But to cut to the chase, if you’re a brand, here’s why real time search should both excite you and scare the heck out of you. Everything that people say about your brand is IMMEDIATELY available. To show you exactly what I mean, I saw a post by my friend @stevegarfield on Twitter this morning, lamenting the poorly designed user experience at a Bank of America ATM machine. Lo and behold, those tweets instantly show up in Google search, along with the comments made by others poking fun at BOA.
Then, as I dove into this article, I did another real time Google search, this time searching the term “Bank of America” which shows more comments, all made in the span of just a few minutes, about poor experiences, customer service, etc., experienced at the hands of Bank of America.
Wow. If you were their CMO, would you care? More importantly, is BOA using monitoring tools so that they’re immediately aware of what’s being said about their brand? What a great opportunity for a brand to continually monitor what’s being said and then immediately (or as quickly as possible) reach out to customers expressing frustration or dissatisfaction and fix their problems. And, as we all know, fixing problems helps save relationships. Real time search has far-reaching implications. What’s your brand’s strategy?
Shelly Kramer is a Principal Analyst and Founding Partner at Futurum Research. A serial entrepreneur with a technology centric focus, she has worked alongside some of the world’s largest brands to embrace disruption and spur innovation, understand and address the realities of the connected customer, and help navigate the process of digital transformation. She brings 20 years’ experience as a brand strategist to her work at Futurum, and has deep experience helping global companies with marketing challenges, GTM strategies, messaging develoment, and driving strategy and digital transformation for B2B brands across multiple verticals. Shelly’s coverage areas include Collaboration/CX/SaaS, platforms, ESG, and Cybersecurity, as well as topics and trends related to the Future of Work, the transformation of the workplace and how people and technology are driving that transformation. A transplanted New Yorker, she has learned to love life in the Midwest, and has firsthand experience that some of the most innovative minds and most successful companies in the world also happen to live in “flyover country.”
