Listening platforms – imperfect but still worthwhile
I’ve been doing ‘buzz research’ using a combination of free and licensed tools for a number of years now and I thought it might be useful to share a few thoughts and experiences given all the ‘buzz about buzz’, in particular, the growing interest in professional listening platforms.
Let me begin by saying, my starting point is has always been scepticism regarding the ability of machines to do the job on their own. Whilst I am fascinated with Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity concept, I believe we are still a long way away from computers being smarter than humans. The current limitations of listening platforms prove it.
So the question for me has always been which tool is the best minimiser of the need for human intervention, not which one will replace it. The tools on the market today are simply not sophisticated enough, if they ever will be, to deliver full automation. And are we really ready for it, if they could?
The list below provides an overview of what I consider to be the top strengths and weaknesses of the majority of tools on the market.
Strengths: They help make sense of the data
- Provide sophisticated dashboards with easy to use reporting features
- Facilitate early detection of problematic issues which could negatively affect product sales or share price
- Provide a ‘temperature check’ on a wide range of issues and metrics
- Increasingly help manage engagement through response management tools and workflows
Weaknesses: They are machines not humans
- Automated sentiment is not always accurate due to natural language processing limitations
- They do not capture everything that is relevant although they get better with training
- Assessing who is influential is hotly debated and contestable with no standard methodology in place across providers
- We need to supplement tools with human analysts to properly vet and classify the data
In spite of their limitations, they are incredibly useful tools for what they do pick up. It is then up to the human analysts and planners to make sense of it all. The ability to identify problems and consequently take corrective action before an issue becomes a crisis reaching national or global proportions makes these tools entirely worthwhile.
But early detection of customer experience and service problems is not the only reason to have a listening service in place, other reasons include identifying who is influential in conversations about your brand, your share of those converversations, and where they are taking place. You just need to be aware that you need to factor in time to vet and classify the data if you are going to fully reap the benefits.
If you are interested in finding out more, please consider attending Monitoring Social Media 09, where I and others with experience in this field will be speaking in depth about this topic.
