What’s Listening 2.0? Can you stand to hear it?

I was fortunate to be invited to do a Webinar today on Listening 2.0, along with Mark Kovscek of VivaKi and Pauline Ores of IBM, on what’s going on with all these conversation monitoring/mining/listening services that are suddenly popping up. As Chief Strategist for Converseon, I am kind of biased. I mean, we have the really good one, you see. But it was helpful to be part of a panel where we could talk about what kind of qualities make a good one and we got lots of great questions.

Image by Gauravonomics via Flickr

My piece of the talk focused on two key components of the new improved listening:

1. Insights. The early listening companies focused on automation of keyword snippets. They struggled to correctly label sarcasm as negative and they couldn’t analyze a blog post with two negative comments and one positive, calling the whole thing neutral or mixed, when the client needs to see each individual insight, not some aggregated glob. With improved technology, but more important, with human analysts, Listening 2.0 companies can provide real customer insight rather than streams of keyword snippets.
2. Actions. But it’s not just about understanding what customers say, it’s about doing something about it. Companies need enterprise listening where the same service can be used across organizational boundaries, so that everyone hears the same things and, more importantly, can act on them using workflow tools common in other business processes.

Thanks to those of you who tuned in. For the rest, I’ve posted the slides of all three presenters for WOMMA’s Listening 2.0 Webinar. I’d love to hear about what you are expecting out of your listening company.