Talkwalker’s latest research report, in partnership with Trustpilot, shows the growing importance of customer-centricity and conversational intelligence for brands. Findings revealed that for brands to boost the marketing ROI,  data-driven companies must go beyond social listening and have a unified view of their brand, market and consumers across the organisation.

For marketeers, the past year has clearly shown how critical consumer conversations are for brands. Interactions on social media, reviews and forums are still of huge importance – but what is often forgotten are ways in which other departments, outside the marketing team, interact with customers. Every way the voice of the customer enters an organisation is of value.

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Talkwalker’s State of Conversation 2021 Report, which worked with over 1000 leading global brands, shows that consumers are looking for more than mere product and services. The most successful brands which continue to show consent growth and strong ROI, are those that clearly understand their customer, are able to spot trends, and use data to seek out new opportunities.

Talkwalker also revealed the extent of COVID-19’s disruption to consumer intelligence. The pandemic brought consumer conversations to the front and revealed the importance of external data sources to help brands understand the customer and its market.

The report also looked at trends across several industries. How conversational intelligence was used by brands and how customers drove changes over the past year.

Not only was COVID-19 a huge factor in transportation decisions, public transport closed and restriction on travel generally, but the growing issues of climate change and green mobility were top topics that were driving consumer behaviors.

The most consistent global topic of conversation during 2020 was COVID-19 and healthcare. The pandemic and vaccine conversation were, and still are, very divisive. People were constantly looking for news about the pandemic, insights into treatment and progress on the race to find a vaccine. This created a huge growth of misinformation around the industry – especially from anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists.

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Elena Melnikova, Chief Marketing Officer,  at Talkwalker said; “Last year was just the beginning of the huge growth of conversational intelligence. Already we are seeing that 2021 will be the year that online conversation becomes essential for brands to truly engage and understand their customers. As technology becomes more innovative – with internal and external data merging – more dots will be joined between social conversations and voice of the customer.

“Brands which want to come out of the global pandemic stronger, with a greater connection to consumers’ need to take up this tool to activate the voice of the customer to drive revenues.”

For more data from Talkwalker’s State of Conversation 2021 Report, with detailed regional analysis, download the complete report here.