Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
July 1st, 2010 by tbj
One of the unique abilities of Buzzient is our ability to integrate with enterprise business applications, notably Oracle. Through Buzzient, users of Oracle CRM can create sales leads or customer support tickets based on what people are saying on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media.
We’ve posted a presentation for the Oracle Partner Network community on how we do this, as well as the roadmap for the future:
http://www.slideshare.net/tbjbuzzient/buzzient-presentation-oraclejul262010
June 29th, 2010 by tbj
This is a bit overdue, but we’ve quietly released support for monitoring games on Facebook, iTunes, MySpace, and other major platforms. We’ve actually had this capability deployed with a major customer since last year, but now that we’re getting more questions about it, we might as well ‘fess up.
The growth in social gaming is a powerful trend; gaming developers, however realize now that it’s not enough to release the game, you also need to manage performance. That’s where Buzzient comes in. We enable game developers to monitor customer service, receive real-time feedback from users, as well as understand overall sentiment on deployed games. This gives developers crucial feedback in determining what new features to develop, or how to improve retention and reduce churn.
Look for more Buzzient announcements and partnerships in this exciting new sector the rest of 2010 and 2011.
June 24th, 2010 by tbj
We’ve had a GREAT time at the annual Oracle Conference for Retail vertical customers, CrossTalk. As a part of Buzzient’s partnership with Oracle, we had the opportunity to address the entire audience during the general session.
It’s very clear to smart retailers that social media is impacting their industry, particularly when it comes to merchandising and customer service.
We look forward to continued work with Oracle in this industry vertical!
June 22nd, 2010 by tbj
We’re speaking at the Oracle Retail CrossTalk conference this year. We’re humbled and proud to be a partner of Oracle, and enthusiastic about sharing our experiences with enterprise-class use of social media.
Retail is a logical vertical industry for social media applications; over 80% of US adults are on social media according to Forrester. In response, over 60% of retailers have implemented some sort of social media presence (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace). The real challenge is in monitoring consumer reaction to retail social media storefronts, and finding (a) a way to analyze the results and (b) and way to integrate the results with existing retail applications.
I’ll present my slides tomorrow after our speaking session, but look for more announcements from Buzzient in Retail, as well as with Oracle.
http://secure.lenos.com/lenos/emp/OracleCrossTalk2010/agenda.asp
May 3rd, 2010 by tbj
Buzzient was just written up in Techcrunch.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/01/advice-from-founders-who-bootstrapped-their-way-to-success-2/
The most important theme in this article IMHO, is customer focus. We at Buzzient realize that we’re nothing without our great customers. I wanted to say a quick word of “Thanks” to those companies such as Credit Suisse, Motley Fool, Perkin Elmer, Credit Suisse, Pace University and others who have chosen Buzzient!
April 20th, 2010 by agoeldi
When the news that the SEC is suing Goldman Sachs for fraud broke last Friday, activity in social media picked up immediately.
And the online verdict was clear: The story is extremely damaging to Goldman’s reputation. Buzzient’s automated sentiment analysis algorithm constantly analyzes online sentiment from millions of posts in real-time. On our detailed sentiment scale, a typical value for a company like Goldman Sachs is somewhere between 0 and 15 — more or less neutral.
However, on Friday the sentiment values suddenly turned very negative. Goldman reached a -20, which is a value rarely seen for large brands.
Things were even worse for certain source types. Many financial blogs provided damning in-depth analysis of the case, which led to even lower sentiment values in the blogosphere.
On a typical day, only a couple of hundred social media posts mention Goldman Sachs. On Friday however, volume suddenly rose to well over 1400 posts, about seven times the normal volume.
Interestingly, post volume remained very high throughout the weekend. That’s highly unusual for business-related topics and shows how strongly the public reacts to these allegations.
By the way: The spike visible around April 7 was related to an exclusive CBS report on Goldman’s business practices. But the sentiment analysis shows that this report was discussed in social media in a mostly neutral way. It was retweeted frequently without an overly negative tone.
