Forrester Wave Report Names Top Four Social Listening Tools

In this age of social, listening tools have become marketers’ ears.

In its new Wave report on Enterprise Social Listening Platforms, for instance, Forrester Research noted that social listening helped Yoplait realize it needed to drop high fructose corn syrup from its yogurt, and an unnamed carmaker figured out the main reasons customers were resisting the purchase of electric cars.

The top tools to help brands listen to their customers’ social expressions, according to Forrester: Synthesio, NetBase, Sprinklr and Brandwatch.

Those four were ranked in the top category of Leaders. Forrester points in particular to Synthesio’s connection of social listening to business-oriented metrics, NetBase’s data on “audience interest levels in specific topics,” Sprinklr’s rules-based engine for routing posts needing attention to specific agents and Brandwatch’s focus on data visualization.

The second-highest category, Strong Performers, included Crimson Hexagon, Clarabridge, Salesforce, Networked Insights and Cision. Prime Research, Oracle and Sysomos occupied the lowest group of Contenders.

The report says that social listening is a growing market because B2C marketers are seeing “social intelligence as a way to get closer to their customers.” Social insight, Forrester pointed out, is impacting more than just buzz.

It’s also affecting marketing content, product innovation, cross-channel campaigns and customer service, it can help measure a campaign’s success, it provides a better understanding of customers and it has become a major indicator of brand health.

Social listening vendors are continually boosting the feature set on their platforms, with Forrester noting that 10 of the 12 reviewed vendors now also have some kind of customer engagement. The research firm said it expects these platforms to evolve into “social relationship platforms” that are more fully integrated into customer relationship management platforms, customer analytics tools and voice-of-customer tools.

These dozen vendors were chosen, Forrester said, because of their product fit for the category, their customer success and Forrester client demand. Evaluations were based on vendor surveys, product demos and calls with three of each vendor’s customers.

The vendors were then considered against 30 criteria in three groups: the tool’s current coverage/accuracy and ability to deliver insights; the company’s strategic vision; and the market presence.