Digital tools help us avert possible brand crisis: Saurabh Tyagi, HiveMinds

Consumers and brands are now scaling up in the digital world. With the rising digital connect, negative campaigns and complaints against products and services on social media are often blown out of proportion causing quick damage to the brand's image. Hence brands, both global and Indian, are going the extra mile these days to maintain their image and ensure brand health stays unaffected which will help to retain their customer base.

Apart from quick resolutions of issues raised on social media, D2C companies are now relying on tools and technology to keep track of public sentiments, conduct sentiment analysis, and even avert the brand crises which often unfold like wildfire, experts say.

"Sprinklr, Brand24, Mention and many other tools are being used to keep a gauge on public sentiments against any product or services and analyze the reasons behind those opinions," says Saurabh Tyagi, Chief Client Officer of HiveMinds, which is part of Madison group. 

These tools help companies make their customers happier across digital channels by using AI to create insight-driven strategies and better customer experiences. They cost anywhere between $10 to a few thousand dollars a month, depending on the brand’s needs such as frequency and granularity of the data and ROI. 

Tyagi says, “If a consumer raises his/her complaints online and it is not addressed appropriately, we don’t just lose the lifetime revenue potential from that consumer but the brand can also end up losing other potential consumers who might be considering our product or service. Better to use immediate feedback from current customers so that future customers don't face the same issues. Digital tools help us avert possible brand crisis than to manage one.”

“Brands having a large user base like payment gateways, fintech or food, and grocery shopping have to manage mentions and comments at scale on a daily basis; thanks to technology and feature-rich listening tools, we can track comments, respond in real-time or escalate to customer relationship management teams to directly speak to the customer. Brands can also use feedback to understand what their customers want and work with their product and marketing teams to deliver better products & services in the future,” Tyagi adds.

HiveMinds has also built a market intelligence tool named 'Intutel', which helps them to analyze the brand's overall online presence. Canada-based Quantrics has a tool that possibly offers the most extensive research, noted Tyagi, adding that a lot of brand tracks have gone online because of COVID restrictions. But in the future, a mix of offline and online measurability will work best.

Google Trends

Brands are also using easily and freely accessible tools like Google trends to find out important data like--How intent for the brand is moving relative to their key competitor? What search SOV are they getting in each market against their competitor? What are some keywords and themes which the consumer is associating with your brand and category?

Moreover, ad campaigns are also analyzed using tools to better understand the reactions of the public and consumers. “What sustains brand sentiment is how strong was the story, in what context and connection was it consumed (viral vs controversy) and how long did people retain it?” says Tyagi, adding that the big shift from a few years ago to now is that information overload makes everything transient (a terrible story or a good one) unless it blows up so big that it deeply affects the brand long term.

Online reputation teams

Sharing insights on online reputation teams, Tyagi stated, “Most companies have fully equipped online reputation management teams to handle online listening tools. And, this needs to be handled with utmost care for a very sensitive and highly expressive online audience. Though genuine concern and care usually is still the best response, a brand will have to, however, watch the extent of engagement required and not dwell/invite newer problems while attending to one. A lot of times, not actively engaging in a debate can also be a good strategy".

In the case of targeted campaigns to malign the brand, these tools also help track timestamps and frequency of posts which can be escalated with reason to the social media channel team who could take steps to minimize the spread of posts.