Top Takeaways from Khoros Engage 2019 (Part 2)

Editor’s note: Part one can be found here.

Khoros Engage 2019 focused on innovative approaches to the biggest issues facing digital leaders today: solving the connection crisis, managing worst case viral scenarios, and of course: which color notebook will you take home? Chartreuse seemed to be especially popular.

These issues require unique solutions (except for the notebook — you’ve just got to choose). Listening to how brands are addressing their challenges revealed a universal truth: You can’t solve today’s problems, let alone tomorrow’s, using tools and tips from the past. In part two of our event recap, we’ll take a look at the platform, procedures, and philosophy that can help your brand to reach new levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Representatives from Khoros Marketing, Care, Communities, and Strategic Services outlined everything users can now leverage — along with what they can look forward to, in an extensive product roadmap session. Each of the upcoming innovations serve the same purpose of helping brands bridge the connection crisis to deliver a unified customer experience. Some of the upcoming solution features are shown below:

Khoros Marketing

• Expanded paid planning measurement
• Custom calculations to align analytics to the business
• Deeper governance and compliance capabilities

Khoros Communities

• Private messaging
• Community Syndication
• Group Hubs

Khoros Care

• Expanded omni-channel CSAT and NPS surveys
• Deep messaging analytics
• Structured messages

While it’s always great to understand the technical features of a product, it’s also important to understand how they are valuable to you. Right now, Khoros customers can leverage the platform to deliver a fully connected customer journey.

In the example given during the roadmap, the solution representatives discussed a fictionalized customer named Naomi who reached out to an also fictionalized company called EcoAir via messaging. Since EcoAir uses Khoros, their care representative is able to pause the conversation to fit around Naomi’s busy life. The agent also gives her links to learn more on the brand’s online community. After she sees the amazing trips EcoAir community members had, the marketing department sends her a coupon for a discounted trip and she books her vacation. With Khoros, brands are empowered to achieve desirable outcomes like these.

If you would like to take your use of Khoros to the next level, the Strategic Services Team is available to help — simply talk with your account representative to learn more.

General Motor’s Global Head of Customer Engagement Rebecca L. Harris, PH. D sat down with Khoros’ SVP of Customer Success Dianne Borges to discuss how GM’s Social Media Center of Expertise (CoE) was built from the ground up. Although GM’s Social Media CoE is now a poster child for internal alignment, it was founded to bring calm to the chaos GM experienced after moving into social media. In those days, there were only a few people managing social media at GM and they were caught in a crossfire of different departments wanting to use social media to achieve their conflicting goals.

By creating the Social Media CoE, educating each department about the best business uses for social media, and securing buy-in for those strategies, Rebecca formed a world-class structure. She and her team have brought down the number of tools the Social Media CoE uses from 125 to six and achieved results including going from 36K monthly social media mentions to 142K. When their social media team reached scale, they needed to unify the team within one platform that would allow for better governance and analytics. In partnership with Khoros, GM onboarded 800+ users across the globe in less than 30 days. To see the full story, watch our case study.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a millennial or Gen Z member who hasn’t heard of Bumble, the popular relationship-building app empowering women to make the first move in dating, friend-making, and networking. Bumble’s VP of Strategy Priti Joshi showed how the brand quickly gained a following and how they continue to expand it with innovative approaches to their product features, brand messaging, and target markets.

The main message in Priti’s keynote was that brands must balance the often conflicting approaches to run a business based on data and based on what you feel is right for your brand. As Priti said, “user feedback is integral to driving overall growth, but you need to choose what to incorporate based on your company’s North Star.”

This message rings true for all brands, as there is so much noise out there in the world of social media. By having the courage to do what’s right for your brand, you can stand out and achieve greater results than you could following every trend or datapoint. Focus on the data that aligns with your brand’s purpose and quickly pivot your strategies to take that into account.

Khoros Engage 2019 brought together digital leaders to discuss the topics that will continue to have real business impact throughout 2019 and beyond. We couldn’t have had such insightful conversations without all of our incredible attendees. Our host, Khoros SVP of Strategic Services Spike Jones, said it best in his closing remarks: “For us at Khoros, Engage is a source of pride. We thank you for joining us.”