Dr Ranjit Nair (PhD AI), CEO and Founder of Germin8 Solutions

Dr. Ranjit Nair is the CEO of Germin8, a digital intelligence company focused on using data analytics and artificial intelligence to help companies become more customer-centric. He is passionate about artificial intelligence, innovation and the analytics to generate value for both companies as well as individuals.

Ranjit completed his PhD in Computer Science with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Southern California in 2004. His thesis focused on decision making in multi-agent teams involved in collaborative tasks in uncertain environments, like robots tasked with rescuing people in the aftermath of natural disasters. Post his doctorate, he worked as Senior Research Scientist with Honeywell Labs in Minneapolis, where he continued his work in developing algorithms for planning and decision making in the face of imprecise and incomplete information. 

He returned to India at the end of 2006 to be a tech entrepreneur and to fulfill a desire to see India become known as not just as an exporter of IT services but also for world-class software products and innovation. With this goal in mind, he founded Germin8 along with his father, Raj Nair, who is a successful strategy consultant and serial entrepreneur. Today, Germin8 helps many large companies across sectors like financial services; automotive, FMCG and pharmaceuticals to use analyze their customers and become more customer-centric.

Apart from Germin8, Ranjit serves on the India Advisory Board of the University of Southern California and is the past President of the Alumni Club of Mumbai of the University of Southern California. In his spare time, he enjoys advising young entrepreneurs who have just begun their startup journey. He also serves as visiting faculty at several institutes like MICA and NMIMS.

Outside of his professional interests, Ranjit spends his time with his family and is the father of a precocious three-year-old. He spends the little time that remains on reading science fiction, running long distance, and experimenting in the kitchen.

3 Vital Elements to Build Your Brand Image via Responses on Social Media

Social media is one of the most important means of building your online brand image. There are many brands like Tesco, Sainsbury and Xbox who have upgraded their brand image with their unique way of responding. Good responses make your brand memorable, recallable and respectable. The more you react to your audience, the more likely you are to be successful. It’s time to make your brand stand out in the crowd with these three vital elements for online image building:

Tone of Responses: Yes! Your tone of responses matter a lot. It should complement your brand’s image. If you are a suit and blazer selling brand for businessmen and you respond the queries posted by your customers in a cool and funky tone, using slang words such as “hot” and “dude”, you are ridiculing your own brand. The best solution to it is to delegate different people to manage different channel. After sometime, a person working on a specific channel tends to specialize in it. Using the right tone can help to reflect the humane side of your brand, which is crucial aspect of creating a good image. Now days, customer wants to interact with humans, and not robots.

The Use of Words: Content has proven to be an effective medium of marketing. Whether it is online posts or responses; your use of words has a great impact. Your words need to be what the customer is expecting. Besides this, the words should be catchy and easy to understand because not all are well-versed with the language. Sometimes, you can use phrases and idioms to impress the customer. Avoid using sarcastic words since some respondents love to play around with words that are subtly satirical.

The Turnaround time: Maintaining a lower turnaround time is always going to be a vital element in building a brand image on social media. If a brand takes long hours to respond to a customer query, you are making your customer frustrated since “nobody likes waiting”. Customers post queries on social media for quick answers and if your brand cannot fulfill this expectation, then it really needs to work upon its online customer care services. The lower the turnaround time of responses, the better becomes the brand image. However, some brands have excelled in online customer care services.

Dr Ranjit Nair (PhD AI), CEO and Founder of Germin8 Solutions

7 Online Reputation Management (ORM) Commandments by Dr Ranjit Nair (PhD AI), CEO and Founder of Germin8 Solutions

Today, as a business owner, online customer feedback with regards to your business has become a key driver to understand how customers perceive your products and services, which can dramatically affect your bottom line. Positive reviews and comments a local business receives on social media leads to higher levels of customer acquisition and retention, significantly impacting a brand’s public image. Effective online reputation management can be challenging for some business owners, but is critical to stay ahead of the game. Studies have shown that 72% of customer’s online trust reviews on websites and various forums as much as they do personal recommendations from friends and family. Here are some statistics about their consumers that digital marketers should be aware about.

