twopointouch

A new report into customer engagement produced by e-consultancy reveals that UK firms are likely to significantly deepen their commitment to Web 2.0 technologies over coming months. The authors, who polled 800 internet and customer experience professionals to obtain the results, found that:

42% are planning to apply user-generated content (UGC) to their websites in the next 12 months; 23% are using it already.

35% are planning to use corporate blogs in the next 12 months; 17% are using them already.

33% are planning to use podcasting in the next 12 months; 18% using it already.

35% planning to use videocasting in the next 12 month; 17% using it already.

In brief, there will be twice as many companies involved in this stuff next year. (Unless they get distracted. The report also mentions that 66% regard lack of time and resources as a “great barrier” to delivering better customer service.)

While I am an evangelist for all this stuff to some extent, it’s hard not to feel that there’s a bandwagon element to this group of respondents. While the positive impact of blogging is pretty well-established, considerable question marks remain over the impact of some other Web 2.0 elements.

Yesterday, news emerged that very few people (1%) regularly download podcasts though awareness of the format has risen considerably. I’d want rather better assurance of positive results before I advised a company to go down that route. Even more are planning to videocast. I wonder whether the very large support for this idea might be related to the news that the format is now considered the best vehicle for advertising online?