer service experiences. In a recent research report, analyst firm Forrester found that 16 percent of customers have vented about negative customer service interactions through social channels, such as online customer reviews, Facebook status updates, or blog posts. Forrester also cites “integrating social media monitoring” as one of the major trends that characterize leading-edge voice of the customer (VOC) programs.

“Companies need to know what their customers are saying about them online, and they need to use this unsolicited feedback to not only address the concerns of the individual customer, but to uncover insights to help improve business processes that lead to higher overall customer satisfaction,” added Schuster.

The MarketTools study also revealed a disparity in the way companies think and the way they act in regards to customer satisfaction. Although 92 percent of respondents believe that satisfied customers are very important or extremely important to their company’s bottom line, fewer than half (42 percent) solicit customer feedback on a continuous basis, and more than one-fifth (22 percent) solicit feedback only once a year or not at all.

The survey found that 39 percent of executives surveyed said that their companies increased focus on customer satisfaction in 2010 versus 2009, with 21 percent stating that they invested more in customer satisfaction-related products and services in 2010 versus 2009. But it also found that despite the importance given to customer satisfaction, 14 percent of executives surveyed said their companies don’t solicit customer feedback at all.

46 percent of the executives surveyed rate their company’s performance on customer satisfaction in the top 10 percent when compared to their peer companies, and 93 percent rate themselves in the top 50 percent of peer companies. The math on the latter point is amusing, given that this would include some of the execs from companies that don’t solicit customer feedback at all.

And finally, while most companies collect such data, nearly a quarter don’t really do much with it. One out of every four (24 percent) executives said that they seldom or never use customer feedback to change a business process.

This column was written by Mark Cox of ConnectIT, an IntegratedMar.Com

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