Social media produces unlimited opportunities to create a memorable and personalized customer shopping experience; however, most retailers are not successfully executing their social media strategies, according to a new special report from Boston Retail Partners (BRP).
According to the BRP SPECIAL REPORT: Enhancing Customer Engagement Through Social Media, 81% of retailers using social media to engage with customers indicate that their processes need improvement.
“Social media provides retailers with unprecedented visibility into their customer base. It provides a venue where retailers can directly communicate with their customers and it can be an extremely powerful tool for collecting and using customer insights to improve planning decisions,” said Brian Brunk, principal at BRP. “Retailers can understand who the customer is, what she wants, when and where she wants it, and even why she wants it based on social media postings and feedback.”
BRP’s report provides insight into its 2016 Customer Experience/Unified Commerce Survey, and highlights the social media opportunities and challenges facing leading retailers today.
Here are five key areas identified in the report where retailers should use social media to improve the customer journey:
Experience: 69% of retailers see opportunities to utilize social media to enhance the customer experience.
Interaction: 75% of retailers support customer interaction via social media.
Endorsement: 59% of retailers plan to utilize brand advocacy/social media endorsement as a source for identifying their most valuable customers within three years.
Satisfaction: 59% of retailers utilize social media comments as a means of measuring customer satisfaction.
Insight: 60% of retailers capture customer feedback and insights from social media and online comments.
Tim Parry is Multichannel Merchant’s Managing Editor, and the lead programmer for Growing Global.