Speed

o    42% expect a response from the brand within an hour [Source: Edison Research]

o    57% expect same response time at night

o    72% expect a response within 1 hr on Twitter [Millward Brown]

Transparency and Genuineness

·         Customers whose complainants were resolved are more loyal than those who never experienced a problem at all

o    34% are more likely to buy

o    43% are more likely to recommend

o    38% are more receptive to ads

o    42% are willing to praise on social media [Millward Brown]

Does this resonate with you as a brand?  Are you doing anything about it? Here are 7 simple rules to follow when it comes to managing the online reputation of your business, which in turn helps tip the scale in your favour.

1. Setup Appropriate Social Media Accounts

Based on your business and where people are likely to talk about your company and its products, setup accounts on all key social media platforms that would be appropriate. These may include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and any industry-specific forums.

The paradigm of modern business marketing has shifted from seeking potential clients to luring potential Clients. Having a polished digital profile is an important step towards attracting customers. Potential business connections and clients will sometimes search for your name in advance, so you want to have an impressive profile before that first meeting.

2. Set up Accounts with Social Media Monitoring Tools

Listening is key to knowing your audience better. Depending on how popular and well known you are, there may be few too many people talking about your brand. Social media has brought brand conversations to the forefront, which has led to brands having to be transparent and authentic in their communications and marketing

3. Set up Early Warning Systems using Keywords

Run regular searches and set up alerts or RSS feeds that notify you when your keywords are mentioned. It is wise to aggregate all this information using an RSS reader in order to easily review research, analyse and finalise the keywords you want your brand /online persona to be associated with. Various Social media listening tools provide inbuilt alerts to track specific key words and sentiments so that you can segregate the ones on priority. A deft use of social media is the need of the hour in order to avoid tiny incidents from turning into a marketing crisis

4. Sentiment Analysis

What do your customers tweets, blogs and posts about your products and services tell you about what they think and how they feel and perhaps most importantly, how do they affect your sales and other KPI’s? Social Media Listening accurately translates all these unstructured data into statistics that are both measurable and actionable thus guiding your direct responses and overall marketing campaigns. A timely analysis of this unstructured data gives you a competitive advantage by detecting trends early, alerting you when a crisis is slowly emerging and monitoring your competitor’s activities.  Rather than just turning text into numbers, the tool further helps connect these numbers to required actions leading to a meaningful ROI.

5. Engagement and Resolution

Engagement is at the core of any social media strategy. In order to be successful you need to take your strategy one step further by listening, engaging and being proactive. The beauty of social media and its real time nature is that misconceptions and problems can be instantly addressed and fixed. A brands true presence or value online is its engagement and a Social Listening tool provides its clients a clear picture of audience engagement as shown below.

6. Be Responsive

Brands with high levels of advocacy significantly outperform those that lack advocates or encounter consumer criticism. As per Hubspot, 51% of those who complain are more impressed with the brand after the brand responds. The best way to win over your audience is to listen to them and respond to consumer criticism in real time. Social media has provided brands with a platform for two-way conversations with their target audience. Modern marketing success hinges upon your company’s ability to position itself as consistently helpful and useful to prospects and advocates, alike.

  7. Identify Themes of Conversations

Listening or monitoring is how brands can keep tabs on their audience in real time. An analysis of these conversations gives marketers an insight into social conversation and derives value. This type of analysis is designed to help you understand:

-The topic of discussion

-The audience discussing it

-In what context are they discussing it

-The reason why they are talking about it

Conclusion

As business becomes more and more personal brands should move from becoming content pushers to conversation enablers and listeners. A good Social media listening tool can help you monitor a variety of sites and aid your social media efforts.