Corporate houses, driven by the tenet of consumerism - customer is the king, are listening more and more these days to what consumers are saying about their products and services. An attentive listener will change the ways of doing things.
But how do corporate or business entities actually listen to their customers? They spend a lot of money for advertisements and in commissions paid out to their sales agents. But do they have the means to directly reach out to their clients and capture what they're saying about the corporate? Do the business entities have a functional grasp on the business realities they live in?
The business entities know very well what quantity they are producing, but do they know their relative market share? Do they know what their competitors are doing to lure their clients? Where do they need improvements?
The competitive edge that an entity have will erode away soon, if it doesn't listen to its customers. Customer is the king… you know!
But how does a firm reach out to them? How do we know what our clients think about us? How reliable is our firm's information sources? These are the questions a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) needs to ask to oneself these days.
Yes, there is facebook and there is the vast wilderness of social media. How do a firm use it to capture the perception of its customers? Though there is a thing called social media analytics, but what is it actually? How does it work? What was that thing that put Mr. Zuckerberg in trouble? Cambridge Analytica or something like that? No?
Well, why on earth would I want such a thing? Business will need such a thing!
Not for prying into the privacy of others, but to listen and learn what customers are saying about you - the business entity or firm.
This concept is known as the 'Chief Listening Officer' (CLO) in the modern corporate world these days.
But what exactly is this CLO thing? How does it work?
Well, the idea is to pay heed to what your customers, employees, and at times, your competitors are saying about you, meaning, your company, your products, services, and your way of doing business. Yes, listening is time-consuming and needs an open mind that can accept criticism - almost a rarity these days. But 'not listening can be costly', according to the contemporary management gurus.
Your kind attention is needed here. This CLO thing is important not only for the CEOs, but for all other three-lettered positions as well. The CFOs, CIOs, CTOs, CMOs, and all others having the top responsibility in the major functional lines of a corporation need to do their share of listening too in order to perform better, and to have a better grasp of the technological and economic reality of their business.
For example, the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) or the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) of a company will be better positioned to advise the CEO or the Board of Directors on pricing strategy, if they have a better understanding of what their clients are saying about the price of their products and that of their competitors. The CIO (Chief Information Officer) and the CTO (Chief Technical Officer) will know better where the gaps are in information flow within the company and what information about the company and its products to promote, and how to tread the difficult paths of public relations, and while dealing with the suppliers and vendors, if they listen carefully to the clients.
Many of the successful corporates dealing with a large number of customers have done well by setting up dedicated listening teams who religiously do just the listening job. They do it by relentlessly surfing the social media posts in the public domain. The posts commenting on a particular product or service, or experience a consumer had and shared with his/her friends or with the public, is the fodder for these listening teams. Yes, there are specialised software available to make this job easy, and to come up with analytical results.
In Bangladesh too, a number of companies, particularly the multinationals, in-volved in fast moving consumer products and services, have their listening team in place. This listening team actively listens to what their consumers are saying and feed the information to the customer service and marketing teams of the company. If you have ever tried any feedback by using the facebook page of one of these companies, you would know that they're often quick in responding. Whether they are able to resolve satisfactorily the issue you addressed is a dif-ferent matter altogether, but they do the listening and come back to you fast.
The local companies in Bangladesh still remain a little behind in terms of listening. To do some effective listening, a company needs to employ people, train them, acquire software, and formulate company policies for ways of how the responses would be. All this is expensive and time consuming, and perceived as something that can be dealt with later.
But can it really wait in this modern time of dogged competition? Perhaps the answer is 'no'.
Exactly this is why the opportunities for business intelligence services is on the rise in Bangladesh. Such services will offer customised listening solutions to companies in need. They will lend you their ears, so to speak, to capture what your clients are thinking about you, and what you need to do to improve your products and services to satisfy their expectations. Once you have the feedback of your clients made available to you, either in raw or analysed form, it will be up to you to react. By engaging these listeners, you would save time and cost, as you would not need to hire specially trained people or buy a software.
According to internetworldstats.com, the number of facebook users in Bangladesh stood at 28 million, or 48.4 per cent of a total of more than 80 million internet users, as of December 31, 2017, as reported by Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission. Though not all of the users are active on a daily basis, such a huge number is a virtual goldmine for listeners who are keen to give them an ear.
Shaquib Quoreshi is an independent Management Consultant.
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