If you propose social media listening to customers, you should be the first to use it right?
This week I’ve been in Milano for the IAB Forum, the “most authoritative event of the year on digital and interactive communication in Italy, attended by all industry players and promoted by IAB Italy – Interactive Advertising Bureau” as per their headline. Nice event, good presenters, happy to meet some old friends.
When arriving at the venue, I was looking for WiFi and I found the “IABFORUM2016” network… but I could not find the password. So I tweeted to see if someone from IAB (or someone of my acquaintances) would have been capable of providing it on the go.
Guess what? No answer at all from organizers, no answer at all from exhibitors, no answers at all from @IAB social media accounts. (A couple of my friends provided btw the password via private messages after some minutes, and I also discovered it was printed on the bottom of physical totems ath the entrance).
So, what’s the point? The point is that social media listening is no more an option for corporations, but it also cannot be an option during events. It must be linked to social CRM (bare minimum) for providing real time answers and off line follow-up, it should be linked to CRM systems and corporate customer database to enrich their profile and increase loyalty.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning can now manage several interactions with no need of human intervention (e.g. in my tweet, a BOT could have answered “Dear Max, WiFi password is ABCD1234”), in real time and scaling to thousands of users.
Funny to discover that Italian media agencies are not using social media during their main event. I’m sure you had someone in the office from one of those agencies in the last 24 months pitching for a social media listening tool. Next time, just ask what they use for themselves. Answers will be interesting for sure 🙂