Dachis Group Social Business Summit 2010 Preview; Sam Decker on Customer Created Content

Next week at the Dachis Group Social Business Summit 2010, the Chief Marketing Officer at Bazaarvoice will be talking about being customer centric. Sam Decker had a chance to share a little bit about his session with us.

You work with CMO’s at the top retail and manufacturer brands in the world. What issues are at the top of their list going into 2010?

We work with marketing leadership at over 750 clients. CMOs state they are doubling their investment in social media marketing, and expect measurement of these programs to grow more than that. One top issue is how to measure this. It’s a top issue because the other top issue they grapple with is how to increase measurability and accountability in a growing reputation-based market. Interactive brand building involves more customer participation than broadcast marketing. They don’t know where to start, how to measure and how to scale this strategy. Now there may be other top issues of course, such as growing sales with shrinking budgets, but this is the area we talk to them about most often.

Where are some places to find the voice of the customer that might not be obvious?

It’s amazing how many execs and brand managers don’t have Google Alerts on their brand, product and competitor names. That may be obvious to someone like you and me, but there are a lot of non-digital-savvy executives who have never seen a Google alert. The most impactful method of finding the voice of the customer is to facilitate it yourself. We do that by facilitating customer stories, questions, answers and product reviews. Certain types of contributions from customers are more meaningful than others, because when customers talk directly about a product, brand or service to others the company is able to ‘listen in’ and leverage a form of digital word of mouth for marketing and culture change. When the brand puts the customer voice in their own hands (as opposed to just listening outside its own walls), they take ownership and action.

Are you starting to see these conversations moving from the halls of the marketing department to other areas of the business, and are they starting to see some real business results?

For me this is the most exciting part about what we do with our clients. I call customer-created content the “Trojan horse” of customer centricity. What was thought of as a digital marketing strategy became a culture shift by democratizing the customer content and data throughout the organization. I have another term for that: “Customer Oxygen.” When every person in an organization can get operational data and ‘voice’ from customers that are relevant to their jobs and decisions, it’s like their breathing a new oxygen that changes micro and macro policies. Product development cycles go from 3 months to 3 days. Merchandisers use new data to choose products or pull product from shelves. Market research – and more importantly, operators – better understand how customers think and buy. And CEOs have a new measure of accountability. As a student of customer-centric strategy, it’s a beautiful thing!