SDL Lends Customers an Ear

Monitoring customer conversations from multiple sources is a challenge for businesses of any size. But with SDL Social Intelligence's August 2012 update to SM2, a business intelligence product, small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) can leverage enterprise-power social media monitoring capabilities.

"We think SMBs and departments deserve more than cheap, stripped-down listening tools and 'light' versions of enterprise platforms," said Warren Sukernek, Vice President; SDL Social Intelligence Division. "They should have access to the entire social Web and the analytics to make sense of it."

With this in mind, all sized businesses can now take advantage of SDL SM2's features, such as sentiment analysis, word clouds, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and the ability to monitor more than 60 million conversations each day from 250 million distinct sources.

Belgacom, Belgium's primary telecoms company, is one enterprise that turned to SDL. Belgacom's Product and Services Specialist, E-Business division, explains an issue many Web professionals can relate to. 

"In the early days, we could easily manage the process of dealing with customers' issues, but with the explosion in social channels it soon became much harder to find the individuals and topics we needed to react to," said Bram Leunis. "We needed a new tool to search the entire social environment and automate the way we dealt with the customer queries we found."

The SM2 platform enabled Belgacom to engage its clients across several social media channels, ensuring that every customer was heard and responded to in an efficient manner. With SM2, Belgacom built upon its already successful use of Eva (the company's virtual character) to engage with customers online and turn potential negative issues into positive experiences, while for marketing intelligence; SM2 expanded Belgacom's view on what people are saying about the company.

"In the past, we used individual, standalone tools but this approach was rather limited and disjointed, as one piece of software would search across Twitter, one would search forums, etc.," said Leunis. "But with SDL SM2 we now have the ability to monitor every type of source in one place, including blogs, news sites, forums, message boards and this was one of main drivers behind choosing SDL."

Results

- Belgacom can proactively search and respond to customer queries across all social media channels in one platform, saving time and ensuring full customer service coverage.

- SDL SM2 enables Belgacom to listen for and engage customers in their own language across all social media channels, allowing for a more customized and relevant customer experience.

- Intelligence on customer perceptions feeds into the overall marketing process.

"Our proactive approach to finding customers with issues and engaging with them in social channels creates a real 'wow' affect which is greatly appreciated," said Leunis. "SDL SM2's search results are also the first customer reactions we receive when the company launches a new product or service, so they are invaluable in helping decide how to communicate with customers going forward. In the long-term, being able to create internal awareness of how Belgacom's actions are influencing customer perceptions is of major strategic importance."

Get a live demo of SDL SM2 here