How do companies manage social listening?

“Listening and Engaging in the Digital Marketing Age” - a report, from Forrester.

The full report from Forrester, commissioned by Dell, is available to read and download from Dell's micro-site, which is here, the up-shot is that companies that launch listening and digital engagement initiatives are rewarded with improved customer satisfaction scores, loyalty and brand metrics.

Only 50% of companies surveyed (US sample) feel that social media is a core function in their business, however they do feel that their efforts are serious despite only 6% of companies saying that their social media functions are very integrated in the business.

“Listening and responding to customers is so basic and fundamental. The emergence of social media elevates how companies can act on the feedback they get from customers,” (Karen Quintos, senior vice president and Chief Marketing Officer at Dell)

We've read and summarised the key findings in the report below:

“I believe the greatest benefit has been that our customers who use social media and interact with our efforts see us as a more progressive company because we are using multiple channels for communicating.” (Marketer at enterprise banking company)

Where to start?

Assuming you're in the majority where social media usage is pretty limited to one or two key techniques, Forrester gave their advice on where to start:

• Set a premium where efforts can really impact commercial change, based on Forrester's previous comments these would be product based interactions that can influence sale. The most obvious Examples may be simply a useful and active social FAQ to aid in purchase decisions or employing Uservoice or Get Satisfaction to crowd-source product development ideas. It doesn't need to be complicated to demonstrate immediate, commercial benefit.
• Listening to and learning from customer conversations is important, as is the ability to dip into those conversation where they might matter most. Resources are tight for all of us, I think Forrester are suggesting that we focus our attention and efforts on where an influential person (maybe a blog), or an influential conversation (maybe a few people debating something on an important forum or social network), are already active. The conversations with opportunity are likely where there is already interest and attention.

What do you think - does your experience marry with the research or do you have a different take?