Are brands losing touch with consumers?

I jumped into a LinkedIn discussion the other day. The Group was discussing how brands are losing touch with consumers. Certainly the data is increasingly telling. As recently as today, more data is out telling us that most consumers don’t talk about brands on the dominant social media channels.

Responses ranged from “…brands were never in touch in the first place.” to “companies don’t understand the customer service role”. I weighed in with the following…

Agree with the above but add the following thoughts. Brands have often gone into social media channels without a clear understanding of what their customers actually want. IBM (disclosure - IBM is a client of my employer Text 100) released a Social CRM study that highlighted the emerging gap between marketing perception and social consumer reality. It showed that while brand marketers felt consumers came to their social networks to feel brand love, they actually were more interested in receiving coupons, discounts and customer support.

I think this is compounded by the fact that often the people interacting with social consumers on networks like Facebook and twitter aren't adequately skilled in this type of customer-facing role. Just look at the growing list of social media customer service issues (search for Ocean Marketing and Penny Arcade on Google for more on this)! I think the time's right for social consumer support people to step up and play a larger role in social network planning and execution.

If you're interested, I've blogged about these points in a 2012 trends post - link's here.  

So that’s my two cents. Anything to add?

-Jeremy

Photo credit: "My Favorite", Erwss, Peace and Love, cc attribution, share alike http://www.flickr.com/photos/erwss/3129884643/