Net promoter score is more than just a customer service metric. It offers the combined power of quantitative and qualitative feedback, giving teams the chance to make substantial improvements to their customer care strategy.

In this article, we explain the basics of NPS measurement. Plus, we also walk you through how you can collect NPS data using Sprout.

• What is a Net Promoter Score
• Why your Net Promoter Score matters
• How to calculate Net Promoter Score
• How to collect Net Promoter Score feedback with Sprout Social
• What is a good Net Promoter Score?

What is a Net Promoter Score

Net Promoter Score measures customer loyalty by gauging whether or not a customer would refer your business to a friend or colleague. It’s calculated by asking customers to rate the likelihood of their referral on a scale of zero to ten. Anyone who provides a score of zero to six is a “Detractor”, while scores of seven to eight are “Passives” and scores of nine and ten are “Promoters”.

Although NPS is a type of customer satisfaction benchmark, it’s different from a customer effort score or customer satisfaction score. It measures the overall sentiment that a customer feels towards your brand, rather than focusing on a specific purchase.

Why your Net Promoter Score matters

Your Net Promoter Score is a key customer service metric. It’s a straightforward assessment that can serve as a powerful roadmap toward new and improved customer experiences—for fans and critics alike.

Understanding and tracking your NPS opens your business up to major opportunities, including:

Spotting customers at risk of churn

Your Net Promoter Score data will show your brand’s biggest promoters—and its harshest critics.

While their feedback may be hard to swallow, it’s absolutely crucial. When you proactively identify your detractors, you also create an opportunity to win them back. Once you’ve fine-tuned your NPS survey process, you can then establish a structured approach to following up with detractors. This outreach can transform negative experiences into positive ones, salvaging customer relationships along the way.

Eventually, your NPS data will be able to do more than just save one-off customers. With enough data, AI analytics tools can predict churn patterns and provide recommendations for intervention, contributing to a stronger overall customer experience.

Activating your biggest fans

Customer expectations are higher than ever. Imagine the level of satisfaction required for someone to rate a business a nine or ten out of ten in a feedback survey. Being able to accurately identify those superfans is more than just helpful—it can drive meaningful impact for your business.

Regularly measuring your Net Promoter Score gives your most enthusiastic supporters a chance to identify themselves. This information can be used to create tailored engagement programs that generate excitement and most importantly, word-of-mouth recommendations.

Once you start consistently engaging your promoters, you turn them into brand ambassadors. These advocates are invaluable, especially now that brand authenticity is at the top of everyone’s minds.

Supporting marketing efforts

Your NPS data offers valuable information about the aspects of your products, services or brand that resonate most with customers. These are more than just wins for your team—they’re valuable differentiators that can be used to support marketing efforts.

For example, say you work with a retail brand that collects NPS survey data. After analyzing trends in NPS feedback, you realize that customers love your brick-and-mortar experience—especially the help they receive from your thoughtful and experienced staff.

These insights provide the perfect foundation for a social media campaign promoting the level of service customers can expect when they shop with your brand. You might even center the campaign creative around real staff members and store locations to build a sense of community and familiarity.

Securing a competitive advantage

Tracking your NPS allows you to benchmark your performance against competitors in your industry, providing valuable insights into customer perception relative to your peers. By comparing your NPS with industry averages or competitor scores, you gain a clearer understanding of where you stand and how you stack up against others in the market.

Benchmarking against competitors also allows teams to set more realistic goals for their overall customer experience strategy. When you aim to outdo your competitors, you set your business up for great market share within your industry.

Improving customer experience

Feedback is the gift that keeps on giving. With Net Promoter Score (NPS) feedback, you can enhance your overall customer experience, resulting in more satisfied customers.

Your NPS survey data is a treasure trove of valuable customer feedback that can be segmented and analyzed to uncover pathways for improvement. This data makes it easier to align business priorities with customer needs and preferences, powering more strategic decision-making throughout your organization.

There isn’t a single department that wouldn’t stand to benefit from Net Promoter Score data. When every team is rallied around the customer, the whole business wins.

How to calculate Net Promoter Score

Calculating your Net Promoter Score starts with distributing NPS surveys at key points throughout your customer journey. This critical feedback will provide valuable insights into customer satisfaction and loyalty. For a thorough assessment of your customer retention practices, you’ll want to distribute NPS surveys:

• Shortly after customers make a purchase
• At the conclusion of support interactions
• At regular intervals (quarterly, bi-annually, etc.)

It seems like a lot, but don’t worry—there are plenty of customer service software tools that can automate survey distribution. The right solution should allow you to send out a large number of surveys at the right time to the right people in just a few clicks.

Once you begin collecting responses, you can calculate your score. To calculate Net Promoter Score, ignore Passive respondents then subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. As a reminder:

• Detractors are customers who gave a score from 0 to 6
• Passives are customers who gave a score of 7 or 8
• Promoters are customers who gave a score of 9 or 10

Your NPS can range from -100 to 100, with a positive score indicating that you have more promoters than detractors.

How to collect Net Promoter Score feedback with Sprout Social

You can send out NPS surveys at the conclusion of any social customer care interaction on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly known as Twitter) with the Sprout Social Advanced plan. To do so, navigate to Settings by clicking on your initials in the lower left corner of the app. From there you’ll click Customer Feedback under Inbox and Review settings.

You can use the profile picker to configure customer survey distribution for each of your social profiles. Be sure to select “Net Promoter Score™ (0-10)” as the Feedback Type for setup across all networks. This will ensure that users are prompted with the right Feedback Questions to accurately measure NPS.

You can report on your NPS using the Customer Feedback Report, which aggregates all customer satisfaction ratings collected via X, Instagram and Facebook Feedback survey responses. The report offers an overview of feedback results, along with performance data by team member and feedback responses.

What is a good Net Promoter Score?

Generally speaking, any score above zero is considered a good Net Promoter Score. However, a great customer experience strategy aims to exceed customer expectations at every touch point. To remain competitive, your true goal should be continuous improvement.

Analyze qualitative customer feedback, historical NPS score data and industry benchmarks to determine your goal Net Promoter Score. Set your sights on something realistic and achievable, and you’ll be on your way to creating a more competitive customer experience.

Are you getting the full picture when it comes to your Net Promoter Score?

People of all ages and demographics turn to social media to share praise, air grievances and everything in between. When you disregard Net Promoter Score data from social, you compromise the accuracy of your customer experience insights.

Sprout Social will help you get a more complete picture of your customer care story. Sign up for a free trial, and find out how you can drive more meaningful connections from social today.

The post What is a Net Promoter Score (NPS) and how do you measure it? appeared first on Sprout Social.

This is the power of business intelligence (BI) reporting.

The right BI tools turn mountains of data from various sources into actionable, easily analyzed documents or dashboards. Instead of guessing or sifting through piles of data, BI reporting does the heavy lifting for you, saving you time and headaches.

Bringing social media insights into the mix adds a whole new dimension to your reporting as well because you get real-time feedback from your social media audience, competitors and campaigns. This gives you the most up-to-date insight into how people perceive you and engage with your brand.

Read on to find out all you need to know about business intelligence reporting, why you need it, the best reporting tools and business intelligence best practices.

Table of Contents

• What is business intelligence reporting?
• What is the importance of business intelligence reporting?
• Business intelligence reporting challenges
• Top business intelligence reporting tools
• Business intelligence reporting best practices

What is business intelligence reporting?

Business intelligence reporting is the process of collecting data from various sources, such as customer databases, financial information systems and digital marketing channels, and presenting it in a digestible and actionable format.

Business intelligence reports help organizations understand what’s happening with their business, and make sense of critical data in order to make more informed decisions and predictions. The result? Often more growth and a bigger bottom line. According to a McKinsey report, data-driven organizations experience above-market growth and earnings increases of 15 to 25 percent.

Business intelligence reports can also be tailored for specific departments and stakeholders. For example, marketing business intelligence helps organizations contextualize marketing data and connect marketing metrics like social media engagements and follower growth to broader business goals. It also helps businesses predict the future by spotting trends and identifying potential problems before they get out of hand.

What is the importance of business intelligence reporting?

The biggest benefit of business intelligence reporting is that it reduces guesswork. Instead of relying on gut feelings or hunches, data provides concrete evidence to guide decisions.

Here are a few other key advantages of business intelligence reporting.

Faster decision-making

According to research from Oracle, 74% of people say the number of decisions they make every day has increased tenfold over the last three years. Business intelligence reporting addresses this decision fatigue by providing instant access to critical insights. Whether you’re analyzing budgets, planning a marketing campaign or optimizing internal processes, BI helps you make quick, intelligent decisions on the spot.

Customer insights

Customers today are pickier about where they spend their money and which brands they trust. They like brands that understand how they think and feel. Business intelligence reports help you tap into your customers’ needs and even predict their wants by uncovering in-depth behavior and trend data.

Competitive analysis

Analyzing business intelligence data on competitive analysis insights like competitor engagement, follower growth and content strategies helps businesses understand what’s going well for their competitors and identify opportunities to refine their social media strategies. For example, if a BI competitive report shows you that a competitor’s video content has been doing exceptionally well lately, you might consider incorporating more video content into your social media strategy.

Cost optimization

BI reporting also uncovers operational inefficiencies, such as production bottlenecks, slashing unnecessary expenses. You can also proactively monitor key performance indicators like cost per unit produced or cost per sale, to address them and be on target. Lastly, combining historical data and predictive analytics helps companies forecast future costs more accurately, leading to better resource allocation and budgeting.

Streamlined process

Have you ever wondered when you should publish a social media post or what types of content resonate most with your audience? BI reporting tools analyze data from social media platforms to give you data-driven content strategy recommendations. The result? Less time experimenting and more time producing more of what your audience enjoys at the right time.

Reliable data quality

Business intelligence tools consolidate data from various sources into a single platform, reducing the chances of errors due to manual data entry or siloed information. They also often have data cleaning features that catch inconsistencies and duplicate entries. Many BI tools also offer real-time or near-real-time data updates, so you always have the most current information at hand.

Data-driven culture

With customizable and personalizable dashboards, BI tools empower your employees to make more data-informed decisions, ultimately benefiting the whole organization. When everyone can access, analyze, share and act on relevant data it fosters a more data-driven culture.

