Imagine you have a spying system, but you donāt know how it operates. Weāve saved you some time researching the web and prepared this instruction on social media āespionageā within ethical and legal boundaries, of course, to help you decipher the subtlest signals coming from your customers (and your competitors!).
So, welcome to this guide on social listening roles, tools, and strategies for improving your customer experience.
How Can Social Listening Enhance the Customer Experience?
If calibrated correctly, the social listening mechanism can lift your CX to an exceptional level.
Letās see what functions it can take up.
Grasping customer feelings and emotions
How do people feel about your brand, product/service, or feature? Do they treat it positively, neutrally, or negatively? Youād never guess that without sentiment analytics enabled by social media listening tools like Brandwatch, Keyhole, or others.
Leigh McKenzie, Community Advocate at Traffic Think Tank (TTT), remarks, āYou particularly need social listening with sentiment analysis after major shifts in your company. Negative or positive sentiment may reach its climax after rebranding, launching new products or services, organizational restructuring, or any other update or event.ā The TTT brand mentions and emotional reactions spiked on Reddit, a centaur in the world of social media (half-forum and half-social network), after SEMrush acquired the company.
Leigh McKenzie also warns, āIf you want to elevate CX with social listening, never leave customer complaints and negative comments unaddressed.ā
Burger King ignored the TikTok hashtags #sadness and #failed near the companyās name and numerous brand mentions after a negative customer experience (the staff was rude and forgot the cheese). Such indifference may leave customers frustrated. Noticing and tackling pain points
Pain points are specific challenges customers encounter while interacting with your product, service, or brand. They may occur at any stage of the customer journey and, whatās worse, can dent customer satisfaction and loyalty.
The most routine troubles are linked to:
Product (out-of-stock situations or long waiting times)
Service (inadequate or unhelpful customer service, struggles with returns, refunds, or repairs) Price (unclear pricing information)
Communication (no order status updates, no answer from support)
Delivery and logistics (issues with tracking, lost packages, or damaged items)
āThanks to effective social listening, you can pinpoint and tackle customersā problems right on the nose. Itās as straightforward as noticing and answering a question or comment under your social media post and redirecting the user to a DM or email if necessary,ā says Jeffrey Zhou, CEO and Founder of Fig Loans. That is precisely what the company did when it monitored the Instagram account and discovered the customerās pain point related to late payments. Attracting and engaging potential customers
Social media listening also empowers you to actively scan social networks for opportunities to attract new customers and boost their engagement. For Brooke Webber, Head of Marketing at Ninja Patches, a question format is the best strategy that goes hand in hand with social listening to engage leads and channel them toward purchasing decisions. She shares, āWe ask questions, keep our eyes peeled and ears sharp to comments, and close the loop by reacting to them. At the same time, we pull out inquiries from our potential customers and reply to them directly on social media.ā The Ninja Patches team answered questions like these on TikTok: Can I use a regular iron?
Discovering brand fans and strengthening relationships with them
You may have hundreds (or even thousands!) of potential brand ambassadors, but do you have any idea about their existence?
Again, listening to social media conversations becomes vital for detecting your loyal audience, building authentic and close-knit relationships with them, and enriching their experiences with your company.
While using social listening in customer experience management, Logan Mallory, Vice President of Marketing at Motivosity, applies the āThanks Mattersā principle (likewise implemented for employees). He explains, āOnce you discover a satisfied brand fan endorsing your company, you should form an emotional bridge with the power of gratitude. A āthank-youā can be your first brick in it.ā Motivosity noticed a brand mention from a loyal client on LinkedIn and expressed appreciation for the shout-out. Preventing and handling CX crises
You wouldnāt want to get dragged into the vortex of a customer experience crisis; mark our words.
Yet, you never know what awaits you there: in the shadiest social media nooks. And if you miss it (letās hope not!), a PR disaster may explode on social platforms as an infectious virus outbreak.
