Social Listening For Real-Time Business Agility

Q: What is the purpose and potential added-value of social listening for enterprise businesses? 

A: The amount of data generated by social media platforms is increasing exponentially, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic forced many to use social media because they could not leave their house. At that point, brands could only interact with customers digitally. The approach people had with social media changed because for many it became their only source of information. 

Companies started to realize that it was virtually impossible to manually analyze all this data. SentiOne analyzes this large amount of data to understand what is happening within and around businesses every minute. It allows for a simple and fast way to analyze what is happening in their social media accounts.  

Q: What is the importance of this tool with an expanding and increasingly overlapping digital ecosystem?

A: Omnichannel involves different social media platforms and with different purposes. On each one of these platforms, it is necessary to publish and share distinct types of content to reach separate audiences. Brands do not have the luxury of expecting to see their clients where they want them to be. Brands now have to find clients wherever they are. Our tool analyzes all channels to allow the actors involved to make fast and effective decisions. 

Q: How does SentiOne assess old and new application programming interfaces (API) and how does it choose its sources?

A: We have two processes. The first is based on customer feedback because they will always have more knowledge of their group and where it is heading. Second, we are always scouting for emerging options, while focusing on data privacy, protection and other regulations. Not every source is integrable because we cannot pull data from certain sources. 

Q: How has SentiOne adjusted to the rise of data protection laws? 

A: It is tricky. As a European company, we follow the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a very strict guideline that forces companies to double or triple check every data privacy norm that they have implemented. We also have to follow the guidelines generated by the data providers, which are constantly monitoring and reviewing their data streams. Normally, their API streams already follow all laws and regulations, so we cannot make any errors. If errors were to happen, they could affect the data providers, such as social media platforms. We do not scrape the data. 

Q: Why did SentiOne’s international expansion in Latin America start in Mexico? 

A: Latin America has many business opportunities. We tried to generate a few leads in Brazil and Mexico and were surprised by the positive response. It was our largest and most successful campaign to date. We contacted 150 leads and had a conversion rate of about 20 percent, with 28 meetings. We also forged our two largest deals in history, which are almost twice the size of our biggest contracts in the EU. After this success, in 2019, we decided to build a presence in Mexico.

Q: How has SentiOne adjusted to Mexico's cultural nuances and sociopolitical divergences?

A: We came with a proof-of-concept mentality, understanding that it was a completely different market, so we did not make large investments and focused on adapting and growing organically. We did everything to understand the market, the stakeholders and the overall system, especially how the Mexican business mentality works. 

We learned that you need to know people, to have a good network and just a little bit of luck to do business in the country. We have long relationships with customers who have been with us since our first day in Mexico. 

Q: Social listening also has federal and public applications. What ethical guidelines does SentiOne employ before and during a project?

A: Everything we do can be done by others because we are accessing data that is legally collectible and publicly available on social media. We collect and analyze public data and we are the most transparent option right now. We do not work in the political area because it is a difficult industry and can generate misconceptions of political support or affiliation. 

Q: Data generation is growing exponentially. How is SentiOne preparing to ensure that its AI and ML data parameters, processing and analytics continue as normal?

A: There are two main ways. The first is by constantly upgrading our software and hardware capacities and the second is to constantly enhance our performance at the employee and developer level. We are constantly working with the newest hardware and software while also heavily investing in improving our capacity for data collection, quality and processing. Data is increasing as the number of users grows, so we need to keep up with demand to maintain our place in the market. 

Q: What main objectives will be guiding SentiOne’s strategic road map in 2023?

A: We will focus on expanding in Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina and Peru, while maintaining our steady, organic approach.

SentiOne, is a conversational AI platform that provides state-of-the-art customer service automation based on social listening and data analytics.