Customer experience is a huge differentiator for financial services providers. A .7% interest rate is the same .7% at one bank as the next, but service can vary widely. Meanwhile, we’re still recovering from – or in the middle of, depending on whom you ask – our recent economic woes. The financial services industry is plagued by consumer distrust, which has led to low customer loyalty.

Switching is both a nightmare and an opportunity for financial service providers, including banks, insurance providers, financial advisors, credit card providers, and others. The bad: your customers are looking around, so it’s more important than ever to delight and retain them. The good: your competitors’ customers are looking too, and with the right offering, you may be able to win their business. Providers are dedicating more resources to the customer experience to drive acquisition, retention, and lifetime customer value. But what’s the best way to delight customers?

To find the answer, we went straight to the social data. In our new Q3 Conversation Index, we took a deep dive into the customer content collected across our financial services clients to uncover trends in customer sentiment, language and more. Here are a few of the findings.

Acquire new customers – focus on frictionless experiences

Switching financial service providers is a major hassle. Customers typically have to jump through hoops to disentangle themselves from their current providers – the last thing they want in a new provider is complicated or inconvenient processes. Financial services customers for less than four years tend to use the words “easy,” “helpful,” “awesome,” “happy,” and “experience” in their feedback. Focus on delivering easy and helpful experiences to your newest customers to make their switch satisfying from the very beginning. Encourage them to speak up, and use these authentic opinions to attract new customers by actively emphasizing what your newest customers love most about your service.

Retain current customers – be courteous and listen

More tenured customers (10+ years with the provider) use “courteous” and “convenient” in their reviews. This is where excellent experiences separate firms with loyal long-term customers from those with retention issues. These customers are more vocal – those with the provider for 20+ years contribute more content (32% of all reviews) than any other group, and they want to be heard. To deliver an excellent experience, listen to what these vocal customers have to say, and act on it. Show them you’re listening by thanking them for their opinions – even the negative ones – and communicating changes you make based on their feedback.

Maximize lifetime value – proactively manage satisfaction

While they’re the most vocal, long-term customers are also less satisfied than newer customers. Customers with a firm for less than a year leave 8% higher average product ratings. Keeping your customers happy requires monitoring their happiness over time. Find the point where they switch from “very satisfied” to “satisfied,” and be proactive. Target marketing to this stage in the lifecycle, and reward the loyalty of your customers to keep them feeling appreciated. During the period where satisfaction typically starts to drop, what are the most common complaints? Use social data to find what’s hurting your brand, and work to fix the problem.

To retain customers, you don’t have to be the financial services provider that gets everything right. Be the one that cares enough about your customers to keep listening and improving, and your customers will tell you what it takes to keep them loyal. For more trends and recommendations, download the full Q3 Conversation Index.

“And then it happened – she met Ken, and somehow she just knew they’d be going together.” Original Ken debut commercial, 1961.

Fashion doll Barbie and her boyfriend, Ken, were made for each other. From his debut commercial in 1961, it seemed the two would be together forever. But in 2004, manufacturer Mattel (client) broke up the couple to focus on Barbie’s career development. By 2010, moms and older girls remembered Ken, but many younger girls weren’t as familiar with Barbie’s former beau.

Coming off the success of the doll couple in Toy Story 3, Mattel saw an opportunity to re-launch Ken with a strong personality—someone more than just an accessory to Barbie. The campaign would tell an interactive love story through a highly-social courtship to bring Barbie and Ken back together.

“People don’t come to websites anymore – websites come to you,” says Lauren Bruksch, Marketing Director for Barbie and Girls brands, Mattel. The brand launched an integrated cross-channel campaign including paid, partner, owned, and earned media. Word of mouth was the filter for all concepts – the team considered how will people would contribute to and share the campaign at every touchpoint.

Owned media: Social brings Barbie and Ken to life

Before the campaign, Barbie already had a strong social presence. The doll talks in first-person on the social web, and her established voice and authentic personality have grown highly engaged fans. She has 2.8 million Facebook fans who interact with the brand 5,000 times per day on average, and 89,000 Twitter followers on her verified account.

Mattel launched Ken on Facebook and Twitter to remind the world that he and Barbie had split. Giving Ken a voice through social created a personality, “making him real for consumers rather than just an accessory,” says Bruksch. Through his social networks, Ken announced interest in dating again. Mattel partnered with Match.com in a video showing him searching for new love interests, only to find Barbie.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Social became the medium of the love story, linking the various media efforts. Ken checked into places he and Barbie had gone on dates, and tweeted nostalgic pictures of their relationship. Barbie and Ken interacted and flirted on social just as a real crushing couple might – bringing their fans into the courtship and cross-promoting each other’s accounts.

