“The reality is that social media is no longer a ‘nice to have’, it is a strategic need, and the next step is not just participating in the conversation, but leading it, sharing information, and more and more critically, monitoring social feeds and linking this to our systems, to make a meaningful impact to citizen convenience and service delivery.” Kroshlen Moodley
The analytics technology available today allows for sophisticated and automated sentiment monitoring and predictive analysis.
By establishing a taxonomy of critical keywords, analytics tools, and combining it with an organisation’s structured data, departments will be in position to better formulate outgoing messages, target specific audiences for those messages, and agilely respond to citizens’ complaints.
This will enable governments on a municipal, provincial or even national level to respond to crises, to send in additional resources if necessary, and to not be caught on the back foot when service delivery protests spark up. Clever data use helps public servants in understanding where there are pain points across the country, and to capacitate ourselves to respond to those issues.