Synthesio, Global Social Media Monitoring

The 2012 Summer Olympics are fast-approaching and we’re excited to be a part of the action! With the projected millions of visitors that will set foot at the games at the Olympic Park – located in Stratford, Greater London – vendors and Olympic sponsors are focusing their efforts on providing their customers with a quality experience.

BT, a leading phone and digital TV provider for UK homes & businesses, has teamed up with Synthesio to keep a pulse on their consumers who will be attending the Olympic games. BT’s goal is to monitor online complaints in order to rapidly resolve issues and maintain top quality service for their customers.

Our partnership with BT was mentioned in the News section of the V3.co.uk website…

“We have been working with BT Retail [which already uses the Synthesio tool] to add more information to the platform so we will receive insights on any positive or negative feedback and look for people discussing issues they are having with our services,” Gary Symes, Service Director 2012 Olympics at BT Global Services, said during an event at the Technology Operations Centre (TOC), attended by V3.

“This will help us quickly dispatch staff to the areas where the problems are occurring and contact the person making the complaint directly and try and help them too.”

Symes mentioned that BT will incorporate learnings from their experiences of monitoring conversations during the Olympic games, to assist with ongoing engagement efforts between BT and their customers, even after the Olympic games have ended.

Although Synthesio is not participating in any of the Olympic sporting events, we’re geared up and ready to assist BT in maintaining satisfied customers, focused on what’s important- the gold medals!

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Advanced Influence Ranking System for Businesses & Agencies

At Synthesio, we don’t rely on the popular service ‘Klout’ for influencer identification, as has become commonplace with other listening providers. Instead, we’ve built our own influence ranking system from the ground up; a business-oriented influencer tool, specifically designed for helping the world’s leading brands and agencies to identify the sites and users that matter most to them.

Our proprietary influence ranking system, called SynthesioRank, is 100% automated, and has already been road-tested and successfully implemented by a number of our clients globally including Microsoft and Nissan. It leverages a unique set of calculations for each media type – Facebook, Twitter, Sina Weibo, Blogs, Mainstream sites, etc. – and is built into both our global social media monitoring dashboards, and our enterprise level Social CRM engagement platform, Unity. The result is a powerful, industry-leading tool built with the needs of brands and agencies in mind. By contrast, Klout and others like Kred have gained popularity with consumers by providing a fun method with which to measure their personal influence, but lack the consistency, accuracy and advanced calculations per media type to truly be valuable to businesses, as SynthesioRank strives to be.

According to Loic Moisand, our CEO, “As more and more brands begin to understand the massive value associated with listening to social media banter, the next question inevitably becomes, ‘who should we pay attention to most, and on which sites should we be focusing our communications and budgets?’ As a result, ‘Influencer Identification’ has become a hot topic, so we’re excited to be the first social media monitoring company to truly create a ‘Klout for Grownups’, an advanced, consistent and accurate system to help the companies identify the influencers that matter most to their unique needs – and with companies like Microsoft, Nissan and L’Oreal jumping aboard, it seems like we’re onto something pretty big here.”

With SynthesioRank, companies may now identify influence on a number of levels including websites, users and even down to an individual mention. In other words, if Apple were to monitor online conversations surrounding their latest iPhone for example, they could instantaneously see which are the top influential websites mentioning the product (broken down per media type – mainstream, blogs, forums, etc.), who are the top influential users driving the conversations, and they could even prioritize the massive amounts of data by focusing on the most influential mentions first. What’s more, all influencer lists may be broken down per country and even topic and subtopic, allowing various departments of a brand to identify the influencers that are most important to them – so Apple could easily see influencer lists for each product like iPhone and Macbook Pro, and even fine-tune further to see those talking about iPhone’s Siri, Macbook Pro’s new Retina Display, their pricing or their TV ads…

Most importantly perhaps, SynthesioRank’s various calculations include relevant influence as well, taking into account how many on-topic mentions have been posted on a given site, or mentioned by a given user. This is extremely valuable because a person on Twitter, for example, who has 1 million followers might be seen as influential in general, but if he’s never mentioned your brand, perhaps he’s not particularly influential for you.

