Social ROI: Biggest challenge for chief customer experience officers?

Just 15% of Europe’s Chief Customer Experience Officers (CCO) claim to have an accurate approach to measuring social media return-on-investment (ROI), according to a study conducted by Consero and Qualtrics Research.

The findings are a result of the recent 2014 European Customer Experience Data Survey, which aimed to decipher the focus areas for those in the relatively new role of CCO, across Europe.

As well as the concerns surrounding social media ROI, 36% of CCOs also state that their main challenge is organisational alignment, while 12% highlight ‘understanding the customer’ as theirs.

Applying ROI to social media has been a major bugbear for organisations over the last 12 months, thanks in main to the complexity of measuring what represents financial success through customer service and marketing channels.

A variety of measurement methods are available, and Bulmers recently made press for its application of a strategy that calculated how much each of its Facebook fans was worth.

However, most businesses still struggle with the concept, and statistics from C4B in July suggested that 20% of businesses have yet to put any form of social media strategy in place for their customer communications.

“As consumers increasingly use social media to interact with corporations, customer experience officers must balance the delivery of a high-quality service with cost and profitability,” said Paul Mandell, founder and CEO of Consero.

“According to our survey, identifying and implementing effective means to quantify return on social media investment will be a significant focus for customer experience officers in the months ahead.”

Paul Bridge, membership director of PR Gym recently spoke to MyCustomer to advise businesses they should be applying an advertising-equivalent monetary value to each of the following steps, in order to better establish social media ROI:

1.       Awareness: an indication of how many people are reached with the brand message (measured in audience impressions and reach).

2.       Appreciation: a measure of how many people show an initial interest in brand content (measured in posts, shares, re-shares, etc).

3.       Actions: speak louder as they indicate an active interest in the brand/product (measured in clicks, downloads, enquiries, purchases, etc).

4.       Advocacy: signifies intent to keep in touch (measured in likes, followers, circles, subscriptions, etc).

5.       Domino effect: reaching audiences through their network (measured in friends of friends, followers of followers, viral reach, etc).

There are currently an estimated 150 chief customer experience officers in positions across Europe and 750 globally. While the figures suggest the role is still a niche one, it’s predicted to become a vital position over the coming years, especially in large-scale organisations where businesses are having to align their marketing and customer service departments more effectively as customer expectations rise.