Business intelligence reporting challenges

Business intelligence tools make it easier but synthesizing data from different sources into one accessible dashboard or report isn’t so simple. Understanding all that information and ensuring the data is accurate, relevant and helpful is also tough.

Whether you’re already using business intelligence tools in your organization or getting ready to implement a solution, here are some common challenges you might encounter.

Technological advancements

Technology advancements make business intelligence reporting tools more impactful, but have certain challenges. Take cloud-based solutions, for instance. They handle vast amounts of data but also need tight security to keep that data safe. Rapid advancements also mean frequent software and system updates, leading to higher maintenance costs and additional training required to keep users up-to-date.

Data governance

Business intelligence reports contain sensitive information, so you need clear rules and processes around access to keep your data safe and accurate. Think of data governance as the rulebook for how a company handles its data. It involves deciding who’s responsible for what, ensuring the data is clean and reliable, and keeping it safe from hackers or unauthorized access using encryption or other safeguards. Controlling who sees what data is critical.

Linguistic challenges

Business intelligence reports often have technical terms and complicated data that might leave non-experts scratching their heads. Also, if the report’s language isn’t consistent with the terms your employees already use, they’ll struggle to understand it and become overwhelmed. Sprout understands this. That’s why our social media intelligence reports, for example, include topic summaries so report viewers can quickly view the top performance metrics they care about.

User adoption

Some people in your organization might resist using business intelligence software because they’re used to other methods or feel overwhelmed by new technology. Plus, some BI tools are pretty complex, even for the tech-literate. Getting everyone on board with BI reporting means providing the right support and showing them how it will make their jobs easier.

Top business intelligence reporting tools

Business intelligence can be a game changer for your company. However, with so many platforms on the market, it’s tough to know which business intelligence tools would best fit your organization.

Here are a few of the most popular choices on the market and their capabilities.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social makes spotting business trends and opportunities a breeze. Sprout has plenty of built-in reporting tools and templates, like our Social Listening and Sentiment Analysis features, that will show you how your company stacks up to competitors and how your audience feels about your brand. Sprout also integrates with Salesforce and Tableau, allowing you to see your social data alongside other business intelligence insights and get a 360-degree, unsiloed view of your business data.

Need more customization? Use our reporting features to build custom reports from scratch or personalize existing templates with widgets to hone in on key data—like the sample Go-To-Market Product Launch report below. Our digestible and user-friendly social media reports are also easy to understand and share with teams.

With Sprout, you’ll be able to contextualize social media insights by seeing which interactions and campaigns attract leads and drive revenue growth.

Databox

Databox is an analytics platform that simplifies data management for growing businesses. It centralizes your data for better decision-making and performance improvement. With Databox, you get a centralized source of truth, quick access to insights and better decision-making informed by data. As a result, you’ll spend less time creating reports and more time focusing on strategy.

HubSpot

HubSpot simplifies business intelligence, providing a comprehensive platform for all your customers’ needs. The all-in-one platform connects your marketing, sales, customer service, content management, operations and commerce processes, providing deep insights into every customer interaction. From marketing automation to sales tools, HubSpot helps organizations connect with and better understand their customers.

Business intelligence reporting best practices

Using business intelligence tools without following best practices is like taking a road trip with a broken GPS. You’d probably get lost and make some wrong turns. Similarly, misusing BI tools could lead to inaccurate conclusions, poor strategic decisions, wasted resources and missed growth opportunities.

Here are a few best practices to get the most out of your business intelligence tool.

Define your stakeholders

Who will be accessing your business intelligence reports? Marketers? Customer service representatives? Product developers? Executive leadership? All of the above? Before generating a report or creating a dashboard, identify who will be using those reports. Then, based on their needs, technical skills and knowledge, include only the most relevant information.

Choose the right metrics

When picking metrics to include in your reports, consider the following three questions:

• Your business goals. Are you focusing on long-term or short-term objectives?
• Your audience. How do they impact decisions?
• The bigger picture. What metrics will paint the most comprehensive story and guide your next steps?

Use data visualizations

Let’s face it—numbers and spreadsheets are a little boring to review and challenging to understand on their own. That’s why visuals are super helpful for data reporting and storytelling. Just don’t overdo it. Don’t cram too many graphs and charts into your reports. Leave some white space between your visuals for clarity.

Drop-downs and filters also help users focus on the most relevant insights. For example, in the Sprout Social Profile Perfomance report pictured below, the filter button (in the top right corner) enables users to select the profiles they want to view data for throughout the report.

Ensure data reliability

If your data isn’t reliable, it’s unusable. To ensure your business intelligence reports present trustworthy data, regularly check your data sources and verify that they’re pulling the most accurate and up-to-date data. You should also double-check your data for errors or inconsistencies. Lastly, secure your data using multi-factor authentication, encryption or other measures.

Leverage AI

AI is a powerful tool for interpreting business intelligence data. AI can review historical data to predict future trends, which could help you manage inventory or project sales. It also assists in abnormality detection, notifying you of unusual data patterns like sudden drops in website traffic.

The future of BI reporting with AI

Business intelligence is a powerful tool in its own right. However, adding AI brings a whole new level of capability. For example, if AI handles most of your data analysis, trend spotting and report creation task, you’ll have more time to focus on strategy while making faster decisions and predictions.

We’re already incorporating AI into Sprout’s social business intelligence features. For example, our Smart Categories tool automatically identifies, classifies and groups data in your Listening Topic (i.e., specific keywords, hashtags, brands, or industries you follow). The Sentiment in Listening feature also uses AI to classify messages as positive, negative or neutral.

Ready to see what AI-powered business intelligence can do for your organization? Request a personalized Sprout Social demo today.

The post Business intelligence reporting: making sense of your organization’s data appeared first on Sprout Social.

Create better customer experiences by ensuring your support agents understand the nuances of providing care on social. This social media customer service training deck will help you explain everything they need to know about the channel, including:

• Tips on delivering brand-friendly customer service across key social networks
• Instructions on when and how to escalate customer service inquiries
• Crisis management procedures, including what to do and who to call

Be the partner your customer service team needs. Download this social media customer service training deck and set your support agents up for more social media success. 

The post Template: Social Media Customer Service Training Deck appeared first on Sprout Social.

In this article, we’ll explore audience engagement benefits and strategies. Plus, we’ll show you some shining examples of what audience engagement looks like.

What is audience engagement?

Audience engagement is any interaction between your target audience and your brand. When an audience is fully engaged, they don’t sit back and passively scroll through your social posts. An engaged audience takes action, which can include clicking on a link or sharing content with a friend. This action furthers their connection with your brand.

If your audience doesn’t engage with your brand, it may be a sign that your content does not resonate with them. It’s vital to track audience engagement so you can be sure your content interests the people who matter most to your organization.

Types of audience engagement

There are several different ways audiences can engage with your brand on social media. Some forms of engagement require little effort, while others are much more involved. Here are some examples of common types of audience engagement:

Likes and reactions

Likes and reactions are one of the simplest ways for an audience to engage with your brand on social media—all your target audience has to do is click or tap a button. But when your audience does so, their followers see it in their feeds, which exponentially increases your brand’s visibility. That’s why likes and reactions are important metrics to consider when analyzing your content performance.

Reviews and mentions

Reviewing or mentioning your brand is more involved than simply liking or sharing your social media posts. It shows that your audience is actively engaging in a conversation about your brand. They are passionate about what you do and want to tell people about it.

Comments and replies

Similar to reviews and mentions, comments and replies show that your target audience wants to engage in a conversation about you. They may converse directly with you by replying to your brand’s posts or comment on another post relevant to your brand. Either way, they’ve got something on their mind and they want to share it with others.

Shares and resharing

Sharing and resharing brand content seems like a simple form of audience engagement. However, it’s actually more complicated than that. When your audience shares or reshares your content, they are taking things a step further than just passively enjoying it.

Website interaction

If your target audience clicks through a link to your website from a social post, it shows they are committed to learning more about your brand. They liked what they saw on social enough to go off-platform and hear what you have to say.

Why is audience engagement important for your content strategy?

Audience engagement matters because your brand doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s not possible to have a successful digital marketing strategy or social media strategy without it. Here’s a peek at some of the many ways audience engagement can benefit your brand:

Increase brand loyalty

When your audience engages with your brand, especially more than once, they are more likely to stick around for the long term. Your target audience feels that your brand understands them and their needs, which leads to brand loyalty. An engaged audience will also learn about your company’s mission, vision and core values, and see how they align with their own. This further builds their connection to your brand.

Boost visibility

Social media algorithms reward audience engagement on your social posts by displaying them to more people. It tells the social platform that your content is interesting and that other people may also want to see it. By increasing audience engagement, you also increase visibility for your brand to new audiences.

Gain feedback

Tracking audience engagement helps you learn how your target audience feels about your brand. If they don’t engage with your content very much, it’s a sign that your posts aren’t relevant to your followers. You need to go back to the drawing board and see where you went wrong.

If they engage positively by commenting, sharing or liking your post, you must be doing something right. However, if you see negative comments, it’s time to scan through their feedback to determine what is causing the issue. Social listening tools like Sprout help brands surface the big issues, from customer service hold-ups to product defects and more.

Improve user experience

When an audience engages with your brand, they actively interact with you through likes, shares, comments, clicks and more. These actions give you insights to further tailor your content to your audience, and so creating a better user experience for them.

How to engage an audience

Getting your audience to engage with your content takes time and effort, and begins with your social media marketing strategy. With the right tactics and tools, you can be on your way to capturing the hearts and clicks of your target audience. Here is a list of strategies you can use to engage your audience better:

Understand your target audience

The most effective way to engage your audience is to get to know them. Your target audience shares specific characteristics, so a best practice is to look at commonalities within, such as:

• Demographics
• Geography
• Behaviors
• Psychographics
• Buying intent
• Subcultures
• Interests, hobbies and values

This will help you determine what your audience cares about most, what day-to-day challenges they face and how you can best support them.

Knowing your audience will also help you determine which social channels to focus on. If you want to increase engagement, it’s best to move your resources to the channels your audience frequents.

