The digital revolution brought a lot of disruption to different economic, political and social sectors. No one can ignore the impact of social media, especially enterprises. In this new era, customer relations has become both easier and more complex.
Customer relations are easier on the one hand because clients share positive and negative feedback on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. So to know what customers really think about their companies, enterprises need to track and monitor social networks.
Then on the other hand, it is complicated by the increased amount of unstructured data. Firms have to analyse this data using robust systems to build useful dashboards to help businesses to better reach customers.
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During this week’s Ciab—a conference and exposition focused on IT for financial institutions held in São Paulo— Rahaf Harfoush, a digital strategist and author, told a crowded audience of financial executives that they should be aware of several key digital trends.
According to Harfoush, these are the seven top trends to watch:
1 – Consumer micro-influence is rising; more people are using their small amount of influence within their social networks to create change.
2 – Consumers are becoming more interested in taking ownership of financial literacy,  tracking and budgeting.
3 – New social network financial ecosystems have been created, such as Gumroad, a tool that allows people to share and sell directly to their followers.
4 – New business models have sprung up, such as Kickstarter, a the crowd-sourced funding platform for creative projects; the advice site Covestor, which people can use to find and follow investing leaders; and secondary markets, such as SecondMarket, which provides tools for private companies and investors to engage with each other.
5 – Mobile banking is increasing and changing with initiatives, such as e-wallet (Lemon is one example); anytime and anywhere services, such as Square, a credit card reader for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices; and  device-based banking, which has revealed new industry players, such as Safaricom.
6 – Data policies are evolving, including so-called “weblining,” the capacity to deny someone something based on online behavior.
7 – Decentralized digital currency is emerging, such as Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world.
