The Increasing Importance of Social Intelligence for Retailers

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Social intelligence is the art of analyzing feedback from consumers who are active on social media. A new generation of tools has begun to process and analyze large amounts of data to reveal their attitudes, views, and preferences. These can be turned into actionable insights.

When such tools are applied in a timely and in-depth way, they can help retailers to:

Measure successful initiatives

Get a better understanding of customer needs

Help in proper brand positioning

According to a new survey, nearly 50 percent of Gen Z and millennial shoppers across markets feel that social platforms are better than online searches to find out about new products. By tapping into their conversations and opinions, retailers can create strategies for success.

A group of technology and marketing experts clarifies this in their book, Social Business Intelligence. They write that social intelligence is the best way to tap into what “consumers, partners, employees and even competitors think about you, your products and services, your company and your team.”

Let’s take a closer look at how social intelligence can help retailers grow and succeed.

Five Ways that Social Intelligence Can Help Retailers

Understanding consumers

‍ It’s often been said that the consumer is king for retailers. Social intelligence puts the consumer at the heart of every decision. You can tap into conversations about their preferences, behaviors, and needs. This can be done by location, so you can discover where to focus your efforts. A proper analysis of consumer attitudes also leads to better segmentation and personalization.

Competitive analysis

Social intelligence provides retailers with valuable information on direct and indirect competitors. Do shoppers prefer your products to theirs, or is it the other way around? What competitive actions do they like and dislike? Are there tactics that you should watch out for? All this and more help retailers calibrate their offerings and plan for the future.

Product and service innovation‍

An essential role of social intelligence is spot trends. It can complement market research to illuminate specific interests, needs, and actions. This can be turned into insights for new products and online and offline ways of shopping.

Customer service

A satisfied consumer is loyal and an online brand ambassador. Customer service plays a significant role in achieving this. Through social intelligence, retailers gain the ability to respond to positive and negative feedback promptly. Complaints can be sensitively resolved, and potential customers can be won over.

Risk assessment and crisis management

Protecting a retailer’s reputation is another valuable part of social intelligence. Alerts can be set up for relevant keywords to identify and manage any potential crisis. With ongoing data-driven risk analytics, problems can be spotted in time. Remedies can be provided before these spiral out of control.

Cogent’s InCights team has a suite of powerful tools for predictions, prescriptions, and diagnoses when it comes to social intelligence. If you’re in the retail sector and want to see how to put these to work, contact us today.