Leverage AI and social listening

Social listening gives you access to the unfiltered opinions of your target audience. Social media management tools like Sprout help you conduct sentiment analysis with artificial intelligence so you can easily review and measure what people are saying about you—and topics related to your brand and industry—across social media.

These insights help marketers and larger teams understand exactly what needs to be improved, such as products, price, store locations, customer service or anything else you discover through social listening. Thus, helping you gain a competitive edge over the rest of the industry.

Define the metrics

How do you know what success looks like? You must determine how you’re going to measure audience engagement to track it. There are several metrics you can track, including:

• Likes
• Comments
• Shares
• Video views
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Followers
• Time on page
• Conversion rate
• Video completion rate

Track the metrics over time to spot trends or anomalies. For example, you may notice when you post about trending topics, your likes and shares go up, and when you plug your product, your comments go down. Tracking metrics enables you to adjust your social media strategy to increase audience engagement.

Sprout’s 2023 Content Benchmarks report is a good resource for understanding how you stack up against industry benchmarks. For example, the average daily inbound engagements per post in 2023 was 14. How do you compare?

Use modern audience engagement strategies

We’ll get to modern audience engagement strategies in a bit, but the main message here is to understand what audiences want today.

Online trends move quickly, and brands have to keep up with the evolving tastes of their target audience. What may be popular one day could quickly drop out of favor the next. Keeping tabs on the types of content your audience wants and engages with most will help your brand stay relevant.

Track performance

Tracking performance using specific metrics, as we defined earlier, will also help you optimize your social media performance.

For example, if you get a lot of comments on your posts but take two days to respond to each one, you may be stopping a possible conversation. Track what happens when you respond to each comment within a day or within a few hours. Does that increase the level of engagement?

In this example, Wendy’s social media team does a great job of responding to audience comments, keeping the conversation going

Try A/B testing

Conduct A/B testing to determine what your audience responds to most. You can test headlines, subheads, post text, images, post formats, post length, time of day, day of post and more. Ensure you only change one variable at a time. That way you will have a clear answer of what specific element caused your audience to engage differently.

Modern audience engagement strategies

How can you get your audience to consistently like, share and comment on your social media posts? Here are some of our favorite strategies for you to try.

Use visual storytelling

Users respond more favorably to posts that include visuals like graphics, videos and photos. However, it’s not enough to include just any video and image from your library. Curate the visuals so they signal the brand’s identity to your target audience without them ever seeing a logo or brand name.

Chanel’s Instagram account provides an excellent example of visual storytelling. The visuals are so consistent in style that any Chanel fan can spot them as being associated with the brand.

Share personalized content

Social media users don’t react to generic content. They only engage with content that speaks to their hobbies, interests, values and other characteristics. Use attention-grabbing content tailored for specific groups of your audience. Personalizing content is one of the most effective audience engagement strategies because it shows your audience you understand their needs.

In this example, Nike appeals to soccer fans by using a specific hashtag and tailoring the copy and image to soccer players.

Be responsive

Social media is not a one-way communication tool, especially if you want to increase audience engagement. By being responsive to user comments, reviews, shares and other forms of engagement, your brand can address potential issues, build relationships with customers and foster loyalty.

For example, Coca-Cola responds quickly to all user posts about their brand, whether positive or negative, so its audience always feels heard.

Engage influencers

Influencer marketing is an audience engagement strategy that can help connect your brand to new audiences who are already highly engaged. Influencers have a dedicated social following of people who trust and value their opinion. If an influencer vouches for your brand, their audience sees this as a form of social proof.

Zoe Sugg is a lifestyle influencer and entrepreneur with 9.2 million followers. She often posts about the products and services she uses in her day-to-day life which are also products that she thinks will appeal to her audience.

Build a community

Create a place where your target audience can gather online and connect with like-minded people. Online communities, like forums and private groups, strengthen your audience’s connection to your brand through the people they meet in the communities. For example, The Arboretum, Sprout’s online community, serves as a gathering place for 10,000 social and marketing professionals to connect for support, ideas, questions and industry updates.

Leverage user-generated content

What better way to get your audience engaged than by using their content in your social media posts? Try reacting to the original post or resharing the original post. Or, ask users to create content based on a specific prompt and share their content on your social channels. User-generated content makes your audience feel like they are a part of the brand and that they have a platform to share their experiences.

For example, Away uses content that customers of the brand have created. This makes Away’s audience feel special while providing social proof for potential customers.

Include interactive elements

Many social channels come with built-in interactive elements, such as quizzes and polls. These are useful for increasing engagement with your target audience and getting their direct feedback. Simply ask your audience a question and give them a couple of responses to choose from. This provides your audience with a voice and tells them you are listening.

24 Seven Talent makes excellent use of LinkedIn polls because they ask questions related to topics their audience cares deeply about.

Try contests

Sometimes, your audience needs an incentive to engage with your brand on social media. A contest is a great way to offer them a prize for their engagement. Social media contest entries can include liking or commenting on a post, tagging a friend or creating a video or photo entry, for example.

Take a look at this post for a giveaway contest from Nuba, which asks followers to enter by completing a number of actions, such as liking the post and tagging their friends. These actions increase visibility for their brand, in addition to engagement.

Audience engagement examples

Check out some of the other ways brands can get their audiences to engage beyond social media.

Webinars

Webinars are an excellent medium for Q&A sessions. Get your audience involved by asking them questions during the session, and open it up for them to ask questions too. You can also solicit questions from your social media followers to answer during your webinar, and spur excitement about the content you’ll cover.

Social media presence

Make your social media presence unique by establishing a distinct voice, tone and brand personality. If your social media personality aligns with your target audience, they will likely want to interact with you online.

Check out how Innocent Drinks uses its quirky personality to get its audience engaged by using humor and tying into timely topics unrelated to its products. This creates an authentic social media presence that stands out from other brands.

Online reviews

Social proof, which includes reviews and testimonials, helps build trust with your target audience. Ask your customers for reviews after they interact with your brand. Then, share those reviews with prospects to build credibility. You’ll need an online review management strategy to ensure you maximize the benefits of any reviews.

WPX Hosting regularly posts customer reviews on X (formerly known as Twitter) to show potential customers how its audience perceives its products and services.

Conferences and events

If your organization hosts live events, increase engagement online by asking attendees to post during the experience with an event hashtag. Be sure to post event updates and ask followers to join in. The hashtag should be short, unique and memorable.

Apple often uses the #applevent hashtag for its different conferences so fans of the brand can follow along live during the event. The hashtag is used in hundreds of thousands of posts.

Surveys

Surveys and polls provide a range of engagement opportunities. Ask your audience about product or service-related preferences, get their feedback on your customer support offerings or ask a question about the mundane parts of their day.

For example, we use polls at Sprout Social to get customer feedback because we value their opinions and want them to share their thoughts with us.

Get your audience engaged

Whether you want to have better conversations with your followers, improve the quality of your leads or enhance overall brand health, increasing your audience engagement will help you get there. And, with higher audience engagement comes stronger brand loyalty.

While you can get audience engagement on many different marketing channels, social media in particular is a good one to start with because users are naturally inclined to engage on this medium. If you’re having trouble understanding what your audience thinks about your brand, sentiment analysis may be the answer.

Mine the opinions of your audience to get a contextual understanding of their engagement to enhance your brand. Learn all about sentiment analysis and how it can benefit your brand.

The post Audience engagement: What it is and tips to improve it appeared first on Sprout Social.

Make sure the web is working for you, not against you. Use this article to learn how to establish a comprehensive online reputation management strategy.

• What is online reputation management?
• Why does online reputation management matter?
• What factors contribute to online reputation management?
• Better online reputation management in 5 simple steps
• How to choose the best reputation management software for your business

What is online reputation management?

Online reputation management involves actively monitoring and influencing how your business is perceived online. The main goal of this process is to control the online conversation surrounding your brand using various strategies to ensure that when people search for you online, they come across information that paints a favorable picture.

Why does online reputation management matter?

Your online reputation management impacts more than just your marketing team. Do it well, and teams across your org chart will feel the benefits in the following key areas.

Brand image

When people search for information on your business, everything they find works together to paint a picture of what it might be like to be a customer. Strong brand reputation management practices ensure that the picture is a good one.

This work is important everywhere but especially online, where good and bad customer experiences live on in perpetuity through social media posts and reviews. With online reputation management, you can bolster praise and account for feedback, giving you more control over your business’s brand image

Risk mitigation

Managing your online reputation requires you to be proactive. That proactivity plays a major role in crisis prevention and risk mitigation—two must-haves for growing businesses.

Continuous reputation monitoring allows businesses to detect potential issues or negative trends in sentiment early on. This early detection supports intervention before a situation escalates into a crisis that might cause lasting damage to your brand and company.

Business expansion

A good reputation has a snowball effect. The better your reputation gets, the more customers you attract. In the past, this work was relegated to slow-moving offline endeavors. Today, the internet can get this process going faster than you can say “avalanche”.

A steady drumbeat of positive attention online creates a strong environment for business expansion. After all, you’ll likely need more space and resources to meet the needs of all your new and existing customers.

Investor relations

Your business’s online reputation matters to more than just your customers—investors also use the internet to vet potential investments.

In recent years, social media platforms like Reddit, TikTok and X (formerly known as Twitter) have become especially popular destinations for retail and institutional investors to discuss and analyze market trends. Without an online reputation management strategy in place, your brand could potentially miss out on business critical conversations.

Consumer insights

At the end of the day, your business’s online reputation is made up of feedback—praise, ideas and concerns ranging from “inconsequential” to “absolutely vital”.

A key element of online reputation management is ensuring that critical feedback gets to the people who can do something about it. When your processes bring your customer to the center of the conversation, you strengthen your business’s ability to deliver on what they want and need.

What factors contribute to online reputation management?

The internet can be a bit of a double-edged sword. There are so many ways to build your business’s reputation online. There are also a lot of ways for that reputation to be damaged.

An online reputation management strategy powered by routine sentiment analysis can help you make sense of the many factors that contribute to your business’s reputation across the web. Those include:

Social media

Social media has brought a new level of transparency into consumer conversations. Whether they’re evangelizing for a brand they love or ripping into a poor business practice, people turn to social to speak their minds.