“The value of SynthesioRank is in its advanced calculations and in the vast selection of influencer types and filters available for brands and agencies to leverage. For example one Twitter user is ranked via the number of on-topic tweets, total tweets, followers, following, and how many times they’ve been listed, whereas a mainstream website is ranked via the on-topic mentions, frequency of updates, their Alexa Rank for traffic, Google PageRank, and even the placement of the mention within the article (a comment has a lower weight than a title mention). You simply cannot find this level of influencer detail and value anywhere else. In addition to ranking influential users on Twitter and Facebook, some unique features include rankings for Facebook groups/fan-pages, country-specific sites like Sina Weibo, other sites like blogs, forums and mainstream news sites, and even YouTube videos and YouTube channels. It’s all there in one, extremely intuitive and user friendly platform.” says Loic.

We’re delighted to have already received press about this announcement at the Holmes Report – you can read their article here.

For a big brand, having a Facebook page is expected and important in this social media age. But having a Facebook page, and running one effectively, are two different things.

Whilst big brands will usually attract hundreds or thousands of ‘fans’ to their Facebook page automatically, many of whom will post on their wall, the difficulty arises in trying to answer all questions and engage with these fans appropriately, in an attempt to foster a community. Responding to customer questions is especially important if they are technical or customer service related, and customers rightly expect quick and accurate responses to these issues.

Why is social customer service on Facebook so hard to get right?

The catalyst for these difficulties lies in the current Facebook page interface. Facebook does not offer a search engine on your wall, so your customers don’t have the ability to find specific discussions. Your answers are neither archived nor classified, so customers may end up asking the same questions over and over again.

In addition,  these questions do not always correspond to the editorial purpose or tone of voice of the page (e.g. playful/corporate/engaged). For example, if an appliance brand attempts to promote its brand values and marketing campaigns on its page, and fans start saying, “I have a problem with my dishwasher”, the page can quickly become customer service-centric – and deleting posts like this is not an option, as tempting as it might be.

Finally, Facebook does not accommodate the emergence of “super users”. Unlike a forum, their history on the page is not visible, and so such active users aren’t highlighted as influential or knowledgeable customers, and can’t drive the development of a community.

So what’s the solution?

Given these constraints, there is a need to centralize customers’ questions and the answers to them, in order to better manage your page and satisfy your customers. Each of your answers to a technical issue, such as a product query or delivery problem, should be easily found and accessed by all your customers. By creating a space dedicated to customer service issues, you can allow your customers to find a quick solution to their problem and at the same time preserve the editorial feel of the wall.

The “one-to-one” relationship that you would normally have with your customers on a typical Facebook page, hence becomes a “one-to-many.” Three key elements will help you in this process:

- A search engine that allows the user to find an answer without having to ask the question.
- A great interface to enhance the contributors’ user experience and encourage them to help the community.
- A ‘back office’ functionality to help track customer relationships on Facebook and facilitate the sharing of customer information with relevant departments (Customer Service, Marketing, R & D).

Synthesio has developed the Facebook Community app to do all of these things. In a dedicated tab, your fans will find all your answers to their questions and you can centralize all contributions relating to defined issues like customer service.

Synthesio’s Facebook Community app offers a whole host of features and settings to make the management of your Facebook page simple and efficient:

- Tab dedicated to customer service issues and other user-defined categories
- Categorisation of customer returns
- Quick access to answers
- Search Tool
- Certification of messages
- Exchange private messages
- Management of exchange

If you’re interested in transforming your Facebook page into a true customer relationship channel, email kiron@synthesio.com to find out more information.

Internet Week NY 2012 has come to an end, but with approximately 200 city-wide events in NYC, and 20,000 tweets throughout the week, it’s definitely left its mark on the digital community of NY and beyond. In fact, this year’s event has generated nearly double the Twitter buzz as compared to last year, a testament not only to the growing magnitude of the event, but surely the exciting speakers, activities and content of the sessions as well.

Some trending topics being tweeted during the event include Digital, Party, Future, Excited and Love, which further illustrate the positive and stimulating discourse taking place throughout the city. The conversation peaked at an impressive level of 5,000 tweets on the second day of the event, undoubtedly due in part to engaging events like the OMMA Social and Keynote speaking from The New York Times’ David Carr & Brian Stelter who took the stage with Chairman of Internet Week NY, David-Michel Davies.

Last week, we posted the Internet Week Halftime Report announcing the trends and influencers at the halfway point, but now the time has come to share the final results. What were the trending topics on people’s mind? Who were the most buzz-generating keynote speakers, and of course, who ultimately made it to the top of the Internet Week 2012 influencers list? Click on the Post Game Report below to find out!

