Over the last decade, customer experience management has increased significantly in importance. The growth of social media has played a big part in this. Many companies found that the customer now had a voice, often for the very first time. Thanks to social media, customer feedback became visible – and not only for the company.
Social media made great, good and even downright bad customer experiences visible for other customers and for the traditional press. As a result of this external pressure, customer policy has evolved in a positive direction over the last ten years.
In the future, consumer pressure will continue to increase. The number of social media platforms, the level of their use and the impact they make are all still on the rise. Despite recent scandals, it is clear that Facebook is still the most important player in this virtual world, with more than 2 billion active users. Reports suggest that people with an iPhone spend 48% of their screen time on Facebook. They spend just 4% of their screen time on all their other apps put together. Android users spend a third of their screen time on Facebook. In addition, Facebook also controls Instagram (600 million users), Messenger (1 billion users) and Whatsapp (1.2 billion).
The real power of Facebook was confirmed with the launch of Instagram Stories at the end of 2016. At the start of that year, Mark Zuckerberg wanted to buy Snapchat, but his offer was rejected. Since then Facebook has copied just about every functionality of Snapchat and has rolled them out to its billions of users. When Instagram Stories was launched in October 2016, Snapchat had about 150 million active users. Nine months later (June 2017), this figure had risen to 170 million, but Instagram Stories already has 250 million. From 0 to 250 million active users in just nine months – that’s the power of Facebook.
Little wonder that everybody is keeping a close eye on the approach and plans of Mark Zuckerberg at the moment. Not least because of the role Facebook played in the election of Donald Trump, which has finally woken up many senior policy-makers and managers. The impact of social media on the perceptions of the average consumer or citizen is massive. Positive or negative customer stories on Facebook have a major impact on the public’s perception of a company.
Alongside the dominance of Facebook, there are a number of other impactful online platforms. YouTube has a strong community of influencers. Snapchat remains popular with young people. Twitter is going through difficult times, but is still an important communication channel for public figures. LinkedIn continues to attract its own group of professional followers. Quite simply, social media channels have become a part of our everyday life, and we all know and feel their impact.
The power of the major digital platforms cannot be overestimated. We all learned a lot about the Facebook filter following the election victory of President Trump. Half of the American population were shown messages and posts of people who were deeply unhappy with the new president. The other half – the Trump supporters – were shown only positive feedback.
Facebook lets us see what we want to see. In the past, everyone read the same newspapers and our own brains were the filter. Today, the filter is an algorithm. There is a rumour that one day, Mark Zuckerberg intends to run for president. This probably shouldn’t be allowed. With his Facebook platform, the man has such a huge weapon of mass influence at his disposal that his victory would almost be inevitable.
In the discussion of the social media effect and societal themes, this technology poses huge challenges and possible risks. It creates the impression that everyone has the same idea, whereas the reality is, of course, very different. As a result, each individual can potentially be given a distorted image of that reality.
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Prof Steven Van Belleghem is an expert in customer focus in the digital world. He’s an award-winning author, and his new book, Customers The Day After Tomorrow, is published December 2017. Follow him on Twitter @StevenVBe, subscribe to his videos at: www.youtube.com/stevenvanbelleghem or visit: www.stevenvanbelleghem.com
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