Maturity in leaps and bounds - organisational listening for customer engagement

Much organisational development occurs during times of crisis when answers and solutions are urgently needed. The objective of this article is to show examples illustrating that organisational listening on social media may take leaps from immature to mature mainly due to the pressure from stakeholders, not often as a strategic tool of integrated marketing communications (IMC) or public communications. The first example is from the late 2010s, when stakeholders were introduced to a direct route to brands made available through social media. Many unanswered customer questions suddenly became visible and were subsequently addressed. Similarly, the COVID-19 pandemic, as the second example, pressured organisations to respond to citizens' urgent concerns. These snapshots of development suggest that what matters for organisational legitimacy is understanding stakeholders' changing needs. This paper proposes that organisational listening - even in social media - should become a strategic function of organisations. Building on theories related to organisational listening, social media and IMC, this article argues for incorporating organisational listening as a strategic function into a model of integrated marketing and communications and/or strategic public communication.