S U C C E S S S T O R Y

CALL TO ACTIONA large global institution, Western Union, wanted to find new, more efficient ways to connect with their customers and grow their business. Being on the leading edge of customer analytics, they recognized the opportunity social media offered to drive brand health, and in turn, help solidify its global position, expedite growth of its digital business operations, engage with customers and would-be-customers and provide outstanding service experience.

To align with their focus on customer centricity, Western Union determined they needed to establish a long-term, strategic market research plan that would allow them to understand what people discuss about their entire category. Also, as a truly global franchise with a commitment to connecting friends and families all over the world, they demanded global social media research capabilities.

“Rather than flood the market with social media campaigns, guns ablaze, we wanted to take a disciplined approach – that starts with deep, sophisticated listening.” Arun Muthupalaniappan, SVP of Customer Strategy and Analytics at Western Union

Knowing that a long-term, effective social media strategy required a 360-degree view of their customer base, Western Union partnered with NM Incite to conduct an intricate, multi-country, category-level analysis. This would set the stage for a successful social media listening program and highlight areas of opportunity for value-adding, differentiated social media engagement.

APPROACHNM Incite’s Advisory team instituted a deep, global diagnostic research initiative. They first employed NM Incite’s proprietary online software solution, My BuzzMetrics (MBM), a highly scalable social insights platform designed for Fortune 1000 marketers and their agencies to organize, segment and analyze clean, trusted, industry-specific global data in real time. Data collected by MBM was analyzed across the following dimensions:

• Who: Which customer segments are currently identified and are there opportunities to define new segments?

• When: What stage are consumers at in the Consumer Decision Journey (CDJ)?

• Where: Which social media platforms are focused on relevant discussions?

• What: What topics are most prominent?

• Why: What are the most important customer needs, passions and pain points?

Segmenting the Buzz – Who and What

Social listening at the category level can be considered a free-range, always-on focus group. For Western Union, it’s a focus group that allows them to gain insight on three primary product categories: money transfer, stored value cards (prepaid) and bill payment services.

As a brand that connects people globally, Western Union had the challenge of listening to and truly understanding a diverse customer base. To help, NM Incite analyzed global conversations for thematic patterns across all social media platforms, including social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Weibo, as well as over 180 million blogs, forums and boards. All messages posted online about a need pertaining to money were captured and analyzed. Through this analysis, over 20 micro-segments were identified.

DEVELOPING A CUSTOMER-CENTRIC MODELAT

SUMMARY: Western Union is the world leader in global payment services. Guided by five core values – integrity, partnership, opportunity, passion, teamwork – customer centricity is at its core. By offering services through 500,000 agent locations in 200 countries and territories, as well as online, Western Union boasts incredible trust and reach. Recognizing the immense opportunity to capitalize and leverage this breadth, Western Union executed a CMO-sponsored partnership with NM Incite. Through joint efforts, the research helped them identify white space areas of opportunity for social media engagement, discover key customer segments, and uncover new insights about customers across global markets to drive deeper, more meaningful engagement.

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underStanding CuStomerS – Where, When and Why

Once Western Union knew who their target customer segments were, pre-defined and newly discovered, NM Incite analysts created profiles for each segment, developing a heat map. Stage one of the heat map creation involved identifying discussion volumes and prominent topics for each relevant customer segment, which is mapped across the Customer Decision Journey (Who by When matrix) (see Figure below). This enabled Western Union to glean insight on the key influencing factors that define the customer experience at different stages in the journey, complementing Western Union’s existing analytics and opening the door for new opportunities to engage consumers at these critical points.

Next, NM Incite focused on analyzing each audience segment for pain points and passions. Deeply understanding pain points is particularly important when serving the financially under-served, and can often be used as the strategic catalyst for new product or service development to satisfy unmet needs.

NM Incite further characterized the segments by identifying each group’s propensity to either give advice or ask questions. Segments with significant Q&A activity often signal an opportunity for companies to increase loyalty or gain new customers by providing

value through readily sharing quality information and by actively supporting engaged customers.

Finally, the segments were mapped against other key industry players to find out where they were being under-served. This helped Western Union evaluate how well their product offerings and marketing content addressed consumers’ unmet needs. With these customer deep-dives, Western Union can now prioritize where to best converse with key audience groups, and what to say.

GOING GLOBALFor a truly global brand like Western Union, insights at the local level are meaningless unless there is an apples-to-apples ability to compare insights and analysis across all markets. With different segments emerging all over the globe, Western Union needed a means to understand these consumers and address their needs.

With the ability to collect quality data and track discussion in over 30 markets and multiple languages, NM Incite was uniquely positioned to do to the analysis.

BUSINESS IMPACTThrough this global, category-level social listening initiative, Western Union developed a comprehensive understanding of online customer discussions in its industry. And now, social media heat maps focus the company’s ongoing social media listening efforts and help identify areas of opportunity to guide the company’s long-term roadmap for social media programs, including social care.

“With insightful maps of online conversations, we have a deep understanding of areas of opportunity, and can now focus on actions that matter.”Arun Muthupalaniappan

Low activity High activityAverage activity

GreenSegment

PurpleSegment

Red Segment

Orange Segment

Initial Consideration

Post Purchase

Active Evaluation

FIGURE: HEAT MAP OF OPPORTUNITIES - DECISION JOURNEY

About NM Incite

Global Fortune 1000 marketers rely on NM Incite solutions to discover emerging, industry-specific consumer insights and build relevant, differentiated and emotionally engaging brands.

NM Incite is a joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey & Company, bringing to bear deep expertise in measurement science and management consulting. As one of the largest global leaders in applying social media to solve marketing problems, NM Incite operates in over 30 markets, including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, China, India, Japan and Australia.