Social media analysis startup Airwoot tells brands which customer needs their attention

The next-gen customers are highly opinionated, always on the go and ever connected. Through social media they can reach out to a brand anytime, anywhere. One can simply tweet away their query or vent out frustration on the company’s Facebook page. There have been umpteen instances when brands delay in responding to queries which require instant response. The social media spectrum has broadened, and today there are several players offering content metrics, analytics, brand mentions to monitor reputation and so on. Several companies have built-in tools to monitor social media mentions ranging from enterprise level solutions like Radian6, LiveOps and Lithium to free individual trackers like Twitspark and Klout. Tossing their hat into the CRM social listening ring is Airwoot from the Indian startup Memetic Lab.

Airwoot tries to identify customers, proactively connect with them in real-time and deliver exceptional customer support experience. By creating priority inbox, it filters and classifies each social media mention in order to figure out if it requires the brand response or not.  Let’s not forget that social sites such as Facebook, Twitter etc. come with their own free tools but aren’t quite professional grade as yet when it comes to tracking a customer, collaborating within multiple support agents or external teams, enriching the knowledge base of frequent problems often faced by  customers, or maintaining service levels associated with customer support.

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Aiming for a speedy social media customer support…

Customer support tools on traditional channels such as email and phone fail to understand the dynamics of social media, especially the real-time, transparent and democratic nature of the medium. The Airwoot team has built tools and framework from scratch to understand the new language of social media and how a brand interacts with these messages. Basically, brands sign up on Airwoot and connect their social channels – Facebook and Twitter (will be made available on G+, if clients require it). Airwoot listens in real-time each time users mention brands on social channels. It then identifies customers who need help from the brand and collaborates with the company team in real-time in order to provide support. It sets and tracks measurable social goals such as service levels for responses and customer satisfaction. It also manages complex workflows with a brand’s multiple social media channels.

Incubated at TheMorpheus in August last year, Airwoot is a team of five, along with co-founders Saurabh Arora, Doctoral Researcher, HPI Germany;  Prabhat Saraswat, Doctoral Researcher, DTU Denmark and Achal Aggarwal who has previously worked with Disney, Apple and Opentable.

Airwoot operates on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model where brands sign up and pay on a monthly basis for using the product, starting at USD 399 (approx Rs 24,000) and upwards depending upon the volume of the social media traffic and size of the social media team. It has recently finished pilot runs with few of the top brands in India, which has helped companies achieve three times faster response and issue resolution times, and eventually 2.5x better customer satisfaction. They now plan to make the product accessible to a larger set of brands including e-commerce, retail, banking, travel and FMCG brands. Airwoot recently completed its round of funding from most prominent angel investors of India and now plans to expand the team.