Mattel also launched BarbieandKen.com as the campaign’s central hub. The site curated live streams of the dolls’ social media presences, fan reactions, and all of the supporting campaign media. Throughout the campaign, fans could vote on whether they thought the couple should get back together.

Paid and partner media: Ken woos Barbie to fans’ delight

Mattel then launched a paid media campaign including billboards, print ads, and a Time Square takeover – all grand gestures from Ken attempting to win back Barbie’s favor. Every ad directed readers to the campaign site to vote. The dolls interacted with the ads through social media – for example, when Ken placed an ad in US Weekly, Barbie tweeted a picture of herself reading it, asking for her fans’ advice and directing them to vote at BarbieandKen.com.

In another display of affection, Ken commissioned pink cupcakes in Barbie’s honor through Magnolia Bakery. Mattel seeded fake paparazzi pictures of Ken at the bakery, which quickly spread on social media. Through a partnership with Mattel, Magnolia truly launched the Barbie-themed treats – one location sold 500 in the first hour.

At New York Fashion Week, Mattel hosted a party in partnership with Christie’s Auction House. Dubbed “Ken: the ultimate dream date for every occasion,” the party featured a fashion show of designer-crafted Ken outfits on life-size models, and was named “The Party” of Fashion Week. Other paid and partner media included Genuine Ken, a web-based reality dating show on Hulu, and “Catch me if you Ken” – a driving showcase of human Ken models styled in doll boxes.

Earned media: fans join the conversation to become part of the love story

The campaign and related social antics were covered by a range of news media, from Mashable to Perez Hilton. Fans of the dolls helped spread the campaign through social. Over 500,000 fans voted on BarbieandKen.com, overwhelmingly supporting a makeup. The couple officially reunited on Valentine’s Day, 2011. The campaign site became a celebration site, curating fans’ social responses to the reunion.

Throughout the day, “Barbie” and “Ken” were mentioned on Twitter every 18 seconds, and were trending topics in 22 markets. Mattel saw a 1600% search spike for “Barbie and Ken.” The campaign helped Ken build a large social following, resulting in 111% Facebook fan growth and 162% Twitter follower growth. Barbie’s following grew as well, 34% on Facebook and 39% on Twitter.

Crowdsourcing Barbie’s decision to take Ken back gave fans a feeling of investment and co-ownership in the Ken brand, says Mattel’s Bruksch. As a reunion day sale, Mattel offered $5 “Sweet Talkin’ Ken” dolls on the campaign site, and sold out in just a few hours.

Through the well-integrated and highly-social campaign, Mattel successfully reinvigorated the Ken brand. Paid and owned media together encouraged earned media, always urging consumers to share their opinions and become part of the story. In winning back Barbie’s love, Ken managed to win consumers’ hearts.

In our new social world, where this morning’s headlines are “so four seconds ago,” innovation is essential for brands to stay relevant. Coming up with tomorrow’s next big thing has driven some of the best companies in the world, but many of them were innovating in the dark. “In the past, companies were working inside out: we create the experience and products, and that’s what customers get,” says Christian Kraus, Head of Social Media for Conrad Electronic. “Now, customer intelligence is trying to change that.”

Finally, social offers companies a chance to innovate from the outside in. Customers are the best innovators – they know what they want, and they’re willing to tell you. During presentations at Social Commerce Summit Europe, several thought leaders shared how customers will drive innovation in 2012 and beyond.

Improve your existing offering: customer feedback is the new focus group.

In the past, focus groups attempted to uncover what consumers liked and disliked about products and services. Small sample sizes, survey bias, and disconnect from the true customer experience led to inaccurate and limiting results.

Today, social has eliminated the guesswork. Brands can easily turn their entire customer base into a standing, real time focus group through social. Salesforce.com’s Chief Scientist, JP Rangaswami, explains:

The social web is where customers are freely expressing what they feel about products and services. That is not going to go away.

Always-on conversations with customers reveal exactly what’s best about an offering, what could be better, and what should be eliminated. Customers freely share what you’re getting right, and what you’re getting wrong. Companies can act on both to improve their existing offerings, amp up their best features, and eliminate features or products that don’t meet customers’ needs.

