SAS certainly don’t need to send out an SOS!

As customer engagement moves up the boardroom agenda vendor SAS is reporting a jump of almost two thirds in revenues from its customer intelligence technology offerings

 “SAS’ integrated marketing solution makes customer interactions more relevant, timely and welcome,” said John Bastone, Global Product Marketing Manager for SAS Customer Intelligence solutions. “Understanding a customer’s history with your organization, network and social influence matter in any interaction. SAS excels at identifying patterns that enable marketers to interact in real-time, fully understanding what has been and is happening across multiple channels, departments and divisions. It’s about decision management –where SAS has more than 30 years of experience – while creating a positive customer experience.”

In April the vendor launched a social media tool to help companies integrate social data across their businesses to better focus resources and build customer engagement and loyalty. Another new social media module, SAS® Conversation Center, will be available in January 2011 for managing customer engagement on Twitter. The new solution captures relevant tweets and applies analytics to discern sentiment and influence. Tweets are prioritized and routed to customer facing personnel for response.

These advancements represent a major breakthrough for organizations working to understand what drives market capitalization and risk, bringing science to the art of marketing and helping organizations quantify what creates or destroys value. In recent decades organizations’ intangible assets – brand, reputation, goodwill etc. – have grown from less than 20 percent to more than 80 percent.

Sentiment, which drives these figures, has until now been subjective and difficult to quantify. Yet a single tweet, blog post or Facebook update can influence the perceptions of thousands instantly. Now, with SAS Social Media Analytics organizations can listen, respond and minimize damage or echo positive news with greater accuracy and focus.