New Partnership to Enable Enhanced Social CRM and Engagement Capabilities

Synthesio, a leading provider of global social media monitoring, analysis and engagement solutions, announced today a new partnership with Lithium Technologies, the leader in Social Customer Experience. The partnership aims to unite the unique strengths that each brings to the table, to deliver an enhanced Social CRM platform with industry-leading features.

Since 2006, Synthesio has focused on developing advanced global web monitoring technologies and services, providing brands and agencies with valuable data and insights to better understand their markets and enhance their bottom line – and with a rapidly growing client roster which includes the likes of Microsoft, Nissan, Johnson & Johnson and RIM, it’s clear that they have established their place as a leader in the space. In late 2011, Synthesio announced their arrival into the Social CRM scene with the launch of their social engagement platform – Unity. An ambitious, cutting-edge platform, Unity aspires to take Social CRM technologies to the next level by offering agencies and brands advanced collaboration capabilities coupled with the ability to directly engage with their audience in real-time, not only within Facebook and Twitter, but now also within the other two previously neglected key media types: blogs and forums.

Lithium is the standard for hosted communities and social customer engagement with a seamless experience across websites, mobile devices and the social Web. The Lithium Social Customer Suite grows brand advocacy, drives sales, reduces costs and accelerates innovation for over 300 iconic brands, including AT&T, BT, Best Buy, Sephora, Skype and Telstra. Lithium’s software allows brands to build vibrant communities that engage and activate their social customers to increase sales conversion by up to 25%, double customer spend and lower support costs by millions of dollars.

According to Thomas Le Gac, Managing Director, Synthesio France, “After 4 years working on Social CRM initiatives for Telecoms, I can recognize a powerful social engagement offering when I see it. At Synthesio, we work on Social CRM projects with clients of various industries from Hospitality, to Finance to Telecom, providing proven, tangible ROI, and we’re excited to collaborate with Lithium to further expand our capabilities and provide our clients with the best of our two companies.”

The partnership will aim to seamlessly integrate the Lithium hosted communities as an additional media type with which clients may engage within Synthesio’s Unity Engagement platform. The result will be a uniquely powerful, centralized platform allowing for direct engagement within Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums, Facebook FAQ and now Lithium hosted communities as well, along with Synthesio’s powerful enterprise-level collaboration, reporting features, and the valuable ability to integrate with 3rd party CRM platforms, such as Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, and even internal client-side platforms such as call-center-logs, surveys, etc.

Lithium’s Bruno Teuber, Senior Vice President & General Manager, EMEA, said: “While new social networks offer a host of opportunities for marketers, they also introduce unprecedented complexity. Brands require a selective and unified engagement solution that helps them engage with their customers. Synthesio Unity provides a powerful asset to do just that.”

“Lithium is pleased to be a key community platform integrated with Synthesio Unity. This approach has been requested and validated by several of our joint customers. Synthesio’s monitoring background ensures a high level of expertise for accessing heterogeneous sources including high-performance platforms like the Lithium Community Platform.”

Social CRM has been an increasingly hot topic in recent months, as more and more leading brands realize the value associated with direct online consumer engagement, and seek out the latest tools to facilitate their activities.

According to Gartner, a leading technology research and advisory firm headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, “Two of the four most critical new issues for customer service organizations in 2012 will be:
- How to harmonize customer service processes that sometimes happen with a human support agent, sometimes through self-service and sometimes by peer-to-peer community networks.
- Building competencies in integrating collaborative or social CRM into ongoing customer service workflows.”

Both Lithium and Synthesio have been embracing this truth for customer service by enabling direct interaction for brands and adding an additional level of value by leveraging online communities where users organically convene to voice their feedback. In addition to building a venue for effective brand-to-consumer communication, these communities are designed to allow members to answer questions on behalf of the brand as well. By empowering passionate brand advocates with a dedicated venue and encouragement to answer questions, Social CRM is converting consumers into advocates, and advocates into valuable brand ambassadors.

“With one award-winning client, we achieved a level where customer service only answers less than 10% of online questions; they merely monitor the rest and certify the best consumer answers, so future consumers may easily find their answers. The results are substantial with enhanced customer satisfaction, improved brand reputation, dramatically reduced incoming support calls and savings in the millions.” says Le Gac.