This constant stream of commentary can work for or against your company. According to a study from GWI, over a third (43%) of consumers across all ages turn to social networks when looking for more information about brands, products or services. Social is the new search engine, making it a bedrock of your online reputation management strategy.

Luckily, managing your brand’s reputation on social doesn’t have to mean hours upon hours of scrolling. Brands can use social media listening to synthesize these conversations into actionable insights. For example, Cummins, a global leader in power solutions, uses Sprout’s social listening tools to monitor their brand health and reputation across major social networks in real time.

Learn more about Cummin’s strategy

Review sites

Your business’s star rating follows your brand across the web. Reviews are easier to find than ever, especially when you consider the rise of mobile search. If someone’s looking for information about your business on the go, chances are they’re also going to find your average review rating at the top of those search results.

The more positive reviews you get, the more reassurance potential customers get out of all those positive experiences. In fact, it may be what pushes them to finally procure their goods or services.

A person browsing through reviews is more likely to have a higher purchase intent than an individual passively browsing the rest of the web, which is why online review management goes hand-in-hand with online reputation management.

News publications

News publications impact more than just traditional public relations initiatives. In this day and age, any reputable news outlet has a digital publication that can be found by individuals well beyond their typical publishing audience. Think about it: How often have you found yourself reading an article online, only to find out it’s from a local paper miles away from where you currently reside?

Today, positive news coverage can be amplified across the web through social media and other digital channels, allowing brands to get more bang for their buck with their media relations efforts.

Influencers

In a way, influencers are like their own digital publications. After all, they create content for a specific audience they’ve grown over time. An endorsement from an influencer within your target market can have the same impact as positive media coverage, if not more.

Your influencer marketing strategy can do more than just improve your brand’s reputation online. It can play a major role in shaping that reputation, allowing your business to expand into new audiences and markets.

For example, Dave & Buster’s and TikTok influencer @CorporateNatalie seems like an unlikely pair at first thought. However, the two were able to make 9-to-5 comedy work for an arcade restaurant for this paid promotion.

Content like this can challenge existing beliefs about your brand’s reputation online. For Dave & Buster’s, it expanded their target audience to include working professionals who will likely have to schedule a team bonding session at one point or another.

Better online reputation management in 5 simple steps

Whether you’re introducing these practices for the first time, or you have a few online reputation management processes in place, these tips will help strengthen your approach to better protect your business.

Identify the channels used by your market segment

Where is your reputation being forged online? A qualitative and quantitative approach to market research can help you zero in on where your audience is discussing your brand and industry online.

Taking both into consideration will help you account for the full spectrum of where your audience hangs out online. Analytics tools and market research can reveal some sure bets, while open-ended research methods—like customer interviews and surveys—can shine a light on more up-and-coming platforms for brand discovery and research.

This information will help ensure your strategy is focused on the channels that will make an impact on your business.

Monitor your online reputation through mentions

If we were to think about online reputation management through the lens of a Crawl, Walk, Run strategy, monitoring your online mentions would fit squarely within the “Crawl” stage.

When a user tags your brand handle in a social media post or leaves a review on a business page, they expect a response quickly. According to the 2023 Sprout Social Index™ Report, 69% of consumers expect a response within the same day. If you don’t have a process for monitoring your brand mentions online, you are disappointing customers which can cause lasting damage to brand reputation.

The easiest way to safeguard your brand reputation online is to use a tool that organizes all those notifications in one, centralized platform. For example, Sprout Social consolidates inboxes across social media networks and popular review sites like Google My Business, Yelp, TripAdvisor and Glassdoor, so you never miss a mention.

Identify the topics around your business needs

Once you’ve got reacting to mentions down, it’s time to get more proactive with your approach.

Staying on top of the conversations tangentially related to your brand will supercharge your online reputation management strategy. For example, say a competitor’s highly-publicized product recall is driving a ton of discussion online. By proactively monitoring the conversations happening within your industry, you gain a clearer understanding of consumer concerns so you can craft a response strategy that enhances your competitive advantage.

These conversations can be more difficult to track than mentions alone, but the results are worth the effort. Plus, there are social listening tools that can help you uncover trends and develop actionable insights without any complex data aggregation processes. Sprout’s social listening tool makes the process ultra-accessible with our user-friendly and intuitive Query Builder.

Figuring out what topics to follow will take a bit of trial and error, so we recommend starting broad and narrowing as you go. For example, if you operate within a specific geographic location, consider tracking key conversations happening at a local level and fine-tune your approach from there.

Take charge of the narrative

As you gather insights from your online reputation management processes, you’ll begin to identify trends in consumer sentiment. These emerging narratives can control how people perceive your brand for better and for worse. If you want to maintain control over your brand image, you need to take charge.

Do this by using everything you’ve learned to inform cross-channel communications. If consumers frequently cite the quality of your product as a reason they keep coming back, give your audience a behind-the-scenes look at how it’s made. If your shipping times continuously come up as an area of improvement, create content that builds transparency around what causes those delays.

By addressing the positive and negative, you take back control of your business’s online reputation.

How to choose the best reputation management software for your business

The internet is a big place. If you rely on an individual or even a single team to manage your reputation online, chances are you might miss something vital. If you want to do online reputation management right, you need a tool to help get the job done.

Here are some questions you can ask to ensure your reputation management software procurement process leaves you with the best option possible:

• Does the tool offer a collaborative workspace? You may be driving your online reputation management strategy, but teams across your business will need to contribute to truly get the job done. Your reputation management software should allow internal and external teams to collaborate and carry out tasks without any unnecessary overlap.
• Is the tool scalable? Online reputation management means working with external platforms that can add, remove or update features at the drop of a hat. Check to see how your vendor has responded to these changes in the past. How long does it take them to add new features? Are new workflows intuitive, or do they require training? These questions will help you get an accurate read on whether or not the tool can grow alongside your organization.
• What channels does the tool integrate with? Compare your list of priority channels with a list of integrated channels provided by your vendor. If there are too many gaps, then you may find yourself doing work alongside your software solution to ensure nothing is missed.
• What reporting capabilities does the tool offer? If you’re putting all this work into your strategy, you probably want to see the fruits of your labor. Your online reputation management tool should offer insight into how your reputation is trending over time.
• Does the software offer AI and automation? Synthesizing the countless conversations that take place online calls for some seriously smart tech. Ask your vendor about the AI and automation tools they currently provide, as well as what is on their product roadmap.

Take a smarter approach to online reputation management with Sprout Social

Your time is valuable. Don’t use it to sift through the countless comments and posts made about your brand on the web. Instead, leave that to Sprout Social. Our tools aggregate mentions and conversations about your brand, competitors and industry so you can focus on identifying trends and creating action items.

Put Sprout to the test today by signing up for a free 30-day trial.

Start your 30-day trial

The post Everything you need to know about online reputation management appeared first on Sprout Social.

The average buyer’s journey is becoming more dynamic, and social customer care is a way to capture your audience’s attention when the competition is fiercer than ever.

There’s no denying that customer retention should be a top priority if you want your business to thrive long-term. The 2023 State of Social Media Report found that 88% of business leaders agree social media data and insights are critical to customer retention and delivering exceptional customer care.

Throughout this article, learn more about how social media and social listening can play a role in retaining and delighting customers, plus several proven customer retention strategies you can implement today.

• • What is customer retention?
  • Why is customer retention important for businesses?
  • How can social media play a role in customer retention?
  • How to increase customer retention
  • The importance of social listening in customer retention

Social Customer Care by Sprout Social

The only customer care solution on the market that's built for social first. Schedule a demo today.

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What is customer retention?

Customer retention measures a business’s ability to keep customers over a given period of time. The opposite of customer retention is customer churn, a metric that shows how many customers a company has lost over that same period of time.

Customer retention rates vary by industry. For example, Statista found that businesses in the media and professional services industry have an average customer retention rate of 84% while hospitality, travel and restaurants have an average rate of 55%.

How to calculate customer retention rate

The formula to calculate your brand’s customer retention rate is:

((# of Customers at End of Period – New Customers Acquired During Period) / # of Customers at Start of Period) x 100

Why is customer retention important for businesses?

It’s common knowledge that keeping existing customers is cheaper and easier than acquiring new ones. When a customer is already familiar with your brand and product or services, you don’t need to spend as much effort and costs to attain them in the first place.

This can lead to predictable revenue that sustains your business, giving your brand a solid foundation to grow from year-over-year. A high customer retention rate also increases your overall customer lifetime value. Whether customers increase their business with you over time, or refer you to their friends and family, it means more money in your pocket per customer and reduced marketing costs.

Customer retention also leads to brand loyalty, which can be a source of continued feedback and insights into what is and isn’t working.

This is why brands often put tactics in place to keep customers around for as long as possible—a few of which we’ll explore shortly.

How can social media play a role in customer retention?

Social media is a huge asset to customer retention due to its unique ability to facilitate connections between brands and their customers. Because brands and customers can communicate directly with each other, social media provides the perfect relationship-building outlet.

It’s also a virtual gathering place filled with powerful insights about what people think and feel about your brand. Using social listening, you can get an unfiltered view into how your brand is perceived and what your audience is most interested in getting from you.

Having an active presence on social media is a great way to build relationships with your customers and make them want to continue buying from your brand. A few tactics to use include:

• Offer customer service on social media, helping clients and customers find solutions without having to leave their preferred social platform.
• Set up social media chatbots that help customers complete actions or direct them to a live representative.
• Engage with your audience’s social media content, liking and responding to posts that either mention your brand or are relevant to your products/services/industry.
• Create content that your audience will enjoy and want to interact with.
• Promote ads and social media posts that are personalized to specific segments of your audience by taking advantage of audience targeting features.
• Share genuinely helpful and authentic content that makes your audience appreciate your brand.

How to increase customer retention

Don’t let your initial investment of time, resources and relationship-building go to waste. Below are proven customer retention strategies that encourage folks to stick around for the long haul.

1. Invest in your onboarding process and customer resources

The importance of onboarding can’t be overstated when it comes to customer retention. This is the first interaction a customer has with your business after making their purchase decision—don’t make them regret it.

