Is Experience in Listening the Kind of Experience That Matters?

I assert that Social Media people are the wrong people to be listening. Can they hear what’s really being said? Is a bus driver the right person to be listening for signals from Uranus ? About all a bus driver can do is tell you how big it is! The last time I checked, social media doesn’t have much to do with real world business operations, challenges and frustrations. It has to do with Marketing, PR and other (regrettably) inside-out, and simplistic processes — at least these days. Listening isn’t just about frustrations with your product and negative sentiment. When done in this way, listening is extremely reactive (maybe to the wrong thing) — and not very proactive.

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If your business can’t see a manufacturing, delivery, customer service or customer experience problem before you hear about it on Twitter, I may need to expand this discussion beyond social media. Social media is not going to fix it, let a lone recognize the root cause of these issues.

In many ways, listening is…