Posted by: Abu Yousuf On April 3, 2020.

How Covid-19 is changing the Social Media paradigm for Businesses

Covid-19 has already spread across 200+ countries infecting more than 1 Million people and causing more than 50,000 deaths globally. There are warnings from the UN about the World Economy going into recession causing uncertainty among millions of businesses and workers and the humongous financial losses. This testing time has brought with it many such growing concerns.

However, we can still draw some positive outlook and possible disruptions that are already being seen including:

  • The future workplace is undergoing a massive restructuring
  • Co-creating opportunities through collaboration among businesses
  • Healthcare and medical device innovations are at peak
  • Growing adoption of social media to substitute or to minimize human intervention

In this post, we will try to emphasize on how social businesses can transform their digital stacks and leverage social channels and technologies to stay ahead during an event of crisis, such as Covid-19.

AI-powered Social CRM to replace or minimize human intervention

At the time when businesses need more flexibility and intelligence to manage customer servicing and reputation management online including social media, it is a good idea to review the existing capability and readiness within the organizations. Social Media Customer Service or more broadly, the Social CRM is not something new or have emerged recently. What is more important to understand is about the adoption and the continuous enhancement of Social tools and technologies within the organization to stay future-ready. The Covid-19 has already proven the way forward for many organizations that have taken the advantage of being innovative and staying ahead of the curve in terms of Social CRM implementation. Industry like Telecom, E-commerce, Retail, Hospitality, etc. are leveraging the Social Media Customer Service more proactively than ever, by reducing or pausing the traditional Call Center support during this lockdown. The current situation has also proved that the social media is there to stay even during crisis and people have accepted it as a replacement for traditional Call Centre. Therefore, the organizations that have already adopted Social CRM, it is a testing period! While, those who have not yet leveraged the Social CRM, there is no point of looking back but only to adopt it to stay future-ready.

Social Listening enabling analytics on-the-go

At the time when organizations expect their workforce to stay connected virtually or digitally, more than ever, it is the need of the hour to identify the relevant tools and technologies that can add value or can solve a purpose. While, Social Listening and Monitoring has been the most critical part of any social business, the focus on real-time analytics has increased. Eventually, we see an increased demand to integrate other mediums and devices beyond just emails like, mobile and wearable devices. Good news is that – this is now possible. Most of the industry leading Social Listening and CRM platforms have already enabled the feature of Critical Alerts on Mobile as well as on Smartwatches. The idea behind this - is to empower businesses to stay informed by leveraging Social Analytics on-the-go and take faster and better decisions.

Leveraging Social Bots to the next level

During a crisis like Covid-19, when information plays the most critical role to drive citizen engagement & awareness, it is important for organizations to act as a thought leader. Healthcare and Government authorities are already active as information providers, but other businesses can also leverage Social Media to provide relevant and meaningful information that is been sought after. Here comes the “Social Bots” that can be integrated across social channels, including Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. We now observe a significant growth in the end-user adoption to connect with a Social Bot, especially during this event of Covid-19.

Intelligent Social Content Moderation

While there is an emergency across the globe, it is evident to be flooded with information. In addition, it becomes difficult for the government authorities, organizations as well as for citizens to identify a fake news when every bit of information is crucial. Social Media Content Moderation has been around for quite some time now where the Social Media tools help in restricting users to make any noise, spam or abusive talk. The need of the hour is to go beyond this and predict or identify a fake news. Thanks to the AI-based social monitoring platforms that can detect and predict fake news through appropriate training.

More likely, there would be many other possible Social Media solutions and innovations would be emerged once we overcome the Covid-19 situation. We will try to cover those in our upcoming blogs. We, at Tech Mahindra are well equipped to help transforming your business, towards a social business to stay future & crisis-ready. Visit SOCIO to know more about our social media offerings. If you have any queries or requirement, write to us at socio@techmahindra.com.

About Author

Abu Yousuf, Social Media Platforms and Solutions Lead

A management professional with over 13 years of experience in Strategy, Research, Analytics and Innovation. Hands on experience in Social Listening & Monitoring, Social Command Centre, Social Media Analytics & Insights, ORM and Social Media Marketing. Currently, managing Socio with prior work experience on Sprinklr, Social Studio, Brandwatch and many more. Passionate about Social Media Innovation, Product Development and Customer Experience. Join me on Twitter: @BeingAnalytics