New Technology in a Company Service Efforts - Research Paper Example

Comprehensive Research Report on the use of New Technology as part of a Company Service Efforts Submission: TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………3 Body………………………………………………………………………………………….......3 Benefits of using New Technology in an Organization…………………………………………..3 Use of Social Media………………………………………………………………………………4 Activities the Company’s do on the Internet and their websites………………………………….5 Effectiveness of using New Technology and Social Media for a Business……………………….7 The Force of Social Media in Companies………………………………………………………...8 Use of Multilingual in improving communication with customers……………………………….9 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….10 References………………………………………………………………………………………..11 Introduction The internet has become essential for the majority of people and their everyday social and business lives. The search engines that help people navigate through the plethora of pages, video clips and images found on the World Wide Web is also very essential. Information Communication Technologies have played a crucial role in the worldwide changes that have occurred in the last few decades. The changes generated by ICT have brought deep and broad impact most sectors of the society such as business, healthcare, journalism and publishing, entertainment, government, and the sciences. Search affects the activities of individuals and all sorts of organizations. Body Benefits of using New Technology in an Organization The contribution of new technology to the economic growth can have a realization when and if the technology is put to use and diffused. Diffusion itself results from a series of individual decisions to begin using the new technology, decisions that are often the result of a comparison of the uncertain benefits of the new invention with the costs of adopting it. The benefits of from adopting new technologies, for example, wireless communications are received throughout the life of the acquired innovator. The use of new technologies enhances operations and exploits new market opportunities (Manyika, 2013). When adopted at scale across an emerging type of networked enterprise and integrated into the work processes of employees, social media, and other new technologies can boost a company’s financial performance and market share. Using technology to maximize company’s business productivity creates a platform to realize real business. The business software puts organizations in an assurance of having the tools to overcome challenges of execution on strategizing every day and prosper in today’s economic times. Use of Social Media Companies are on the increase in focusing on managing customer relationships, the customer asset, or customer equity. The rapid growth of social media, from blogs to Twitter and Facebook, to YouTube and LinkedIn, offers organizations and companies the chance to join a conversation with millions of customers around the globe every day. The groups use social media as one way of the promotional channel. They use consumer conversations and turn the information into consumer insights that impact the bottom line (Hunt, 2013). The internet based social media emergence has started a new kind of conversation among consumers and companies. It challenges the traditional ideas on brand management and marketing while in the meantime creates alternative opportunities for companies to understand customers and connect with them instantly (Whitten, 2015). The number of social media channels has increased. Twitter Microblogging allows rapid fire stream of real-time commentary, complaints, and recommendations. The social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn bring together friends, fans, and detractors. The growth and use of these channels have surprisingly increased. By 2011, for instance, the users of Twitter had reached 50 million while Facebook were 500million. Never before had the companies had the opportunities to communicate directly with millions of customers, or even send them messages, get fast feedback, and experiment with offers at relatively low costs. Moreover, it is now possible for consumers to talk to each other, criticize and even recommend the products. For instance, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are used by Vogue, Gucci and other famous fashion lines to advertize their products. The civilization and recommendations help the companies improve their services. Virgin Atlantic is one of the airlines that are active in social media advertising their innovations to their customers. According to research done by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, more than 79% of the 2100 organizations surveyed said they are currently using social media channels as a way to reach customers (Porter & Heppelmann, 2014). However, the majority of these companies also said they are struggling with how to use the best different channels, gauge their effectiveness, and integrate social media into their strategies. In addition to that, some companies are still searching to find how best they can demonstrate the implications of social media and the contribution to the bottom line. While more than half of the companies interviewed are using social media to inform people about their business, only about one-quarter of users said they could identify where their most valuable customers are talking about them. Moreover, less than one-quarter are using any form of social media analysis tools while only 5% are using some form of customer segment analysis. How organization use technology and social media for future improvement Companies and organizations are improving their mastery in dealing with social media. They use them to enhance their products and explore the numerous new market opportunities. Asia Airlines are now doing their services in Africa from the survey they carried