Everyone is analyzing social media, or so it seems. But, a lot of companies, even those MEASURING Social Media comments, are not exactly sure how to ANALYZE social media feedback.  The question I get most frequently from both prospects AND clients is – “How are other clients actually using the social media feedback they are collecting in OpenMic”?
That answer depends a lot on who the customer is: specifically, what type of industry are they in (service vs. product) and what role my client plays within the organization.  Most frequently, my clients are interested in analyzing social feedback via OpenMic include people in customer experience, customer service, brand management, product management, and product marketing.
Each of these different types of clients uses social media feedback differently.  Those clients in customer experience often focus on categorizing their social feedback in-line with the various stages of their customer experience process.  For instance, a customer experience client in the hotel industry might categorize comments into the following buckets:  arrival/greeting, check-in process, hotel room amenities, cleanliness of bathroom, visit to spa/fitness center, bill, etc.   Or a customer service client in the banking industry might categorize comments into the following touchpoints: ATM, retail outlet, internet, phone, etc.
Leveraging information categorized around specific touchpoints enables customer experience managers to more easily decipher the precise points of satisfaction or dissatisfaction that their customers are having with the brand.  For example, the hotel client I mentioned above recently saw a sharp increase in comments from sources such as Tripadvisor, Kayak, hotels.com, etc, in which customers mentioned negative parking experiences at several of their very high profile hotels.  After changing their valet parking contract, these comments decreased significantly and overall positive sentiment for the hotel brand began to rise again.
Using a completely different approach, product and brand managers often prefer to look at their feedback through the lens of brand pillars.  For instance, if a brand manager has defined the brand pillars for their product as ‘honest, dependable, friendly, fun and entertaining’, they might work to categorize the social comments into those brand pillar ‘buckets’ to understand how customers in the social sphere view their product in the context of those pre-defined pillars.
Clients also use social media feedback to understand more specific questions. For instance, clients will often use social media to understand the impact/success of a particular advertising campaign or marketing tactic.  Or, frequently clients like to understand specific feedback on components of their website functionality, customer service agents, call care response times, etc.
Of course, these are just a few of the ways customers are leveraging OpenMic to understand what customers are saying in the social sphere.  As social feedback continues to grow, the ways customers can use social feedback is increasingly limitless.  The best advice I can offer for those companies that are still not gathering and categorizing their social feedback is do not wait until you have all the answers for how you will use this data before you start to collect and analyze.  Every company’s needs will be different but the sooner you start digging in and seeing what customers are saying, the closer you are to understanding your customer and increasing your customer satisfaction.