Create new products and services: social data is the new market research.

Companies attempt to understand what customers want through market research, but this information is incomplete for the same reasons focus groups are. With this inaccurate information driving product and service innovation, brands were stuck in a conversation around, “How do we get customers to buy what we’re building?”

Social data reveals what customers want before what they want is even available to them. Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Group, comments on the accuracy and immediacy of social data over market research:

Market research is decontextualized: it takes place far from the point in time and the environment where decisions are made. Listening to people in social media is fantastic because the comment is made at the moment of high engagement. What you learn through this kind of medium cannot be gathered through research.

Product development teams can use insights from social data to design the products and services people want, based on empirical evidence showing clear demand. The conversation effectively flips to, “How do we build what customers want to buy?”

Build an innovation think-tank: show customers their opinions drive change.

Social data shared online is a gold mine of insight into what matters most to the people who matter most – your customers. But customers don’t believe companies value what they have to say. An upcoming Bazaarvoice survey conducted by Kelton Research finds that only 29% of Millennials and 27% of Baby Boomers believe companies invite feedback because they truly want to know what customers think.

Show customers you care by letting them know you’re really listening. Respond to their input, answer their questions, and create a dialogue. Communicate changes you make based on their feedback. Show that you’ve added new features or built new products based on what they say they want. Demonstrating that you value their input will encourage customers to come back with more feedback to drive more change – creating a valuable loyalty cycle and innovation think-tank.

These are just the few of the ideas shared by the brand leaders and social strategists who spoke at Social Commerce Summit Europe. Get more of the top trends from their keynotes in our free report.

Leading up to the 2011 National Football League season, NFL players and owners were locked in a heated stalemate of a labor negotiation that threatened to cancel the coming season. Player salaries accounted for half of the League’s costs. Meanwhile, the NFL held $4.5 billion in television contracts, and the networks owed that money whether games were played or not. Cancelling games was a money-making proposition for the League – meaning the owners had all the leverage.

But through well-executed campaigns on Twitter and other social media, the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) managed to win public opinion – and with it, a satisfactory deal. In their recent talk at the WOMMA Summit, George Atallah, Assistant Executive Director of External Affairs for the NFLPA, and Domonique Foxworth, NFLPA Executive Committee and cornerback for the Baltimore Ravens, shared how social media helped to resolve the NFL lockout.

Twitter gives players a voice the media won’t

For television networks, NFL football is a money machine. During the ‘08-‘09 season, 20 million people per week watched the NFL on TV. Of the top 100 TV broadcasts in 2009, 75 were NFL games. Networks that had a relationship with the NFL didn’t want to lose it, and networks that didn’t were hungry to start one. It was therefore against the interests of most networks and their reporters to present the League in any negative light, says Atallah.

Many players already had Twitter accounts for connecting with fans and building their personal brands. Their large follower networks provided a place to publicly present their opinions, and spread them enough that the news media couldn’t ignore them, says Foxworth. First, players and player advocates posted op-eds online containing their side of the dispute. These articles were retweeted by other players and fans for massive reach, and having garnered enough social attention, many were eventually reported on by the major news outlets.

The NFLPA even produced a potential 2011 Super Bowl ad. The ad carried the players’ campaign tagline, “Let us play,” and featured players and fans alike demanding that the League end a potential lockout. A 2011 Super Bowl ad cost $4 million, and as expected, CBS denied the NFLPA a spot. Players used this to their advantage, tweeting links to the ad with the teaser, “Watch the Super Bowl ad CBS and the NFL don’t want you to see!” The ad quickly gathered thousands of hits, and made headlines (blog subscribers can click here to view on YouTube).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Twitter helps fight misinformation

During negotiations, both sides were under non-disclosure agreements, bound not to reveal details discussed. Information about proposed agreements inevitably leaked, and often the details were misleading or flat-out wrong.

“I’d get calls from guys asking why we turned down a deal with so-and-so percent… guys who needed a livelihood and just wanted to play,” says Foxworth. This misinformation could’ve turned players against their NFLPA reps, undermining their ability to get a deal done effectively.

To combat this, Foxworth and others used Twitter to let other players know when details reported weren’t accurate. These tweets were shared by players and fans, and helped correct inaccurate news reports and sway public opinion.