out in social media to see if the countries are a viable market. The gains of using social media, however, do not persist. The organization’s improvement should, therefore, not depend entirely on social media. In the same survey, there was I a small group of companies who described themselves as effective users of social media to reach out to their customers. They use multiple social media channels to reach their customers, learn about customers, research new products, and establish user groups among customers. Such companies are most likely to integrate their social media monitoring solutions with their other control solutions. Social media is an experimental tool for many companies. Discrete projects are launched, mostly by a few people in the communications department. Some companies say that they limit their activities in social media as are still testing. However, other companies are still wary as they still perceive danger in exposing their company details and lack of control of the web conversation. Among companies currently using social media in the survey, half said the primary benefit of their activity was increasing awareness of the companys products and services among their customers (Frasco, 2013). Others said that the use of social media has led to positive perceptions of the companies. Thirty percent of the companies interviewed see the increase in traffic to their website as an excellent benefit. A lower percentage reported collecting and tracking the views of their customers from their website. Social media also gives them the ability to monitor and what the customers are saying. Many companies have activities that focus mostly on their products, but they do not participate or understand conversations that are ongoing regarding them on the social media. Social networking sites are the most commonly used by companies (Waad and Gomez, 2013). More than half of the companies interviewed reported to be using other blogs or multimedia sharing. The other percentage uses the microblogs. For example; a medium sized company is using a blog to comment on business issues that reporters are following and at the same time it uses Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to connect with its customers (Trattner, 2013). It is monitoring customers’ and analysts’ comments in order to take a proactive approach in responding. Another major publishing and training company uses social media to recruit its employees. It does this by posting interviews on YouTube. It also uses Twitter and Facebook to market and generate public relations regarding its new books and other products. It has also launched an internal blog to keep employees connected to each other. In conjunction, both the small and large companies reported some form of social media use. For instance, smaller companies described social media as a tool that help them in monitoring perceptions of customers and identifying positive and negative comments from customers (Smith, 2012). Within the companies that use social media, the marketing department plays the key role in social media efforts. It is most likely to be directed by the marketing department; the public relations department follows and then the web team. Effectiveness of using New Technology and Social Media for a Business and connecting with clients The effective social media users are most likely to use social media in monitoring the trends, researching new product ideas through social networks. It also involves having an online user group of customers, and collecting and tracking customer reviews on their website. They are also likely to know where customers are talking about them on the web and prioritize their social media activities accordingly. Twitter has been a great platform for companies to connect directly with their clients. FedEx is on Twitter, and they engage their customers one on one on any issue they are facing. Service providers, for example, T&T network can converse with their customers directly in case of any problem with the network. The companies devised a four channel social media strategy based on the results of the study. The company is using Twitter to get news straight from news reporters (Constantinides, Lorenzo & Gómez, 2008). The company salespeople post scholarly articles on LinkedIn to share with each other and their customers while their Facebook page focuses on the company’s social responsibility efforts. The company blog is more of an exchange with customers. There are more channels for conversation on the web, and enormous information has become available that could be a treasure to companies. They help in fostering relationships with customers, developing new products, and monitoring their completion. A good example is a study by Performers and ROI Research, done in April 2010 which found that 33% of Twitter users have an opinion about companies or products at least once per week. More than 30% make recommendations for seeking guidance. Some companies, however, are rightfully anxious in understanding who talks about them on such channels and what they say, as well as trying to understand how people perceive their efforts on social media. Nearly two-thirds of the companies in the survey did not have an idea of where most of their important customers were talking about them on the web. Many companies are indeed just beginning to see the need for social media analysis that are the tools used for analyzing, measuring, and interpreting the results of interactions between brands and consumers across the digital channel. That recognition of the term jumped to seventy-five percent among the valid users. Almost half of the users said that internal staff was responsible for the measurement of the social media. Another nineteen percent used a mix of internal and external and external resources. However, many still relied on the age-old methods of monitoring instead of the analysis. The