This realization turns onboarding into a make-or-break process. Ask yourself: Are you empowering your customers to make the most of your product or service from the start?

Doing so requires a combination of resources. From self-service options to product videos and beyond, companies should strive to put their onboarding materials front and center in as many formats as possible. This ensures you appeal to all of your customers, not just a small set of them.

At Sprout, we give our customers a variety of resources in our Help Center, so they can learn about our product based on their needs.

From product release notes and support articles to on-demand webinars, we help customers fully understand our products’ features—no matter how you prefer to learn.

The process of churn reduction doesn’t happen by accident. The more guidance you’re able to give customers, the better.

2. Create a sense of community through user-generated content

Education isn’t the be-all, end-all of customer retention.

Perhaps one of the more straightforward strategies to reduce churn is simply engaging with your customers via social.

Picking their brains. Celebrating their success stories. The list goes on and on.

Sharing user-generated content (UGC) in the form of reviews and customer photos represents a way to engage your customers and build a much-needed sense of community among your buyers.

For example, brands should make a conscious effort to share shout-outs and compliments from their customers.

And if you sell a physical product, encouraging customers to share photos of your product in action is a no-brainer. Many brands make UGC a cornerstone of their content strategy.

Among our customer retention tactics, this is perhaps the lowest-hanging but most fun. Don’t be afraid to show off your personality and engage your audience.

3. Actively ask for customer feedback to improve your experience

Gathering feedback represents a win-win for businesses and customers alike.

Not only do you show your customers that you care about providing a stellar experience, but you also gather invaluable testimonials to learn how to better serve your base.

Something as simple as an email asking for a review is a good starting point, providing an open-ended avenue for customers to share their thoughts.

These types of messages should ideally be sent relatively early in the customer lifecycle—like right after onboarding—to keep your relationship positive.

4. Speed up and step up your social customer care

No surprises here. People overwhelmingly take to social media to speak their minds.

Whether it’s a question, complaint or compliment, you need to come up with timely, thoughtful responses.

The good news is that providing social customer care doesn’t have to mean scrambling or refreshing your X (formerly known as Twitter) feed 24/7.

Instead, take advantage of your marketing tools, such as your CRM or social media management tools. Sprout’s Smart Inbox keeps tabs on notifications and @mentions from social, so you never miss a potential crisis. Make a conscious effort to reply to each response personally or refer folks to the proper social media customer service channel to get things resolved ASAP.

5. Reward your most loyal customers

Customer retention isn’t all about righting wrongs or preventing mistakes.

It’s about being proactive. Perhaps one of the best ways to ensure your happy customers stick around is by rewarding their loyalty.

There’s a reason why loyalty and brand ambassador programs are popular among brands. For the sake of retention and keeping people from bouncing to a competitor, rewards and point systems can do the trick.

For example, check out how Smashbox encourages its satisfied customers to keep spending.

This encourages long-term customers and makes your base feel like VIPs by virtue of getting better deals.

6. Listen closely to your lost customers

If you’re trying to figure out how to retain customers, look no further than the ones you’ve lost.

Whether it’s a nasty email or a good old old-fashioned roasting on social, you can’t keep 100% of your customers happy.

That said, if you want to reduce churn, you shouldn’t ignore all negative feedback concerning your brand. Listening to customer complaints clue you in on what not to do in the future. If you find that multiple customers are complaining about the same problem or concern, it’s probably time to take action.

Social listening tools like Sprout give you a detailed look at customer sentiment. You might be surprised at the common threads between your lost customers in terms of what they complain about, leading to org-wide improvements in your product or service.

7. Set expectations to create a better customer experience

Customer experience matters, as does setting expectations about the experience you provide—especially if you’re in ecommerce..

For example, what does your shipping policy look like? Do you offer exchanges and returns? Any guarantees?

These policies are key to ensuring that your one-off customers return in the future. Since they provide customers with peace of mind, you shouldn’t be shy about promoting them.

For example, companies like Red Wing Shoes promote their free shipping and return policies as soon as you land on-site. Meanwhile, they clarify further on their dedicated “Support” page.

Coupled with a generous and explicit return policy and guarantee, customers know exactly what to expect and understand that the brand is willing to commit to their customers.

Just make sure you can stick to whatever promises you make. Failure to do so can result in an unflattering call-out.

8. Keep customers in the loop about your latest products, launches and updates

Remember: Your customers aren’t mind-readers.

And besides, they’re likely juggling a ton of different products at any given time.

Rather than assume they’re aware of your latest update or read your most recent marketing email, you need to make an effort to keep them in the loop through social media as well. Build product launches and updates into your content calendar to make sure customers are informed and engaged.

9. Establish a follow-up frequency that keeps customers engaged

Again, staying on positive terms with your customers means being proactive.

Frequent check-ins, such as outreach emails or calls, help. But you have to walk a fine line between checking in and potentially annoying your audience.

When in doubt, think “less is more”, but be sure to establish some sort of check-in frequency. Doing so will also make the process of cross-selling and upselling easier and more intuitive.

There are likely tools in your marketing stack that can help here. For example, a CRM like Salesforce has a built-in follow-up frequency setting that remind you when to contact customers.

Adjust your settings to follow up with high-ticket customers more frequently and so on. Note-taking in your CRM is also a smart move to tweak your follow-ups with certain customers—like a particular customer or account who doesn’t want to hear from you frequently.

Also, consider how tools like Sprout help you keep track of your social interactions and conversations. Case Management within our Smart Inbox gives you a snapshot of your history with any given contact, making it easier to provide personalized service and care.

Consider that many customer retention programs fail due to a lack of organization. With automated reminders and message-logging, you can keep better track of your relationships and follow up in a way that makes sense.

10. Regularly share engaging content on social media

Competitors, creators, family, friends and other brands are all vying for consumers’ attention. Creating and sharing engaging content is essential to capturing your audience’s attention and keeping them interested.

Offering a regular calendar of entertaining or educational content keeps your customers engaged, your brand top-of-mind and encourages them to return for more. Regularly engaging with them through content helps strengthen the bond between you and your customer, as you work to serve their needs and interests.

Plus, your social content can also lead to organic growth as your engaged customers become brand advocates, spreading the digital word about your brand to their connections.

11. Exclusive social media promotions or contests

Special social media promotions or contests can be a powerful customer retention strategy. Contests create a sense of excitement, engaging your customers in a game of chance. They become more emotionally invested as they eagerly anticipate the results. The thrill of possibly winning prizes also encourages interaction with your social content, keeping them active and engaged with your brand.

Exclusive promotions work similarly by keeping your audience continually engaged while waiting for the next sale or special code to be released. It serves as a reward for following your brand and engaging with your content by giving them exclusive access to deals.

12. Run interactive polls and quizzes on social media

This interactive content invites your audience to participate directly with you, becoming active contributors to your brand’s content. This form of engagement can foster a sense of connection because they feel involved and their contributions are valued.

Polls and quizzes also provide valuable insights into your customers’ preferences and opinions. You can then use these insights to tailor future content to your customers’ needs and interests more effectively.

Essentially, interactive social posts engage your existing customers by making their inputs important, while telling you how to better personalize your content, which leads to greater loyalty.

13. Maintain consistent branding across channels

Consistency builds trust and familiarity. When customers know what to expect from you, they are more likely to return.

Using the same branding across platforms creates a cohesive brand identity, boosting customers’ confidence by reassuring that they’re engaging with you no matter the platform they choose. Consistency also applies to how you communicate with your audience.

Being consistent in your content and how you respond to comments, customer questions, complaints or kudos reinforces your brand’s core values and promotes a seamless experience across channels.

Fostering an environment where your customers are comfortable and know what to expect strengthens your relationships with them because you create a sense of reliability and stability.

The importance of social listening in customer retention

Social listening is a strategy that revolves around the analysis of customer sentiment about a brand. Through social media tools, brands can easily monitor online mentions and conversations around their products, services, industry or the brands themselves.

Some of these conversations can even let brands in on what their target customer is looking for. Social listening—especially when used in relation to customer retention—is much more than simply monitoring the sentiment around your brand.

Instead, it’s important to analyze what your target audience is actually saying. Pay close attention to things like:

• Issues your target audience is having with your competition. Use it to offer a better product.
• Pain points your audience has with your product. Can you launch additional features or settings to make it a better fit?
• Positive and negative sentiments about your brand. Get information to actively optimize your presence.

Using social listening tools to increase customer satisfaction, keep customers longer and improve brand sentiment.

What does your customer retention plan look like?

You’ve already done the hard part by winning your customers over in the first place. Now you need to make sure you’re paying attention to customer retention so they stick with you in the long run.

The good news is, you can easily roll out any combination of these customer retention strategies with the right data and tools.

To continue making informed business decisions, check out the latest Sprout Social Index™ with key social media statistics for 2024.

The post Customer retention strategies for 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

Especially since the quality of your customer care ties directly to your bottom line. Strong service leads to longer-term customers, positive word-of-mouth and a more productive team.

But providing personalized and speedy service is easier said than done by hand. That’s where service software and automation via AI can do a ton of heavy lifting. These tools can break bottlenecks, boost productivity and delight customers at crucial moments.

Below we dig into why customer service software matters and tips for choosing a tool.

• What is customer service software?
• Why is customer service software critical for business success
• Social customer service software
• Full-stack customer service software
• Call, chat and IVR customer service software
• How to choose the best customer service tools for your business
• Ready for the future of customer service with AI?

Social Customer Care by Sprout Social

The only customer care solution on the market that's built for social first. Schedule a demo today.

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What is customer service software?

Customer service software refers to tools that streamline and automate tasks for support teams. These tools create positive experiences and inform brands on how to improve their service.

Here’s a snapshot of what these tools can do:

• Manage customer queries across channels (social media, email, website chatbots)
• Route, assign and prioritize support tickets
• Identify service bottlenecks
• Assess the performance of your customer support team
• Track customer service metrics (CSAT, FRT)
• Generate responses to queries (and automate replies)
• Provide resources via knowledge bases and support portals

Companies that benefit most from customer service software typically tick two boxes:

1. They have large customer bases (think: 100s of queries per day)
2. They have a complex product or service

As a result, the most common adopters of these tools include:

• Enterprise companies
• SaaS companies
• Ecommerce companies
• IT companies
• Mid-level B2C manufacturers or service providers

However, companies of all shapes and sizes can benefit from customer service tools. It all depends on your company’s priorities and the scope of the service you offer.