Social shifts the lexicon from “strike” to “lockout”

Under the old agreement, the League got $1 billion off the top of all revenues ($9 billion) for expenses, leaving a new amount the contract referred to as “total revenues.” Players then got 57% of these total revenues. With the owners’ 43% plus the $1 billion expense allowance, players and owners effectively split all NFL revenues 50-50, according to Atallah. In the proposed new agreement, players would get a lower share of total revenues, leaving them less than half of overall NFL revenue.

In early interviews, NFL representatives referred only to the “total revenues” agreement, without including the expense allowance. Players came off as greedy, unwilling to yield any of their majority share. They appeared to be on strike, and were forced to defend their “unfair” need for a disproportionate slice of the pie. Fans and the media referred to the situation as “the NFL strike.”

The NFLPA posted articles online and used Twitter to educate the public on the true breakdown of revenues. Players tweeted that the situation was not a player strike, but an owner lockout. Once revealed, the public generally found the existing even revenue split fair. Now, if an NFL representative claimed players got the majority of total revenues, reporters were journalistically obligated to question them about the players’ claims of an even revenue split.

Soon the League was on the defensive, forced to justify their desire for more than half of the overall pie. “Suddenly it wasn’t a ‘strike,’ it was an owner ‘lockout’ keeping fans from football,” says Foxworth. “We changed the public lexicon, and that helped change public opinion.”

Social media gave players an outlet to share their ongoing side of the lockout story. On August 5, 2011, the NFL and NFLPA signed a new collective bargaining agreement, ending the lockout without cancelling any regular season games. There was much more to the resolution than a few tweets, but winning fans created leverage for the players that the League couldn’t ignore. In the NFL lockout, social was key in moving the chains.

“We want to engage with customers in a way that makes them love us more and makes us understand them better, so we can better deliver what they want.”
– Jonathon Brown, Head of Online, John Lewis

UK retailer John Lewis is dedicated to customer service. “We differentiate around service, and that service is about understanding and engaging with our customers,” says Jonathon Brown, Head of Online for the multichannel retailer. In his talk at the Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit Europe in October, Jonathon explained how the company’s focus on excellent customer experiences drives them to rely heavily on their in-store employees, called “Partners.”

Partners are experts in their product areas. As the face of the brand in stores, these passionate product gurus give shoppers expert opinions and answers, and are a large part of what makes customers love the in-store experience, says Jonathon. “We want to be the retailer which is most trusted, and where people love to shop.”

John Lewis recognizes the important of expanding the exceptional service and expertise of their in-store Partners – a differentiator for the brand – into the online channel. They launched reviews both as a way to bring Partners online and as a way to get customers talking. “Customers quite easily tell you what’s wrong, and they’ll also tell you what’s right,” says Jonathon. “And if you act on both in a way that moves your business forward, you’ll make a big difference.”

The retailer initially identified 70 in-store Partners to participate in their Expert Partner program. Expert Partners complete a training program, then receive products to review. They publish their reviews with an “Expert Partner” badge on JohnLewis.com.

What makes Expert Partner reviews especially helpful is that it’s not just the Partner’s expertise driving the review. “We get the experts that work on Oxford Street on the sixth floor every day telling us what they think about the products and what customers are telling them,” says Jonathon. “So rather than one person’s view that can be biased by their lifestyle, you have an Expert Partner on the shop floor who plays with the [product] every day and has multiple discussions with people about the product as well… Customers recommend our Expert reviews more than customer reviews.”

John Lewis gathered reviews from both customers and Expert Partners before launching review content on the site. The retailer went live with 2,000 Expert Partner reviews, 30,000 customer reviews, and 25% product coverage. Since launch, the retailer has noticed a positive uplift in key online metrics, including conversion. Jonathon is proud to point out that their online Net Promoter Score now matches their in-store score.

Investing in partners with training, and expanding their impact on the business, brings value to John Lewis. “We’ve increased our sales rate by 40 %, so we’ve really improved the way we are delivering profit back into the business… which allows us to invest back into our partners, which allows our partners to invest in our customers,” says Jonathon. “We’re really happy with the way that virtual cycle is delivering value for us in the long term.”

Expert Partner reviews helped John Lewis win the Impact Award at Social Commerce Summit Europe. The retailer is already looking into additional ways to involve both Partners and customers, such as product Q&A and pre-launch advocate testing groups. “We want to enhance our customer experience, and differentiate in the medium and long-term through making partners happy and then making customers happy,” says Jonathon. And for John Lewis, this means never fearing what Partners or customers might say. “If you love your brand, set it free. Occasionally you have to accept people do things you might not want them to do.”