Jonathan Feniak, General Counsel at LLC Attorney, argues that it may be a life-and-death tactic for businesses. āProactive social listening saves companies from unwanted escalations and PR disasters when they provide a poor customer experience. It also helps them manage crises in an ethical and law-friendly manner.ā Letās draw a brilliant lesson from KFCās case. The brand aced social listening for crisis management. When the chicken shortage tarnished their customersā experiences, KFC apologized immediately and calmed down the storm from angry customers. The company captured and answered all disturbing questions. How to Use Social Listening for Improving CX
Decode your audienceās ādialectā
What if you speak different languages (or dialects) with your customers on social media?
Suppose you say āfor real,ā while your target customer says āno capā (in Gen Z slang). Social listening lets you easily catch your audienceās vocabulary and learn to use it in your social media posts.
Roman Zrazhevskiy, Founder & CEO at MIRA Safety, believes it is the utmost advantage when improving CX with social listening. He says, āItās like youāve tuned to the same frequency. You hear your customers. They hear you. And you perfectly understand each other. Such synchronization in your social speech helps you bond faster and create a smoother customer experience without hiccups and misunderstandings.ā Roman Zrazhevskiy recommends decoding the following elements:
Graphic communication style: with or without emojis.
Conversation tone: serious, friendly, humorous, etc.
Jargon: niche terms or slang.
Speaking and listening activity: time of your audienceās active presence on social media.
A mix of funny memes, emojis, and Internet slang is like a chart-topping track for MIRA Safetyās audience. Look at this particular meme that convinced the Instagram user to buy a gas mask from MIRA Safety. Cater your content to your customerās tastes and requests
Thatās not what we ordered!
Just as it may happen at a restaurant, your social media āfoodā may not coincide with what your customers asked for. Through vigorous social listening, you can extract data-driven insights into customer preferences, likes/dislikes, and the most anticipated social media content. John Baek, Founder of JSB Digital Works, also calls attention to the necessity of analyzing the most searched keywords. āYou must give your customers what they requested to ensure a positive customer experience. Luckily, there are keyword search tricks (varying from network to network) to figure out what theyāre looking for.ā John Baek reveals a list of those:
Autocomplete search and tags (practically on any platform)
Advanced search (on LinkedIn and X)
āExploreā tabs (TikTok, X, Instagram)
āTrends for youā tab (on X)
Knowing what the ideal buyer persona searches on social media, the digital marketing agency publishes Instagram posts with ācontent tips to boost a websiteās rankingsā or āSEO mistakes.ā Mind: Peopleās search behaviors have changed dramatically over time. Today, 31% of people seek answers to their questions via social channels, and 15% prefer a social search to a traditional search engine like Google. Size up your competitorsā strengths and weaknesses
You arenāt duty-bound to do this. Still, many brands tap into social media listening for competitive analytics. Competitorsā victories
Thomas Medlin, Co-founder at JumpMD, persistently advocates for social listening because it can demonstrate where you are on the social media āroadā compared to your competitors and what marketing practices they enforce to outrun you. āCompetitive benchmarking helps you answer the first and foremost question: Where and why exactly are your competitors better than you in shaping their customersā experiences on social media?
Once you get the answer, owing to social listening tools, you can replicate their winning ideas but adapt them to develop smarter offerings and eventually improve your customer experience.ā
Competitorsā fiascos
Yup, you sometimes have to rummage in your competitorsā dirty laundry.
You donāt have to do this bare-handed: scroll through the best competitor analysis tools to help you monitor and analyze the performance of your primary rivals in the social media marathon. Meanwhile, letās review the case with two competitors: Samsung and Apple.
Samsung saw a noticeable āstainā on Appleās āclothes.ā As you may recall, in May 2024, Apple controversially advertised its new iPad Pro, featuring a hydraulic press crushing cultural artifacts.
Samsung instantly hopped on this opportunity to attract Appleās dissatisfied audience and trolled the brand with the āCreativity cannot be crashedā ad.