Why is customer service software critical for business success

Weaving yet another tool into your software stack might be daunting.

The thing is, customer service software is a must-have for modern companies.

Recent Sprout Social Index™ data highlights the high stakes of social customer service alone. Consumers today don’t just expect a personal experience. They expect a quick resolution, too.

A staggering 70% of consumers expect personalized responses from reps. Meanwhile, over two-thirds of consumers value how fast brands respond to them. 

Swift responses directly impact customer acquisition and retention alike. Customer service software helps brands improve both. Not to mention ensuring no queries slip through the cracks.

From faster response times to comprehensive service, here’s what the right tool can do for you.

Improve the customer experience to encourage long-term loyalty

Making a positive impression on your customers is and will always be a top priority.

Quick and comprehensive service can do the trick. Putting tedious tasks on autopilot means giving each customer more individual attention. This aligns with a customer experience strategy that results in long-term loyalty.

Boost your customer support team’s efficiency

Like it or not, the average consumer’s expectations are high when it comes to service.

Food for thought: 39% of consumers expect brands to respond to them on social media within the first two hours. Sixty-nine percent of consumers expect a response within the first day.

When you’re juggling hundreds of queries, even the most dedicated teams can leave people hanging. Thankfully, there are tools to boost customer service efficiency via automation.

For example, consider how tools can help your reps respond faster by:

• Generating responses and resources via chatbots
• Routing tickets to the right people through automated workflows
• Using conversational AI to provide stellar service around the clock

Gain invaluable business insights

One of the biggest benefits of AI customer service is uncovering trends. This includes sentiment analysis, unsatisfactory responses and your top reps. Having a pulse on all of the above informs how you can improve your customer experience and eliminate bottlenecks.

Track the performance of your service team and strategy

Consider how software can align your business’ customer experience with concrete KPIs. Doing so objectively answers whether you’re meeting customers’ needs or not.

For example, most customer service tools track a range of customer service metrics like:

• The volume of queries received
• Response time
• Response rate
• Resolution rate

Benchmarking these metrics can uncover opportunities to improve your service and optimize your customer service team’s processes.

Social customer service software

Below, we dig into a list of customer service tools, starting with tools focused on social media.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social’s suite of tools is built to handle cross-channel customer care on social media. This includes features that empower teams to exceed expectations when it comes to response time.

Having all of your customer interactions across social media in one place is a game changer when it comes to productivity. This ultimately leads to comprehensive, personalized service.

The ability to delegate across channels likewise saves time and reduces stress among your support team. Collaborative features coupled with powerful team analytics can likewise help your reps stay on target and keep a pulse on what’s working (and what’s not). And, our advanced integration and partnership with Salesforce Service Cloud helps reps further tailor responses to each customer with additional context and social data.

All of the features above give businesses the means to provide the best support possible.

Freshdesk

Freshdesk’s customer service suite is designed to resolve tickets at scale.

The platform empowers customers with self-service features such as guided widgets to lead users to relevant answers via your company’s knowledge base. Freshdesk also uses generative AI and automated workflows to route requests to the right reps.

Unified tickets coupled with collaborative features and data tracking, Freshdesk’s tools can handle a high volume of customer queries for big teams.

Front

With so many features and functions, customer service software can get pretty complex. Front acknowledges this upfront, instead offering users a tool “with the familiarity of email.”

The platform automates tasks such as routing and handing off tickets while emphasizing a fair balance of work among reps. Like the other tools on this list, Front supports cross-channel communication with customers. Features such as customer history profiles and in-app note-taking empower reps to personalize service without having to dig for context.

Full-stack customer service software

Integrating service tools with your CRM is a no-brainer for the sake of more comprehensive customer care. Not to mention a more complete understanding of your performance metrics.

Below are solutions that are either built into or integrated with some of the biggest CRMs.

Salesforce Service Cloud

Saleforce Service Cloud’s status as a CRM powerhouse speaks for itself and the platform’s service suite doesn’t disappoint. The platform is up-to-date with self-service AI features such as predictive analytics and generative responses which can easily be edited by reps before being sent out.

Hubspot Service Hub

As noted earlier, expectations regarding response times are high.

As a result, HubSpot’s service suite acknowledges the need for an “always-on” service strategy. The platform supports a variety of knowledge base and portal features to help customers get answers around the clock. Coupled with your CRM data and customer inbox in one place, users can provide personalized service with less bouncing around.

Zendesk

Zendesk is best known for its in-depth knowledge base capabilities. Like HubSpot, the platform strives to provide a meaningful self-service experience to open reps’ schedules to provide personalized, one-on-one customer care. Zendesk’s AI bots, content recommendations and routing are all designed to reduce support costs and likewise reduce ticket volume.

Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk’s strength as a customer service tool is providing context to incoming tickets and analyzing them after they’re resolved. For example, Zoho’s Zia AI assistant handles responses by identifying self-service resources that are helpful (and keeping track of the resources that aren’t). The platform also offers sentiment analysis, ticket tagging and automated prioritization.

Intercom

Intercom’s emphasis on chatbots makes it notable among our list of customer service tools.

The platform boasts the ability to resolve half of users’ customer questions instantly through its AI-powered assistant, Fin. The bot is built to handle repetitive tasks and pulls from support content to resolve queries. This makes for an “always-on” support strategy and likewise frees up more time for reps to handle in-depth issues one-on-one.

Call, chat and IVR customer service software

Below is a breakdown of customer service tools emphasizing calls and voice features.

LiveAgent

LiveAgent offers a self-described “simple” solution that doesn’t skimp on features. The platform handles queries across channels but perhaps most notable is LiveAgent’s call center software. Call-routing, unlimited call recording and call-back requests are all built into the platform.

Aircall

Living up to its namesake, Aircall’s platform is ideal for businesses that are frequently on the phone with customers. The platform’s AI features include call summaries and phrase detection to identify trends among customer queries. Aircall’s breakdown of analytics can likewise inform teams where they might be dropping the ball with calls.

How to choose the best customer service tools for your business

Picking the “best” tool for your business requires context.

For example, are you laser-focused on social media customer service? Do you already have a comprehensive knowledge base? Will your software integrate with your CRM?

To wrap up, here are some points to consider before investing in customer service software.

Think about the size and scale of your business

This applies to both the number of customer queries you handle and their level of complexity. Some SaaS companies might be able to use automation to route people to a knowledge base. On the flip side, a service-based business might primarily one-on-one calls with customers.

Either way, brainstorm the features of any given software that can support those requests.

Reflect on the types of customers you work with

Not all customers are equal when it comes to the support they need. Likewise, different industries have totally different expectations when it comes to customer care. Ask yourself:

• Do your customers primarily communicate with your business via email or social media? What about your website? This highlights why providing an omnichannel customer experience ensures you have your bases covered.
• Do your service calls involve sensitive information (think: medical, financial)? If so, such customers will probably want (or need to) speak to a person in real time versus a chatbot. The same applies to urgent concerns that can’t wait.
• Do customers typically need special attention on a case-by-case basis? Or can their needs be largely served by a knowledge base?

Acknowledge your product’s (or service’s) complexity

Piggybacking on the point above, consider that not all service concerns can default to AI. While automation can help customers pick out plans or understand product features, human oversight and interventions from actual reps are crucial. Especially if your product is complex or requires specific, personalized instructions or steps.

Data dependence

Most customer service tools gather massive amounts of data. That said, what happens to it after the fact? What insights can you pull from your numbers and trends? This is yet again where AI can save the day. For example, AI-driven social media sentiment analysis offers a detailed understanding of customer pain points and opportunities to overdeliver as a company.

Ready for the future of customer service with AI?

The importance of customer service can’t be overstated. Going above and beyond results in long-term, loyal customers and positive word-of-mouth to grow your brand.

The key is having the right tools to meet the needs of modern customers. Features like omnichannel support, generative AI and sentiment analysis can all help make it happen.

All of these features (and more!) are baked into Sprout’s social media customer service suite. If you haven’t already, check out what Sprout has to offer to give your customer experience a boost.

The post Top 10 customer service software tools to use in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

• 60% of customers will switch to a competitor after a negative experience.
• 73% of customers want companies to recognize their unique needs and expectations.
• 52% of customers expect an answer within an hour of posting on a brand’s digital page.

As a business, you need to figure out how to deliver great customer experiences while keeping up with these changing demands.

Part of that equation is understanding how customers think and feel about your brand. That’s what sentiment analysis is all about.

In this post, you’ll learn what customer sentiment analysis is, why it matters and how to do it right. We’ve also included helpful tips and tools to get you started on the right foot.

Table of Contents

• What is customer sentiment analysis?
• Why do you need to analyze customer sentiment?
• How to measure customer sentiment
• Best tools for customer sentiment analysis
• How to improve customer sentiment

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What is customer sentiment analysis?

Customer sentiment analysis is a facet of AI marketing that involves understanding how customers think and feel about your products, services or business.

When a customer leaves a review, comments on your posts or shares a photo with your product, they’re expressing an emotion—such as joy, frustration or disappointment.

As a brand, your job is to decipher that emotion, paint an accurate picture of the customer experience and then use that insight to improve future experiences.

Why do you need to analyze customer sentiment?

Sentiment analysis is an integral part of delivering an exceptional AI customer experience. It helps you understand the nuances of emotion that drive satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.

Here are five ways analyzing customer sentiment can help your business:

Monitor overall customer satisfaction

Happy customers leave good reviews. Unhappy customers leave bad reviews.

Sounds easy, right? But it’s not that simple. Sometimes, you need to read between the lines.

For example, if your app’s review section is quiet after a new update, sentiment analysis might reveal users are unimpressed, not overjoyed.

By capturing the emotional undertones in customer feedback and conversations, businesses can gauge satisfaction levels with greater accuracy.

