» Chief Listening Officer: dircom reloaded ?

Chief Listening Officer: dircom reloaded ?

Enero 21st, 2008 by Sebas Parigi

Existe una nueva forma de denominar al tradicional dircom o director de comunicaciones: Chief Listening Officer (CLO).

En un par de artículos que estuve leyendo, donde se profundizan algunos de los cambios que deberá dar el marketing tradicional para adaptarse al nuevo contexto, se habla de ello quizás como una propuesta a incorporar en las empresas. Creo que aún es un tanto pronto para verlo ya en los organigramas…! pero de por sí una función tan lindante con el mundo exterior de las corporaciones deberá tomar nota de todo esto.

Los cambios que se avecinan (o ya están!) en los negocios o el marketing tradicional sin dudas van a necesitar de una gestión de las comunicaciones corporativas mucho más integral que hasta ahora. La zona gris existente entre el dircom y el marketing se potenciará mucho más, si tenemos en cuenta que cada vez más los mercados se volverán conversaciones en entornos digitales.

David Weinberger reseña de algún modo la zona de confort en la cual las compañías realizan sus acciones de marketing y comunicación corporativa. Coinciden varios en que el cambio será gradual y que los marketineros tienen ante sí un gran desafío.

El mismo o mayor tendrán los profesionales PR, dado que para comunicar productos o instituciones se deberá conocer y escuchar mucho más el entorno. A veces las PR caen también en el error del monólogo. Ahora las herramientas son mucho más accesibles que antes y están ahí al alcance de todos. Ya no serán pesadas investigaciones de mercado, tracks de imagen o reputación; sino redes y conversaciones vivas donde las compañías ya estarán interviniendo de algún modo (con la máxima de todo comunica, incluído el silencio)

If you wanted to build an environment in which blogging would be tempted to betray its values, you’d build a modern corporation. Marketing has trained companies to speak in safe platitudes. Legal has warned companies not to let anyone speak without permission. Executives have let themselves believe that they got where they are because they’re oh so fascinating. It’s a miracle there are any good corporate blogs at all.

De algún modo habrá una necesidad de re-evaluar los presupuestos de marketing a partir de la existencia de nuevos escenarios sociales conversacionales.

Research by BT and the Future Foundation shows that family and friends are much more influential than advertising in shaping consumer’s buying activities. Their recommendation (good or bad) is much more likely to be based on first hand experience than on the adverts they have seen.

El mismo rol de la publicidad parece estar cambiando. Google fue el inicio de ese cambio.

Lord Leverhulme knew that half of his advertising spend was effective – he just didn’t know which half. But just how effective is advertising compared with other approaches? What would be the effect on sales revenue of reducing advertising by 20% and investing that saving in improving the customer experience? What, if instead of bombarding customers with more advertising, we listened more to them and used their feedback to improve the service provided? Are companies listening enough or is marketing too much of a monologue?

Y por qué no han empezado aún, o lo hacen tímidamente? Que la web2 es un fenómeno ciudadano y heredero del hackerismo ya se dijo, pero estás 2 razones me resultan divertidas también:

* There’s obviously no technical reason why a corporation couldn’t start up its own blogs, and many have. But so often corporate blogs are the worst sort of marketing: marketing pretending that it isn’t marketing.

* The fact that companies are stalled at Enterprise 1.5 isn’t due to a simple failing, as if they’re just not as smart as the Web 2.0 hackers.

Seguramente para las empresas es un verdadero cambio de paradigma….y a pasos bien rápidos!

We’ve told companies for a generation now that information is their second most important asset. But, in the 2.0 world, information is free to roam, mate, and produce unexpected offspring. Most companies aren’t ready to go that far, so they point to how they’ve mashed up their store locations with Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Maps, and declare Web 2.0 victory.

Por lo tanto se algunas de las funciones del CLO se volverán vitales para el negocio.

Segmentation. From the insights generated by a rich feedback and listening system, the CLO will define customer segments upon which the company will build and tailor its value propositions. Segments will be context based, with customers moving in and out of segments as their circumstances and needs change.
Measuring the customer experience. Customers look beyond the product when making their buying decisions. As product life cycles shrink and companies can replicate a competitor’s product quickly, the broader experience will become even more important. In the customer-managed information world, the complete customer experience takes on a whole new significance. In the world of customer-managed information, customers will rank suppliers on criteria they set. Failure to deliver a great experience may lead to a firm being demoted or even removed from a list of a customer’s preferred suppliers. Measurement of activities across the customer journey is, therefore, a vital element of the CLO’s toolkit.
Intentions management. “Past performance is no guarantee of future returns.” What is true of investments holds for customer intentions. Understanding the customer’s intentions is the key to being able to focus marketing and face-to-face interactions on the issues and opportunities each customer presents.
Data integration and mining. Insights come when different data is integrated. The CLO will lead the way in mining understanding from the different seams of information gathered about customers and the operations that serve them. Looking for causal links will be top of the list.
Early warning systems. The information generated will be used by the CLO to develop predictive algorithms and track buying intentions and customers at risk. This information will be shared with frontline staff to enable them to sell effectively and, where appropriate, take the action needed to retain a firm’s preferred customers.
Campaign management. The information and insights gleaned by the CLO will be used to personalize the content and timing of marketing messages to each customer based on the integration of data about intentions, campaign responses, satisfaction and past activity. To respond to the power of customer managed information, these campaigns will be truly dynamic and individual. This goes beyond one-to-one, requiring true context-specific marketing.