Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Improving customer value via social media


Following up on our introductory blog: let’s discuss helping customers obtain value from the Apps and services we deliver through the use of social media.  To communicate to our customer base in addition to email we employ social media channels such as Twitter, LinkedIn groups and facebook.  In the energy efficiency space the use of specific LinkedIn groups enables customers to respond to RightSlope posed questions and informational updates – in addition provide feedback to other group members. 

For example our Appliance Search App requires a lot of data population and the coverage of our data is key to value.  The original idea for the app came from an energy efficiency company in New England. After scoping out the project and writing some prototype code we asked a larger community on LinkedIn for need - the response was positive, we then built a demo version for testing.  The response to the demo was great and several reviews were published publicly on the group.

The customer advantage is similar to crowd sourcing they can validate the application has broad appeal and will be improved via multiple input; by querying a social media group they get unfiltered feedback direct from other customers.  The process is successful by involving as many customers and advocates in an open forum format via social media - customers get unvarnished validation and we get open feedback by customers who want to participate in the process.  The end result is an Application that meets the needs of a broad customer base.