Force of Social Media in Companies Other Tools that gather information about the topics and opinions that are either positive or negative that appears in conversations on the internet. With such a review, the ratings and recommendations are available, these tools offer the promise to filter out the noise, identifying the relevant content and understanding trends. The greatest deal of concern seemed to surround the efficiency of current customer sentimental tool analysis. For the practical users having consumer sentiment analysis tools in place are only about thirty-seven percent are confident in the findings from the tools being accurate. Some of these users have worries that the computer algorithms could not accurately distinguish different things. Examples include linguistic nuance, differing context, or cultural factors in deciphering the meaning of a blog post or a tweet, as humans themselves usually disagree on the meaning of a word or a comment. Social media is becoming a new force rapidly in companies worldwide. Allowing their use to reach out to and understand consumers is of great importance (Evans, 2010). In most of the companies, it will move from a “one-off initiative” to a more valuable, integrated, tool in marketing and communications strategies. Social media use is expanding and will still expand in future. Three-quarters of the companies surveyed said that their social media usage will significantly increase in the coming years as the awareness of the importance of social media has grown in their companies. In the next twelve months, the companies that have already budgeted for social media expect an increase of thirty percent in their spending. As social media creates new opportunities, it is also demanding a change in thinking about marketing and the measures of success. Those companies that are most active in social media are experimenting the channels. They are also creating matrixes to measure the effects and the use of new tools to know how to enter into a new conversation with their customers. In future, effective use of social media will be led by the companies that can enter into the new relationship with customers, employees, and partners. The things are changing relationships fundamentally are the thing needed to pay attention to because they are the things that change the way you have to run and act your business. Just recently, we were talking of the information revolution (Neti, 2011). Now, we are witnessing a social media revolution. For business, it is a double-edged sword. On one hand, one can drive millions of potential customers to a website or store. Fortunately, as social media has evolved, the technology to understand the complex relationships has also developed. Companies are working with different customers around the world to go through social media to do everything possible in improving their products. Use of Multilingual in improving communication with customers Integration of social media with tradition is significant. A successful company will not view social media as just an island of information, but rather as another primary data source that has a monitor, captured, managed and analyzed together with other traditional data sources. A company should do more than just reading or listening to conversations. It is possible to understand much more than the mere frequency of words or phrases from customers, by applying data mining and text analytics whether the companies have a positive view or contrary view. The company will rather discover how people feel about the specific company products and services (Bowden, 2014) so that it can pinpoint emerging issues, make necessary improvements, improve the target market, and identify brand advocates or threats. Learning from the conversations is crucial. Businesses seeking long-term value will benefit by capturing new communication data. They will compare the data from a historical archive of customer feedback, and performing the ongoing analysis. Taking a multilingual approach is crucial. It indicated that less than fifty percent of the Twitter content is in English. A bad customer review will seriously hurt your business, no matter the language used. The company must, therefore, have the ability to analyze the comments whether in Spanish, French, Arabic or any other languages. It is critical for a complete understanding of full customer sentiment. Conclusion Provision of natural access to measurements and results is another important issue. Decision makers in the company need quickly to understand the reports that demonstrate performance across a variety of areas. Brand and market tracking, online media analysis, customer feedback, and reputation threat tracking must be put in place. References Bowden, J. (2014). The Impact of Social Media Marketing Trends on Digital Marketing. Retrieved on November 23 2014 from http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/impact-social-media-marketing-trends-digital-marketing Constantinides E., Lorenzo C., & Gómez M.A. (2008). Social Media: A New Frontier for Retailers? European Retail Research, vol 22, issue 1 Evans, D. (2010). Social Media Marketing: The Next Generation of Business Engagement. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 15–. ISBN 978-0-470-94421-9. Frasco, S. (2013). 5 Ways to Reach Out on Social Media. Retrieved on June 26 2013 from http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/5-ways-reach-out-social-media Hunt, T. (2013). 6 best ways to reach out for new business; a good mix of online and offline tactics can drive new business. Retrieved on December 5 2013 from http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/uncategorized/6-best-ways-to-reach-out-for-new-business/. Manyika, J. (2013). Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy. McKinsey Global Institute Report. Neti, S. (2011). 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