Improve customer experience

Sentiment analysis offers actionable insights that can help you craft experiences tailored to the emotional needs of your customers.

For example, you might identify that customers find your landing page confusing. Writing clearer copy and fixing the design can help you improve user experience on your website and generate more sign ups for your business.

Understanding customer sentiment also lets you create targeted campaigns around topics customers feel strongly about and respond to feedback more empathetically, which improves their overall experience with your brand.

Gain real-time consumer insights

Sentiment analysis can help you capture instant feedback during product launches and campaigns. This allows you to react promptly, preventing issues from snowballing.

For example, let’s say a video game company drops a new game and monitors social media and gaming forums for player reactions. Within hours, they detect a pattern of complaints about a difficult level, which is causing players to lose interest.

Acting on these real-time insights, the company releases a patch to adjust the difficulty settings and posts tips for navigating the challenging sections. By doing so, they prevent early negative reviews from damaging the game’s reputation.

Build brand loyalty

Understanding what makes your customers tick helps you turn moderately satisfied buyers into loyal advocates of your business. Here’s how.

By identifying emotional triggers, you can create targeted campaigns around topics they feel strongly about, respond more effectively to feedback and keep delighting customers at every step of the journey.

Not only will customers have a great experience with your brand, they’ll appreciate you going the extra mile to exceed their expectations and bring them joy. As a result, you’ll reduce churn and keep them coming back for more.

Identify product and service gaps

Monitoring customer sentiment can highlight areas of your product or service that may need improvement or innovation.

For example, you might notice complaints on social media about the poor battery life of your tech product. You could roll out an update to fix the issue and potentially avert a drop in sales. Better yet, you could focus on improving the battery of your future products.

How to measure customer sentiment

You know sentiment analysis is important, but how do you actually do it? How do you measure the general emotion surrounding your brand?

It might sound complicated, but it’s really not. You just need to gather the right data and organize it in a way that makes it easier to interpret and act upon.

Which factors contribute to customer sentiment?

Before we get to the steps, let’s find out what type of data you need to measure customer sentiment about your brand. Here are some factors that affect sentiment:

• Customer reviews: Online reviews of your company, products and services contain various emotions expressed via text and/or visuals. They can be positive, negative or neutral, and these nuances are often picked up by AI sentiment analysis tools. Managing these reviews with productive solutions can help your brand improve trust among customers and lower the negative impact of online criticism.

• Brand reputation: On social media, every like, comment or post shapes your brand’s public perception. A viral post can make you popular, while a critical tweet can spark backlash. It’s an up-to-date snapshot of how much people like or dislike your brand.
• News: Whether it’s an award, a product recall or a CEO’s statement, news can significantly impact how customers perceive a brand.
• Marketing initiatives: When your campaigns resonate, they lift positive sentiment; when they miss the mark, they can confuse or even alienate your audience.
• Cognitive dissonance: When customers’ experiences don’t align with their expectations, it creates discomfort known as cognitive dissonance. This psychological phenomenon can lead to negative sentiment if not addressed.
• Competitive landscape: Customers always compare, and so your standing in the market—your prices, quality, innovation—all contribute to how they feel about your brand in the context of your competition.

These drivers can all influence how customers feel about a brand, and it’s important to track them all in order to get a complete picture of customer sentiment.

3 steps to analyze customer sentiment

Now you know what to look for. But how do you go about analyzing this data? Follow the three steps below for a systematic and organized approach to conducting sentiment analysis:

Step 1: Gather the data

First, you need raw material to work with—that means collecting brand-related information from every corner where your customers might express their thoughts.

This could range from online reviews and social media posts to customer support tickets and survey responses. Gathering diverse data sources gives you a well-rounded view of customer sentiment, not just isolated snapshots.

Step 2: Process the data

Next, you’ll need to sift through the data and prepare it for analysis.

This is where sentiment analysis tools can help. AI-powered algorithms can sort positive from negative, and suss out those tricky neutral comments.

This step involves decoding the tone and intent behind words, which requires sophisticated technology, like natural language processing (NLP), to capture subtleties and context.

Step 3: Visualize the data

Finally, you’ve got to make sense of all this information. Data visualization tools can transform your findings into charts, graphs and heat maps that highlight sentiment trends.

This step is crucial because it translates complex data into a format that’s easy for teams to understand and use, turning insights into action points for improving customer experience.

Best tools for customer sentiment analysis

Measuring customer sentiment can be tricky as it’s not exactly a quantifiable metric.

Thankfully, there are some powerful sentiment analysis tools out there to help you navigate the complexities in gauging customer experience and extracting actionable insights.

Here are three sentiment analysis tools you can use:

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management platform that offers sentiment analysis as part of its AI-powered social listening capabilities.

Refine your strategy by exploring customers’ feelings, thoughts and opinions on specific topics, competitors, products and more. Sprout gives you a visual score summarizing the average sentiment around your brand as well as a graph tracking sentiment trends over time.

Lexalytics

Lexalytics is a text analytics platform that helps you analyze sentiment by examining customer feedback across multiple channels. It evaluates the tone and emotion in the text to determine the sentiment behind customer opinions.

MeaningCloud

MeaningCloud offers sentiment analysis by processing multilingual content from various channels. It breaks down feedback into sentiments associated with specific topics or attributes of your products and services.

How to improve customer sentiment

Analyzing sentiment is just the beginning. You also need to know how to make customers fall in love with your brand.

Improving customer sentiment requires a strategic approach to evaluating customer experience and taking advantage of AI customer service tools. Here’s what to do:

Define the scope

Before you can improve sentiment, you need to know where to listen. Are your customers voicing their opinions on X (formerly Twitter), reviewing on Google or asking questions on live chat?

Pinpoint these channels and decide if there are specific regions or languages that need attention. For instance, if your product is hitting a new market, you’ll want to tune into that area’s local review sites and social platforms.

Defining the scope provides a targeted area for your efforts so you don’t cast too wide a net and dilute your impact.

Monitor the sentiment

Next, use sentiment analysis tools to continuously monitor these channels.

By tracking sentiment over time, you can spot trends and understand how customers are reacting to every little change.

For example, if sentiment dips every time you release a software update, there’s a clue to improve your change management process.

Identify the topics or themes

Leverage AI to dig into the feedback to find what’s really stirring up emotions. Is it your stellar customer service, or perhaps shipping delays are causing grief?

Identifying these topics helps you know where to double down and where to pivot. For example, if multiple customers express frustration over a specific product feature, that’s a clear signal you need to make improvements.

Create a strategy

Finally, develop a strategy based on these insights. Allocate your resources where they’ll make the biggest difference. Maybe it’s time to staff up your customer service team or invest in an AI chatbot to provide instant responses.

Also, determine the best channels for customer interaction—perhaps your audience engages more on Instagram than email—and tailor your approach accordingly.

Remember to train your team so they understand the importance of sentiment and how to nurture positive experiences at every touchpoint.

Using sentiment analysis to improve customer experience

What your customers think about your business directly influences its growth and success. Instead of just reading reviews, you need to dive deeper and understand the nuances of emotion to accurately monitor sentiment around your brand.

With customer sentiment analysis, you can get inside your customers’ minds, leverage emotional triggers and craft experiences that delight them at every step.

Sprout Social’s listening lets you track customer sentiment, conversations, behavior and trends across multiple social media platforms with the power of AI and machine learning.

Interested in learning more? Schedule a personalized demo and learn how to drive real business growth with Sprout’s platform.

The post How to analyze customer sentiment to improve customer experience appeared first on Sprout Social.

They see your ads, interact with you on social media and explore your website before they buy. All these interactions—from the first ad impression to every “Please help” DM customers send—define your customer journey. To keep up with it all and better inform your social media marketing strategy, create a customer journey map as a blueprint to help you understand your customers at each stage.

Let’s explore what customer journey mapping is and how it helps your brand.

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What is customer journey mapping?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of each point of interaction your customers have with your company. You can style the map like a flowchart, timeline, table or even on sticky notes.

Creating the map is a great internal exercise. Along the way, you might find pain points or touchpoints you didn’t know existed. A basic customer journey map includes the buying stages (and support touchpoints) a customer goes through.

More detailed maps include:

• actions your customers take
• good and bad emotions your customers experienced
• departments involved in customer touchpoints
• content types you serve your customers
• solutions to pain points

What is a customer touchpoint?

A touchpoint on the customer journey map is the point of interaction a customer has with your brand. It doesn’t need to be a two-way interaction. Seeing a social media ad, getting a branded newsletter and asking a friend for a product recommendation are all touchpoints.

Customers may experience emotions and actions at touchpoints. When someone asks for product recommendations, people might mention your brand. You might not serve that recommendation to them directly but someone still introduces you to a potential customer.

What are the benefits of customer journey mapping?

A customer journey map puts the customer first by giving you a deeper understanding of how your customers interact with your brand. This enable you to make better decisions and improve customer experiences.

When coupled with social media market research, they help brands:

• Provide an overview of the resources your customers use. This helps determine the ROI of customer-centric engagement and service. For example, if blogs are your highest traffic sources, investing more in those channels makes sense.
• Identify content gaps. Pain points without solutions are an excellent source for content ideation and development. If customers need help with a specific product issue, for example, but find limited guidance, create in-depth video tutorials to address this pain point.
• Identify inefficiencies. Maybe some processes are repetitive, or some solutions cause more friction. If your customers have trouble checking out due to a complicated form, for example, simplify it to reduce cart abandonment rates.
• Generate marketing campaign ideas. A clear understanding of customer motivations and journey stages creates targeted campaigns. You can provide them with relevant content and incentives to move them closer to a purchase.
• Guide multiple departments. Streamline content creation, social customer care strategy and messaging optimization across every touchpoint. Departments use the customer journey map as a central reference to ensure a consistent and customer-focused approach.
• Enhance customer communication. Customer journey maps reveal critical touchpoints, like social media interactions, for timely and meaningful engagement. In fact, The Sprout Social Index™ shows 51% of customers believe the most memorable brands on social respond to customers.

Every business and industry has its unique customer journey maps, but the fundamentals remain the same.

Recently, our social team talked about using social media for the customer journey in the auto industry. Watch the video below to hear their discussion on touchpoints, customer experience and how legacy brands are going beyond traditional tactics like targeted ads to tell their story.

