The majority of retailers who use social media to connect with consumers are not taking advantage of the platform’s full potential.
Boston Retail Partners (BRP) has released a new report studying the opportunities that social media presents to retailers when it comes to creating a memorable and personalized customer shopping experience. The new report has revealed that social media produces innumerable opportunities for retailers to engage with their customers, but the majority of retailers are not successfully taking advantage of these opportunities.
According to the BRP SPECIAL REPORT: Enhancing Customer Engagement Through Social Media, 81% of retailers using social media to engage with customers indicate that their processes need improvement.
“Social media provides retailers with unprecedented visibility into their customer base. It provides a venue where retailers can directly communicate with their customers and it can be an extremely powerful tool for collecting and using customer insights to improve planning decisions,” said Brian Brunk, principal at BRP. “Retailers can understand who the customer is, what she wants, when and where she wants it and even why she wants it, based on social media postings and feedback.”
This Special Report provides insight into BRP’s 2016 Customer Experience/Unified Commerce Survey and highlights the social media opportunities and challenges facing leading retailers today.
The report identifies five key areas where retailers should utilize social media to improve the customer journey:
- Experience – 69% of retailers see opportunities to utilize social media to enhance the customer experience.
- Interaction – 75% of retailers support customer interaction via social media.
- Endorsement – 59% of retailers plan to utilize brand advocacy/ social media endorsement as a source for identifying their most valuable customers within three years.
- Satisfaction – 59% of retailers utilize social media comments as a means of measuring customer satisfaction.
- Insight – 60% of retailers capture customer feedback and insights from social media and online comments.
To download the full report, please visit https://bostonretailpartners.com/2016-brp-special-report-social-media/