Jonathon’s full talk includes more tips and examples of using social to deliver a fantastic customer experience. You can watch the full talk and other sessions from Social Commerce Summit Europe here.

Social data and the social sciences are a powerful match. New research from Cornell University suggests that our moods are partly driven by a shared underlying biological rhythm that transcends culture and environment. The sample population studied? Twitter users.

This is the first cross-cultural study of mood rhythms using text analysis of Twitter, and it’s just one example of the sort of insights that can be extracted from social data. Commenting in The New York Times on the emerging use of social data, University of Vermont Mathematics and Statistics researcher Peter Sheridan Dodds said:

There’s just a torrent of new digital data coming into the field, and it’s transforming the social sciences, creating new lenses to look at all sorts of behaviors.

So, what did the Cornell mood analysis uncover?

Happy to bed, happy to rise

Over two years, the team analyzed 400 tweets each from 2.4 million English-speaking Twitter users in 84 countries. Their program associated certain words like “awesome” and “agree” with positive moods, and others like “annoy” and “afraid” with negative ones.

For the average Twitter user, positive tweets crested between 6-9am, then fell to a low between 3-4pm before rising again in the evening. The findings complement what’s known about mood fluctuation in general, as well as another study by the University of Vermont researcher quoted above, which showed that the use of swear words on Twitter correlates to negative sentiment.

We’re happier on weekends—but it’s not that simple

Not surprisingly, positive moods peaked on the weekends and moods were lowest at the beginning of the work week. This trend was seen even in countries where Saturday and Sunday are not considered the weekend.

Sentiment on weekends shifted a few hours later, peaking close to 9am and after 9pm, but following the same general shape as weekdays. Study author Scott A. Golder explains why this matters:

This is a significant finding because one explanation out there for the pattern was just that people hate going to work. But if that were the case, the pattern should be different on the weekends, and it's not. That suggests that something more fundamental is driving this – that it’s due to biological or circadian factors.

Caution: the current limits of text analysis 

While the findings are interesting, it’s important to remember that text analysis alone can’t gauge sentiment with total accuracy, as we explored in our last post. Sarcasm and slang are common on Twitter, and the software isn’t sophisticated enough to catch these human subtleties. On top of that, Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert explains to The New York Times why tweets shouldn’t be considered accurate sentiment indicators by themselves:

Tweets may tell us more about what the tweeter thinks the follower wants to hear than about what the tweeter is actually feeling. In short, tweets are not a simple reflection of a person's current affective state and should not be taken at face value.

This study represents both the promise and the current challenges of social data analysis. As word of mouth is digitally archived for the first time in history, the benefit for businesses will come from the insights we’re able to extract, the context we’re able to place them into, and the decisions they’re able to support.

When social first began gaining popularity, it seemed inevitable that the marketing norms of the rest of the internet would make their way into social networks. Static display ads, impression counts, and brand-controlled, non-conversational advertising would soon rule social as they did the rest of the web – or so many thought.

Instead, social pushed its own norms outward. Consumers found they prefer being talked to over being talked at (they would have always told us that, but maybe we weren’t yet ready to hear it). Traditional, non-conversational advertising on social has failed, and marketing has shifted its focus: conversations instead of ads, influence and engagement rather than impressions. Nielsen’s recent effort, State of the Media: The Social Media Report, shows that social is now the dominant online activity for American internet users. As mobile access makes social less of a destination and more of a constant companion, this seeking and sharing of opinions continues to grow beyond social networks (and even the internet) as a basic consumer behavior.

Here are three key takeaways from the report.

Social is the new norm

Social use is now the most common online activity, making conversation the norm online. Social networks and blogs account for nearly a quarter (22.5%) of Americans’ total time spent on the internet – more than double the amount spent in the number two category, online gaming (9.8%). Nearly four in five active internet users visit social sites. Things that aren’t social will soon seem odd to Americans, including brands with no discoverable social presence.

Specifically, Americans spend more time on Facebook than on any other US website. The social network now reaches 70% of active US internet users, who spent 53.5 billion minutes on the network in May 2011.

Social users demand opinions and share theirs freely

Social users are more likely to share their opinions and influence others. Sixty percent of social networkers create product/service reviews, which are, for them, “the preferred source for information about product/service value, price and product quality.” They’re also more likely to share opinions on current events (26%) and television programs (33%). Over half (53%) of active social networkers follow a brand, so focus your social strategy on capturing the feedback these highly-vocal advocates share.

