Mr. Gambhir

Social Media & PR

The Real Opportunity with Customer Reviews Online

By Ashish Gambhir, Co-founder , newBrandAnalytics

Chances are you’re swimming in the reams and reams of customer feedback data you have amassed. Adding to the data set is the hospitality industry’s newfound recognition of the importance of social media and online customer feedback. But, few companies have figured out how to systematically analyze information shared through social media channels, distill true guests insight, and determine the optimal actions based on this feedback.

Not too long ago, if you stayed in a hotel that did not meet your expectations you may have reported your disappointment on the guest feedback card located in your room. Perhaps you even filled out the post-stay survey. And chances are, you cautioned a few of your friends to stay somewhere else.

Now, fast forward a few years and consider the impact of handheld devices, increased communication platforms online, and, of course, social media. They have radically transformed the way guests voice their opinions about your hotel. Each channel and medium has lowered the “hurdle” to provide feedback. Instead of finding a comment card and still caring enough to fill out the survey, customers can instantly share their opinion with the world with ease.

In fact, hospitality, perhaps more than any other industry, has been transformed by social media. In a recent survey analyzing consumer behavior, Travelzoo found that an overwhelming 81% of travelers turned to hotel review sites to help with their decision-making. Half of those polled said online reviews from previous guests are the most influential. TripAdvisor puts that number even higher - stating recently that 87% of travelers read reviews when planning their next trip.

The rapid growth, tremendous reach, and unbelievable influence of social media feedback are undeniable. While feedback volume from traditional sources (e.g., customer surveys) continues to decline - response rates from these channels has fallen from 50% in 2007 to 28% in 2011 - mentions per brand, region, and even store (or product) on social feedback channels are increasing exponentially. Hotels that capture what guests are saying online, analyze the feedback, and put all of the social media activity to work in a productive way will gain a distinct competitive advantage. As social media has quickly evolved into the most important source of guest feedback, it is critical for hotels to be more customer-focused and socially savvy. Rest assured mining online customer feedback is not just a flavor-of-the-month program; it is a business imperative. When done intelligently, gathering guest feedback and analyzing it provides the level of actionable insight that can drive operational and marketing strategy.

Gleaning and translating the rich information embedded in online customer mentions equips brands with the unfiltered, real-time, voice-of-the-customer insight they need to enhance customer satisfaction and earn loyalty. In some ways, the web has turned every customer into a “mystery shopper,” focus group participant, or any other source of guest satisfaction traditionally used. But instead of getting a few dated insights as a part of the analysis, you receive thousands, in real time, and all unsolicited.

Nobody is Starving for Data... But Many are Starving for Actionable Information

It is clear that there is no shortage of guest feedback online. Companies, writes New York Times reporter Steven Lohr, are swimming, if not drowning, in wave after wave of customer mentions. These social and mobile-era technologies, by one estimate, are doubling the quantity of business data every 1.2 years.

Hotels that dedicate resources to online feedback will harvest a wealth of data about their guest experiences. The challenge they face, however, is how best to utilize the data unearthed in these various online channels to drive marketing and operational strategies. In fact, according to Accenture, CMO’s note that the primary reason they are under-utilizing social media is the lack of analytics.

Many marketers employ basic brand monitoring tools to try to make sense of the overflowing buckets of online feedback. These tools are effective in helping hotels mine the data, but here’s the issue. The challenge of gleaning actionable insight from this feedback is a result of the same factors that makes this online dialogue so valuable in the first place: it is raw, unstructured, and open-ended nature.

Naturally, we gravitate towards what is “tangible.” We develop a series of metric-based questions to ask guests such as: “How was service on a scale of 1 to 10?” or “Would you stay here again at the same rate?” We pose these questions because they are easy to measure, trend and understand… but are we really capturing relevant information? Do we really know what our guests are saying? Does a “7 out of 10” for service mean anything that can actually be utilized?

The best data is in the free form textbox because it enables the customer to simply speak their mind. This is where most of the “meat” is, but also represents the most challenging data to get through with any type of efficiency, relevance, or analysis. Further complicating things, free form feedback has a new platform in social media. Guests are talking about their stay, preferences for service, concierge efficacy, check in procedures, etc., all without being prompted by you. All with great detail, reach, and influence.

The best way to harness the strategic value of this rich social media feedback is to move beyond high level or anecdotal listening by using technology that turns raw, unstructured feedback into actionable insights. As Forrester analyst Zach Hofer-Shall, a leading expert on Social Intelligence, blogs, “The concept of monitoring social media might sound obvious, because most data-hungry marketers understand the value of their customers' social data. But based on my research, even though most marketers may collect this data, far fewer actually use it to inform an enterprise-view of their customers. As any analytical mind knows: collecting data is only the first step.”

Hofer-Shall goes on to outline the process for harnessing social media data to inform your business strategy --- a process Forrester calls "Social Intelligence" which they define as: "the management and analysis of customer data from social sources, used to activate and recalibrate marketing or business programs".

Unica’s annual survey of marketers echoes Hofer-Shall’s contention. The survey, “The State of Marketing 2011” reflects the beliefs of nearly 300 online and direct marketers across various industries, geographies and company sizes that were surveyed on key technology trends in their organizations. The research uncovered a number of key findings, including the need to “turn data into action” as the highest priority for marketers: nearly 60% of respondents listed “measurement, analysis, and learning” as their top technology challenge; more than 60% identified “turning data into action” as their top organizational issue.

It’s evident that the mere fact that guests are talking about your hotel means little unless you can understand the context, credibility, and sentiments of the comments. For example, look at these three posts:

• “I loved staying at Hotel ABC.”
• “If the service at Hotel ABC was better, I would have loved it.”
• “I loved staying at Hotel ABC, but it’s tough for them to beat out Hotel DEF on location alone.”

Three comments that all talk about LOVING HOTEL ABC ---- but three postings with very different meanings.

The only way to arrive at true insight into these comments and gain an understanding of the giant free form textbox that is social media is by using industry-specific natural language processing (NLP) engines to read the feedback for you. An effective NLP engine is the equivalent of having a team of 100 analysts read through every single mention about your hotel on the web word by word, extracting themes, anomalies, opportunities, successes, failures, etc. When NLP is combined with credibility assessments of each mention and hotel-specific feedback categorization, you convert the social media “feedback fire hose” into a well organized, actionable database of information.

With an intelligent view of this feedback, business decisions can be made using real-time, unsolicited, and relevant customer feedback. Not to mention, this is the same feedback that thousands of potential guests read prior to booking decisions.

As Jack Welch is quoted as saying, “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.” Employing an effective social business intelligence platform is the key to translating learning into action.

Ashish Gambhir is co-founder of newBrandAnalytics, the industry’s only social business intelligence platform proven to help operating and marketing executives turn real-time social customer insights into actionable information. Harvesting a depth and breadth of customer feedback unmatched by other platforms, newBrandAnalytics solutions deliver the tools, research and analysis required to distill a real-time, 360 degree view of social guest satisfaction data. His company is helping leading hotel executives generate the social business intelligence to improve guest satisfaction, increase guest count and drive revenues. Mr. Gambhir can be contacted at ashish@newbrandanalytics.com Extended Bio...

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