It’s a great example of how industry-specific customer journey follows the fundamentals but also has touchpoints specific to them.

What’s included in a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is like a detailed travel itinerary for your customer’s experience with your brand. It includes elements like:

1. The buying process

The buying process is the step-by-step path a customer follows to make a purchase decision. It tells you where customers drop off or face obstacles during making purchases.

Use prospecting tools, content management systems (CMS) and behavior analytics tools to gather data. Facebook Shops, Instagram Shopping and TikTok Shop data also provide valuable insights into how customers find products and engage with content via social commerce.

Pro tip: Categorize the journey into stages like awareness, consideration and decision to map these steps horizontally on the customer journey map.

Don’t forget to integrate feedback mechanisms, such as customer surveys or user testing. These offer qualitative insights into the buying process. Understanding the “why” behind customer behavior can be as important as knowing the “what.”

2. Emotions

Emotions show how customers feel at different touchpoints in their interaction with your brand. Emotions heavily influence purchase decisions and brand loyalty which is exactly why it’s so important to include them.

Think about it: When someone has a great experience with your brand and feels happy, they’re more likely to buy from you again. On the flip side, if they feel frustrated or unhappy, they’ll knock on your competitor’s door.

Use surveys or feedback forms to ask customers how they felt during their experience. You might have come across these smileys during your own shopping experience:

These scales are a convenient way to gauge how your customers feel at any point.

Pay attention to what they say on social media and in reviews. You can tell if they’re happy or upset by their tone.

Tools like Sprout Social use AI-driven sentiment analysis to dig into social listening data to give you insights on what people think about your brand.

These insights are handy when creating emotional marketing campaigns. When you know how customers feel, take actionable steps to solve any negative experiences and encourage positive ones.

3. User actions

User actions are the steps customers take when they interact with your brand. They include steps like visiting your website, clicking on a product, adding items to their cart or signing up for your newsletter.

Actions highlight what people do at each stage. Each of these actions tells you something about what customers are interested in and how close they are to making a purchase.

Analytics tools for your website or app are your best bet for such data. These tools show you which pages customers visit, what they click on and where they drop off.

Once you have this information, tailor your marketing efforts and content to align with the actions customers take at each stage.

4. User research

User research examines what customers search for or where they turn for information during the buying process. This part of the customer journey map helps you understand how customers gather information.

For example, in the awareness stage, buyers often rely on search engines like Google to research solutions to their problems. But it’s not just about where they go—it’s about what they’re looking for. Knowing their specific research topics allows you to address their pain points.

What’s the trick? Keep an eye on what customers search for online. Tracking keywords and phrases they use on search engines, as well as social media market research are good places to start.

Also, monitor discussions and conversations to get a deeper understanding of the questions, concerns and topics that are top-of-mind for your potential customers.

The key is to use this information to provide potential customers with what they need at each stage. Targeted content delivery positions your brand as a valuable source of information.

5. Solutions

This section outlines the actions and strategies your brand implements to address customer pain points and improve their overall experience.

It documents the specific solutions or improvements applied at each stage of the customer journey. These include steps like changes to website design that resolve issues and improve the customer experience.

It visualizes how your brand responds to customer needs and challenges at different touchpoints. Besides that, it’s a good reference to ensure your team implements the solutions and refines them to increase customer satisfaction.

What are the 7 steps to map the customer journey?

A strategic approach to building a map ensures you capture every touchpoint, anticipate customer desires and address potential pain points. Here are seven steps to build a journey map unique to your customers and business needs.

1. Set your goals

What do you want to get out of this process? And why does it matter to your business? Knowing your goals sets the stage for how you assemble your map.

Some examples of goals include:

• Identify the top three customer pain points. Use these pain points to create content.
• Understand customer interests and motivations to develop better products and services.
• Total the cost of customer interactions to set a better social media budget.

2. Decide on a customer journey map type

There are several different customer journey maps and each one has its advantages. When you decide which map to work with, you know which details to focus on.

These are four of the most common types of customer journey maps: current state, future state, day in the life and service blueprint. We’ll go further into detail on each one later on.

Understanding your goals and where your brand stands in its evolution will guide you in selecting the appropriate map type.

3. Create and define your customer personas

Which customers will you focus on? It’s difficult to map a customer journey if you don’t have a customer in mind. Customer personas are fictional characters that represent each of your target customer groups. They’re detailed with everything from demographics to interests to buying behavior.

If you’ve already created social media personas to understand your audience, you’re more than halfway there. But if you haven’t, then our buyer persona template or Xtensio’s will be useful. To really get to know someone’s purchase decisions and shopping processes, interview existing customers.

Pro tip: If you have distinctively different personas—such as, if you serve both a B2C and B2B market—set up different customer journey maps.

4. Break it down: touchpoints and stages

The customer journey map is divided into stages that usually fit within the funnel illustrated above. List out the stages to begin. Next, list out the main customer touchpoints that exist for your company. When you’re done with both lists, place the touchpoints into the different stages.

To get even more detailed, assign department owners to each touchpoint. You can identify where certain social media channels fit into the mix. And, you can assign predicted customer sentiment or emotions to different stages of the journey. It’s up to you how detailed you want the map to be.

5. Gather data and customer feedback

You need rock-solid data on how customers interact with your brand to create an accurate customer journey map. Focus on these three aspects:

Analyze existing data

Jump into the data you already have—more specifically website performance, chats with customer support and sales records. This information can tell you loads about how customers act, what they like and what frustrates them.

This quantitative data offers a foundational perspective on how customers interact with your brand, helping you identify both strengths and areas of improvement.

Conduct customer interviews

Get personal with one-on-one chats with customers. Ask them about their experiences, what bugs them and what they expect when they deal with your brand. These talks reveal qualitative insights that numbers can’t, like understanding the emotional and psychological aspects of the customer journey.

Create surveys and questionnaires

Turn to surveys and questionnaires for a more structured and broader approach to gathering feedback. Send them out to a bunch of customers and get structured feedback. Ask questions about their journey with your brand, how happy they are and where they think things could get better.

A combination of these three aspects gives you a 360-degree view of what your customers really experience with your brand.

6. Test and identify pain points

To confirm your customer touchpoints, you probably checked in on various departments and spoke to customers. This is great work but you need to take another step further: test it yourself. Go through the customer journey from the viewpoint of the customer.

While you’re testing the journey, keep an eye out for challenges, confusion or any frustrating moments. For example, if the website takes forever to load, if instructions aren’t clear or if reaching customer support is a headache, make detailed notes of these issues.

It’s also a smart move to collect feedback from both colleagues and customers who’ve gone through the journey. This way, you double-check and confirm your findings for a more complete picture.

A hands-on approach ensures your customer journey map reflects the real-world experience and equips you to take targeted actions to improve the overall customer journey.

7. Make changes and find solutions

So your map is complete. What’s next? You need to find or create solutions to the pain points you identified in the previous step.

Now’s the time to check in on the goals you established in step one and make the moves to smooth out the journey. Give yourself time and space to implement some of the solutions, whether a quarter or six months, and check back on the map to update it.

As you put these changes into action, make sure to watch your customer journey map closely. Don’t forget to keep it up to date to show the improvements and how they affect the customer experience. This keeps your customer journey map fresh and super useful for steering your brand toward delivering an exceptional customer experience.

4 types of customer journey maps and examples

Let’s take a look at the four most common customer journey maps and examples of each.

1. Current state

Current state customer journey maps are like an audit. You document how your customers experience their buying and service paths in your company’s current state. These are especially helpful to establish a baseline for your customer service experience.

Take a look at this simplified current state customer journey map from Nielsen-Norman.

The map follows the journey of “Jumping Jamie” as they navigate the process of switching to a different mobile plan. The map defines the current journey into four stages. Apart from the journey, it also highlights opportunities and metrics to track.

Current state maps are fantastic for sharing user frustrations with all departments. This helps you get everyone on board with investing in solutions and brainstorming ways to address user pain points.

2. Future state

Future state customer journey maps follow the same format as current state maps except they represent the ideal journey. You can use them alongside your current state maps to identify painpoints and areas to improve.

Here’s an example of a future state journey map:

Why does this visual work? It covers different states, feelings and even touchpoints in a cohesive format.

The map visualizes the best-case scenario to create a north star vision for your brand. It aligns your efforts toward achieving the ideal customer journey.

3. Day-in-the-life

Day-in-the-life customer journey maps outline one of your persona’s schedules as they go about their day. The interactions may or may not involve your company. Creating one of these maps helps you identify the best times and areas to interact with your customer.

Here’s a “day-in-the-life” visual from Pipedrive.

The map doesn’t just highlight when the persona does something, but it also highlights different touchpoints and the different people they interact with throughout the day. And, notice those thumbs ups and downs? Those highlight how the child feels during different activities too.

4. Service blueprint

A service blueprint customer journey map focuses solely on when you provide customer service. It ignores components like ads that might exist in other maps.

Miro, a collaborative online whiteboard for teams, created the above map with a bank in mind. You’ll notice how this map is only about a customer’s visit to the bank. This type of map helps brands look at individual service areas and interactions. It’s a macro version of the current and future state maps.

Get started with customer journey map templates

Creating a customer journey map doesn’t have to be overwhelming. There are plenty of free and paid templates out there to help you create one. If you think you’ll need more guidance or many maps, some companies offer special software to design a custom map. Build your first journey map or improve your existing one with these options.

1. Current state template, provided by Bright Vessel.

2. Customer journey map template by Moqups, a design and collaboration tool.

3. Service blueprint template by Miro

4. Customer journey map template by Mural, a planning tool.

5. UXPressia’s customer journey map online tool, made specifically to create presentation-ready customer journey maps.

Create a strong foundation with a well-integrated customer journey map

A customer journey map gives you the recipe for crafting personalized, impactful interactions that build customer satisfaction and loyalty.

When you know what they are and why they’re important, it’s time to make yours. Use data to create a solid customer journey map that exceeds customer expectations at every touchpoint.

Check out how you can turn your B2B social media data into a revenue-driving powerhouse and create a memorable brand.

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