Social Media Can Drive 20% to 40% Higher Spending

A recent survey of more than 3,000 consumers by Bain & Company found that customers who engage with companies over social media spend 20 percent to 40 percent more money with those companies than other customers. They also demonstrate a deeper emotional commitment to the companies, granting them an average 33 points higher Net Promoter score, a common measure of customer loyalty.

Up to this point, a disproportionate share of those results appear to have been reaped the big early adopters.

The gap between the early adopters and those waiting to take the plunge has actually widened. While the average billion-dollar company spends $750,000 a year on social media, according to Bain & Company analysis, some early adopters such as Dell, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, JetBlue and American Express invest significantly more. In some instances, the investment is tens of millions of dollars.

Bain argues that social media can create value at virtually every stage of the sales funnel, from awareness to retention.

Putting social media to work

What's the ROI from Telepresence?

Unfortunately, "usage" is not the same thing as "return on investment" If those two metrics were in fact directly related, nobody would ever have a problem figuring out the return on investment from deploying any unified communications solution.

Generally speaking, one has to assess "success" using soft measures, though some will point to offset travel costs. The problem is that it is difficult to quantify "better quality communications" or "faster development time" or "reduced friction," though those are the sorts of benefits one would expect to see.

The trouble is that most of what one can quantify is "usage."

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