"It all starts with Listening."

Radian6 built a very novel and successful business on the above premise. Listen to your customers, your prospects, your dissenters, and your champions. Understand what people are saying about your brand, your industry, and your competitors. React in real-time to inquiries, complaints, questions, crises, and opportunities.
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The market for social products has come a long way since these early days of Radian6. New companies have sprung into existence. Some have gone away. Others have been acquired by larger companies (including Radian6, by Salesforce). A crowded market brings out the “A-game” in its players. To survive, you have to be rock-solid. To be noticed, you need to do something distinctive and different.

So when ​our team had the opportunity to re-imagine the world of social listening inside of Social Studio, our next-generation social media suite, we knew right where to start: by Listening.

We spent time listening to everyone we could talk to. We listened to our end-users and long-time customers to understand what they loved about the system and where they saw opportunity for improvement. We listened to the crowds on social media to hear what was being said about current offerings. We listened to prospective customers to understand what was important for them in their decision-making criteria. We listened to analysts about where the future would take us. We listened to internal leaders about how it could all fit together. We listened, asked questions, and listened some more.

Then, based on that input, we got down to work. We made sketches, which turned into prototypes, which turned into proofs of concept. These grew into an alpha, which grew into a beta. All along the way, we were tuning, iterating, tweaking, adjusting, validating, and listening some more.

This user-centered design process bore fruit. In many cases, the feedback loop and rapid iteration led to a step forward. In some, it changed the way we thought about our users and their needs. We started to realize that we could reach a whole new group of people with this powerful technology. Key themes emerged.

Starting “Mobile-first” was a big step. With rich dashboards right inside the Social Studio mobile app, it’s easy for busy executives to get addicted to the strategic value that social listening can provide. But the social data analyst gets super-powers too — with synched dashboards and on-demand data at her fingertips, she can answer questions, any time, any where. And designing with mobile in mind from the beginning meant the new flows are more focused, more extensible, and more elegant.

What we called “Time-to-value” emerged another important theme. This is about gleaning value from the tool as rapidly and fluidly as possible. How can a user go from “0 to 60” in less than 60? The answer: ask as few questions as possible before showing results. Let the user react and tune instead of planning everything ahead of time. Use templates tied to use cases to accelerate your path to the results they need. This benefits everyone, from social n00b to full-blown data geek, because it’s all about getting you to your data, fast.

Also, making social Approachable can ultimately make everyone more successful. Social is becoming democratized through the enterprise; The ‘social silo’ is crumbling as more people are participating in the conversation than ever before. The tools that employees need now need to be consumer simple, instantly familiar, and easy-to-master. But that doesn’t have to mean just dumbed down. If you scratch the surface just a little bit, the power of the platform, with its many options and possibilities, reveals itself to an experienced user.

These themes, along with many other insights from our customers, have powered our design and development, our iteration, and execution. At that led us up to today.

Today — after months of anticipation and hard work — the new face of listening becomes a reality in Social Studio. This is the biggest leap forward to Radian6 in many years, and it’s enabled for all our Social Studio customers right now. We're confident they're going to like what they see. After all, they’re the ones that really designed it. We just listened. 

Want to learn more about Social Studio? Get a demo today.