Use this feedback to influence other users – shoppers seeking opinions from people like them. Seventy percent of social users shop online, making them 12% more likely than the average adult internet user.

Mobile social is valued more than web browsing for social users

As mobile internet gives consumers increased access to the opinions they seek online, these opinions will influence even more decisions offline, as well. Social networking apps are the second most-valued apps among US smartphone owners, second most-owned, and third most-used. Social networking app usage is up 30% from this time last year, and 37% of social users access social content from their mobile phones. The mobile internet browser audience to social networking sites is also up 62% over last year. Be sure your mobile experience delivers the customer opinions shoppers seek in your aisles.

The spread of social is a domino effect. As consumers shared more on social networks, they began to expect the same freedom to share and find opinions across the internet. Now, they expect the same conversations they find online no matter where they shop. Encourage these conversations, and integrate them with your brand across channels to give consumers the opinions they want.

“The best brands consistently win two moments of truth,” said Kevin Roberts, CEO of Procter & Gamble, in 2005. “The first moment occurs at the store shelf, when a consumer decides whether to buy one brand or another. The second occurs at home, when she uses the brand – and is delighted, or isn't.”

That “first moment of truth,” or FMOT, became a huge focus for marketers, and still is today. But the minds at Google have introduced a new moment of truth: the “zero moment of truth,” or ZMOT. At ZMOT, shoppers are “pre-shopping” online – researching products and brands, reading reviews, watching videos, asking questions.

For most consumers, pre-shopping involves discovering what others think – their friends, people with shared interests, actual product owners, etc. Seventy percent of Americans look at product reviews before a purchase. User-generated content like reviews and community Q&A helps shoppers find the right products for their individual needs – allowing many shoppers (and more every day) to make purchase decisions at ZMOT, before they ever visit the aisle. In his ebook out today, Jim Lecinski, Managing Director, U.S. Sales & Service at Google, urges marketers to shift their focus to ZMOT with a simple and compelling argument: consumers already have.

We’re excited to be featured in Google’s “Winning the Zero Moment of Truth,” which is available to read and discuss here (the Twitter hashtag is #ZMOT). Here are a few big ideas from the ebook, with quotes from featured executives.

Embrace pre-shopping as part of buying. “Pre-shopping before buying has become a huge, huge part of customer behavior. In the past, it was pretty much confined to big-ticket items like cars, or expensive electronics or homes. Now people engage in discovery before shopping on very small things. It's crossed all categories of shopping behavior. It's just the way people buy today.”

– Bob Thacker, SVP, Advertising, OfficeMax

Your brand is what customers say it is. “The days of controlling the message are absolutely over. At best you’ll be invited in and you’ll get to co-create and participate with consumers.”

– Wendy Clark, Senior Vice President, Integrated Marketing Communications and Capabilities, Coca-Cola.

Conversation is a real-time focus group. "ZMOT is an incredible source of insight for brands to really understand how satisfied their customers are on a real-time basis… An observant product manager can find out precisely why they've been getting a high return rate or why they've been getting high sales."

– Brett Hurt, Founder & CEO, Bazaarvoice

Stop interrupting; be there when shoppers need you. “Engagement with the customer today isn't just pouring a message down on their head and hoping they get wet. It really is understanding that you must be present in a conversation when they want to have it, not when you want to.”

– Bob Thacker, SVP, Advertising, OfficeMax

Serve shoppers, or your competitors will. “You'd never set up a corporate 1-800 number with nobody to answer the phone… The Internet is that 1-800 number, and it's been set up for you even though you didn't ask for it. People are ‘calling’ you with their web searches every minute of every day. Grandma doesn't just phone 1-800-Butterball now – she searches online for, ‘How do I know when the turkey’s done?’ If turkey is your business, you'd better be there with a helpful answer (and maybe a demonstration, or a coupon, or a stuffing recipe). If people search for your product and you don't answer that search, who do you think will answer?”

– Jim Lecinski, Managing Director U.S. Sales & Service, Google

Successful marketing at ZMOT will deliver relevant information to shoppers, when the shopper wants it, to help them make purchase decisions and buy confidently. As Jim notes in this video before his interview with Brett, Google searches for customer reviews have risen over the past two years. As more consumers engage in pre-shopping, opinions from real product owners and “people like me” will play an increasingly important role in winning the zero moment of truth.

Note: Procter & Gamble and OfficeMax are Bazaarvoice clients.