Most news stories only cause a short spike in social media activity that lasts for a day or two. The fact that the SEC lawsuit story led to so many negative posts four days in a row (and the fifth day shows no signs of abating) clearly shows that the Goldman scandal strikes a chord. Social media is an excellent indicator for public sentiment in real-time, and Goldman clearly has a problem on its hands.
March 5th, 2010 by tbj
Whew…things have been flying here at Buzzient, so much so that blog posting got pushed back. Just a few updates for our friends:
- 6 new customer signings, including a bulge bracket investment bank, leading life sciences infrastructure company, SEO/SEM Agency, University and others.
- Multiple new releases, including the Santa Release (Dec 09) as well as a new dashboard for monitoring top users in social media
What’s also great is that our message around combining social media with CRM applications finally seems to be taking hold. Analysts are now discussing Social CRM in everyday conversations, when 3 years ago we got the “RCA Dog Watching TV” look when describing this vision. Thanks to all our great employees, customers, partners and stakeholders for helping us get here!
More to come…
December 14th, 2009 by dnomura
“That sounds great. Where do I start?” This is a common theme we hear. Let’s say your company makes the business decision to take advantage of social media. But now what? Just figuring out where to begin can be a challenge.
The focus of this post is to talk a bit more about using Buzzient as a social media integration platform with CRM. There’s benefit to be had from using automation to integrate the social media channnel and content with your CRM system(s) for lead generation and customer service. For many companies this is a tangible and valuable place to start.
Leveraging social media in these cases doesn’t require you to jump into social media as the initiators of conversations (you’re respondents). Participating in social media as initiators is a different aspect you’ll need to think about and assess whether it’s consistent with your business goals. But taking advantage of social media to find more leads to help drive revenue and commiting to proactive customer support to drive enhanced satisfaction can’t help but be consistent with most company’s business goals. Can’t it?
Buzzient provides the technology that enables you to extend your CRM system to the social realm to help you address this new channel in your sales and service processes. The channel and the methods you use to interact might be new, but your lead qualification and customer service workflows are still the foundations.
You probably have workflows in place to address lead suspects/prospects and customer support issues in your CRM system. Perfect. Leverage the time, effort and expertise you have in your CRM investment.
Buzzient as a social media integration platform integrates with CRM systems so you can use the technology “behind-the-scenes” to find, store and analyze lead- or issue-oriented social media posts. The platform integrates this content within the CRM system so users don’t have to utilize a separate application.
Of course there is also great value in social media analytics. Integrating social media with CRM to derive lead generation and customer service value is just one place to get started. Depending on your business goals, you might benefit by starting with analytics. But we’ll cover that in a subsequent post.
Lead Generation
You might have suspects/prospects coming in from email campaigns, direct mail, good old return cards, website activity, trade shows, etc. But are you taking advantage of social media as a lead generation channel?
People are making posts via Twitter or forums or other social media channels about a desire to buy your products, those of your competition and/or products in your industry area. It’s easy to assume authors are primarily talking about consumer goods, but they’re talking enterprise purchases too. Asking the world, “I’m looking for a new xyz, what does everyone think?” isn’t uncommon anymore.
Getting these social media suspects/prospects into the CRM lead qualfication workflow just like your other channels can boost your lead generation results. It’s important to note that these suspects/prospects aren’t replacing the leads you’re getting from current efforts, they’re adding to them. Your reps can initiate and track conversations with these suspects/prospects using the authors’ social media vehicle (Twitter, blog, etc.) without having to leave the CRM system.
Customer Service
Your customer service organization might be addressing support through an online ticketing system, call center, email, etc. But are you taking the next step to proactively support customers who are talking about their problems via social media? Are you leveraging community-answered issues by getting them into your knowledgebase?
Something like “Having such-and-such problems with xyz again, can someone help?” is seen more and more. Perhaps along with a response such as, “Same problem I had. I was able to fix it by doing a, b, and c.”
