Ikea serve millions of customers across the planet. With the constant growth of social media, customers were writing more comments online than ever before. Ikea decided to use these comments as a way to benefit the business.

So how?

Ikea created a ‘listening hub’, a portal where every comment that was written online about the business was being listened by key stakeholders. After the comments had come in they were being directed to the right department and communicated down the organisation. Instead of ignoring the customers comments, which were both positive and negative, Ikea saw them as an opportunity for a culture shift.

Ikea used the portal as a valuable customer research method. They learnt many things about what customers truly thought about the business and it also highlighted many trends that Ikea were not aware of, for example, Americans are far more likely to turn to Facebook to make a complaint (36.5%) that the Brits (just 5%). The listening hub allowed Ikea to address frequent complaints quickly and communicate these for a constant positive development.

Who would have thought that social media would allow Ikea to be more socially intelligent?

Learn more about Ikea’s social intelligence.