On August 5, Networked Insights, a provider of customer intelligence across social media, announced that NetShops Inc. selected its customer intelligence technology platform to build an outdoor-focused community, “The Backyard,” and gain valuable customer insights from user interactions within its network of sites. NetShops is a leading Web retailer comprised of more than 200 niche home and lifestyle product e-commerce sites, and is one of Internet Retailer’s Hot 100 Best Retail Websites.

The partnership with Networked Insights will help enhance the consumer experience and promote engagement across NetShop’s network of sites as customers look for answers during the buying process. Networked Insights in turn will allow members of The Backyard to interact with others who have similar interests and share unbiased information about past experiences, hobbies, and ultimately NetShops’ products.

Using Networked Insights’ Customer Insight Platform, NetShops will be able to gain insights in these interactions to find out about customer needs, brand buzz, products and competitors, which will enable NetShops to enhance the overall customer experience. The technology will also help the company better understand their customers and make more informed business decisions based the customer intelligence.

I met Daniel Neely, CEO of Networked Insights a couple of months ago when we talked about customer conversations at my blog. When I read about the announcement, I reached out to Dan with a few questions.

I like the idea of making the products and promotions relevant to the interactions people are having within the network. Can you talk about the technology behind the portal? Clearly two components of digital marketing work hand in hand to deliver optimal results - good data and the ability to mine it. Can you expand a little about the service Networked Insights delivers?

Dan Neely: Networked Insights’ solution includes both a customer-facing community (Customer Interaction Network) and and back-end portal (Customer Insight Platform). The insight platform provides insights from all five areas of focus (customer needs, content, competition, brand and product/service) and assigns an influence metric, based on engagement, to each member of the community. Companies can tell who is saying what to who and how influential it is. This social behavior profile, combined with content analysis, helps companies evaluate the most relevant discussions and ideas. Making sense of the information gathered in the community is our main differentiator.

Networked Insights’ proprietary technology can intelligently interpret the conversations and deliver actionable insights. Many companies build community for community’s sake and don’t really take advantage of the value other than giving customers a voice. Networked Insights does that, improves customer satisfaction in that way, but also drives business values in areas like sales, marketing and product development. More information about Networked Insights’ offering can be found here.

As far as linking to the Backyard community is concerned, The reality is that customers don’t actually visit Netshops.com, they visit the micro-sites like Hammocks.com. Since the Backyard community is outdoors-focused, it’s located on Netshops’ backyard-related sites for now.

Can you talk a little bit about Social Commerce? I thought all commerce was social to one degree or another.

Dan Neely: I suppose social e-commerce is more accurate than “social commerce.” So many people do their shopping online, and although many refer to reviews and forums, it’s largely a passive, solitary process. With a community in place at an e-commerce site, retailers give customers the opportunity to have real-time interactions around products and their transactions on the site. A bridge can be built between the community and the e-commerce portion of the site, as you mentioned, linking products/promotions to interactions that are happening within the network. Check out the conversation titled “the debate rages on “Charcoal or gas”.

I suppose users have the option of creating anonymous or fake profiles, if they so choose. Do they? Do you have disclosures and privacy policies at your communities? I remember when Facebook first implemented Beacon, that was a big turnoff for me. It led to my leaving the social network for good.

Dan Neely: As with other social networks, users can create anonymous profiles (with email confirmation). Networked Insights gives the customers full control of their information, they disclose only as much as they want to, we call this progressive disclosure. Depending on the community, customers are rewarded by how much they share (for example, in The Artful Home community, there is a point system that awards gift certificates to certain members). Information about Networked Insights’ privacy policy can be found here.

Have you launched other communities before The Backyard? If so, what have you learned? Are you putting that intelligence back into the technology and tools?

Dan Neely: Last fall, we launched the Artful Community with The Guild. I’ve attached a case study that includes some of the findings. Unfortunately, we’re not able to disclose who else we’re working with at the moment, but we work with etailers, big brands and social media publishers and networks.

In your experience, do companies like Netshops participate in the conversation? Would the company have the ability to see complaints and dissatisfaction online and be able to address it in the tool? Would your tool work with Get Satisfaction? Does it tie back to the company’s customer service?

Dan Neely: At this point, Netshops is taking the approach of being the moderator to conversations– you will see them indicated by a M in a shield in the community. They are not forcing the conversation in one direction or the other but they are helping customers out in the community. A company has the ability to join and interact with the community if they choose to. Through the insight platform, companies are able to see any complaints or dissatisfaction and could use it for customer service. Networked Insights’ technology has the ability to gather intelligence from third-party sites like MySpace, so this could be integrated with a feedback forum site like Get Satisfaction as well.