Using social engagement to gain customer insights for the holiday park industry

We have previously discussed the evolution of social media as a tool for business and how social media has altered customer behaviour which has had a knock on effect on the role of sales, marketing and customer service. This blog looks to uncover how the holiday park industry in particular can embrace social engagement to gain insight into customer behaviour.

Competitor analysis – How your marketing and sales teams can evaluate brand sentiment and gain competitor intelligence with search topics

With the increased growth in the popularity of the UK “staycation”, 28.7 million domestic holidays were recorded in England between January-April 2015, an 18 per cent increase on the same period in 2014, competition in the UK holiday industry is growing. Well shaped search topics within social media listening tools will capture posts made by new businesses or offerings and promotions entering your market place, automatically forming the competitor environment. This provides you with initial competition awareness, providing a unique vantage point in today’s ever-growing market place.

Customer service – Identify real-time customer issues and trends on social media with social listening

58% of consumers who tweet about a bad customer experience won’t receive a reply from the company they have an issue with. Businesses cannot respond to conversations they don’t see.

We have previously discussed the growing importance of social media within a customer service context within the holiday park industry.

Recognising and drawing attention to a negative post about your brand might not appear to be a conducive way to drive customer engagement, but news of bad customer service reaches more than twice as many ears as praise for a good service experience; however resolve a complaint in the customer’s favour and they will do business with you again 70% of the time. Listening to your customers and providing a solution to their grievance can result in an upturn in sentiment.  A social listening tool like Microsoft Social Engagement can help you spot emerging trends in people’s comments, respond to service issues before they escalate, track marketing campaigns, gain insights about your competitors, and more.

Service development and product analysis – Examine the real-time social media impact of a campaign or service offering with social analytics

Across social media and “traditional marketing channels” companies miss or mishandle up to 80% of customer engagement opportunities.

With sentiment analysis and social listening tools you can easily identify brand advocates within your customer or prospect base. Letting your happy customers do your marketing for you is not a new concept but in the digital environment it is quicker, gains more traction publically and by using social listening tools, organisations can see the conversations they should be engaging in.  Sentiment analysis and trend reporting within social listening augments your traditional marketing analysis and provides a true understanding of the success of your marketing campaigns.

Darryl Hall, online marketing manager, Park Resorts, highlights how they use digital media in their marketing campaigns:

 “User generated content is becoming increasingly useful in a Digital Marketer’s toolkit. Nowadays holidaymakers make purchasing decisions based on social media and travel review sites. They are looking for authentic stories, reviews and content to ensure they are making the right choice when booking a holiday. Giving our customers a platform to share their amazing holiday memories helps future guests when deciding whether our parks are right for them.”

Contributing your new service ideas via social media allows you to make decisions on how to modify the idea, watch out for suggestions on enhancements and extrapolate proposed changes made by followers.

Leveraging the power of social can facilitate employee and customer collaboration

An excellent example of collaboration in action can be seen by a town in Spain, Jun. The Mayor uses a twitter account to connect with local citizens and workers.  This could easily be translated to the holiday park industry:

• An excellent response rate to customer enquiries on social media shows your target market that you are committed to resolving customer disputes
• Social media can facilitate direct communication between customer, management and employee, a timely response shows that you use social networks as a communication platform and a quick resolution shows that you value your customers opinions
• The “mutual visibility” saves time and money by allowing companies to see how they are performing and what their customers’ expectations are in real-time

For a holiday park to function at optimum performance, business processes and systems should be flexible and oriented around the changing needs of the customer, not a role or function. Microsoft Social Engagement scours social networks like Facebook and Twitter to help you monitor what people are saying about your holiday park or new service offering, and then analyses the data and presents it to you in easy-to-read charts and graphs.

Information should flow freely through departments and hierarchies, and employees need to be enabled to use data to build relationships with their customers and solve their problems in a timely manner.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online users can add Microsoft Social Engagement charts and visuals to dashboards, or add them to account, contact, or competitor screens to help with customer engagement and team collaboration. Contact Prodware today to find out more.