Proactively getting social media customer issues into the CRM support workflow just like your other channels can enhance customer service levels. Does this increase your queues in the short term? Probably. But is it valuable to you to establish yourself as a company that makes the effort to reach out and support customers? Will solving an issue early (as it’s broadcasted on social media) and getting the solution into your knowledgebase save dealing with many tickets for the same problem later? As with the lead/sales reps, your customer support agents can initiate research with the customer using the authors’ social media vehicle (Twitter, blog, etc.) without having to leave the CRM system.
Of course these examples might require you to adjust your business processes somewhat to embrace social media as a new channel for lead generation and support. But the benefits from increased leads and elevated customer service levels can be worth it.
Buzzient integration includes the ability to communicate with the author of the post via their social media channel, from within the CRM system. This is an important point. The lead/issue came from a social media post, there isn’t a phone number or email address. Only their username. So if they tweeted, talk to them via Twitter. If they posted on a forum, talk to them there. Without leaving the CRM system.
You can see an example of Buzzient’s deep integration into CRM (Oracle CRM On Demand is used for the example) via the demos page, under the Social Media Integration section.
Of course Buzzient Enterprise also provides deep social media analytics. But for companies who are focused on leveraging what’s being said on social media to maximize lead qualification and enhance customer service, using Buzzient as a social media integration platform to CRM is the way to link the social channel with your CRM.
December 7th, 2009 by tbj
I still remember the moment in “Soylent Green” where Charlton Heston realizes that his daily meal was, well, organically-grown. Behind all the mystery and the technological miracles, there was the sudden realization that things are sometimes simpler than they seem up front.
Even with the inexorable merging of CRM and social media analytics, I often get the question: “Why should we tie our CRM system to a social media analytics platform like Buzzient?”. This is a valid question; CRM rollouts have too often turned into multi-year affairs, with extensive customization and end user costs.
My response is pretty simple: regardless of all the hoopla and whiz-bang gadgetry that some are using to describe social media, it really comes down to the simple fact that social media is “made of people”. It’s not just about the content types, the ability to monitor MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. It’s more important to acknowledge that behind every user handle there is a real person; a potential consumer, a purchase influencer, or maybe an existing customer. Listening and responding to these people isn’t a matter of being “cool”, it’s essential to the mission of CRM.
Therefore we at Buzzient will continue to drive innovation in how social media connects to CRM. We won’t stop until you pull the software from our cold, dead hands…(’props to Charlton Heston, RIP).
October 16th, 2009 by dnomura
Back from a great OpenWorld experience. It’s amazing how Oracle has gotten the logistics for this event down to a science. Even Tuesday’s downpour didn’t seem to have much effect, other than the venues scrambling for more rugs to keep people from slipping on slick tiles.
Many have already posted about OpenWorld and the progress in Oracle Social CRM. The tools that help drive more sales through sales user collaboration look great.
Having been in the CRM space during the early days, I remember customers’ sales management expecting promising results from the reporting and accountability CRM systems provided. But I also remember the grumblings from sales reps themselves who preferred to continue using Act! or Outlook. Oracle’s Social CRM tools give reps a benefit to using the CRM system.
As an Oracle Partner, we’re excited to be able to provide a platform that enables an external aspect of social CRM integration for Oracle CRM On Demand and other Oracle and non-Oracle applications. Customers are able to leverage unstructured social media content by integrating it into their CRM workflows. Benefits such as expanded lead gathering, enhanced customer satisfaction, quicker investor relations action and more are achievable.
This isn’t just for getting social media posts expressing a level of buying interest into the lead qualifications workflow, but also those talking about problems or issues into the customer support workflow. We’ve also seen more and more examples of HR organizations finding social media content from current or prospective employees that need to be addressed, in other words they need to get those into a workflow too.
Many departments in an enterprise can benefit from learning and leveraging what’s being said about a company when the author isn’t talking to you, or under any type of survey bias. An important consideration is getting these posts that need action into the appropriate workflow so you can document and take action.
