[Podcast] Challenging Conventional Wisdom in Market Research: Cash App’s Ellen Tseng on the Power of Structure, Storytelling and Stakeholder Buy-In

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Podcast Transcript

Jackie Cuyvers:
Welcome to the Women in Social Listening and Insights podcast, where we showcase the incredible work of women working in the field of social intelligence. My name is Jackie Kivers, and I’ll be your host for this journey. In this podcast, we’ll be speaking with women from enterprise, agencies, and academia who are leading the charge in the world of social listening and insights. Together, we’ll be exploring their careers and the challenges they’ve faced and overcome and the innovative solutions they’ve developed. Our goal is to provide valuable insights and advice to our listeners who are passionate about this field and committed to advancing their careers. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting out, you’ll find inspiration and guidance in these conversations. So sit back, relax, and get ready to learn from the women who are shaping the future of social intelligence. Let’s get started.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Today, we’re joined by Ellen. Ellen, please introduce yourself.

Ellen Tseng:
Hello, Jackie. Thank you for having me. I am Ellen. I’m the head of a social listening team, head of social listening and Cash App Afterpay at Block. Nice meeting you guys.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Thanks so much for joining us today. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you first got into the field of social intelligence? What did your path look like?

Ellen Tseng:
Yeah. Absolutely. So social listening and social intelligence has been my entire career. I started as a social media analyst for entertainment agency for the movie studios. And it was at that job, it really opened my eyes about how the company and even agency industry using social media conversation, insights, analytics to really have a pulse check or, like, a measurement about how the fans feel about a certain product for the first job is a movie studio, so, like, a movie title, how they feel about certain trailer. It was very interesting because it’s looking at insights from a nontraditional a nontraditional sentiment way from market research. Right? And I will say definitely the entertainment and music industry were the forerunner for social listening and intelligence compared to other industry because I know social listening intelligence literally just become thriving for the past, like, five years. But they actually already seen this particular expertise is gonna be very helpful, very useful for the entire, market, like, ten, eleven, thirteen years ago.

So it was very eye opening, also very refreshing as well. And then I went on to, like, traditional advertising. I’ll learn a little bit more about, like, quantitative analytics and how does social media analytics, like, mixing with media. And that was very, very helpful for me to understand that not only the qualitative insights need to pair with quantitative analytics and how they speak to one another, how do you draw correlation, and why that makes sense to when when you come up with a good narrative, you definitely need data to back up your qualitative insights. And then I went on to a brand company, which is a mobile company, mobile sorry, mobile game company. And they definitely also introduced me to a lot of influencer partnership perspective when it comes to social insights. And that was when, like, YouTube literally just at the peak. So you know that there’s a lot of YouTuber like PewDiePie, Markiplier.

How those influencers when it comes to social listening, we look at the exposure, we look at awareness, we look at how the fans work, right, how the fans talk about around the celebrities, around the influencer, around the product they are endorsing. So that particular experience definitely helped me a lot and also introduced, I think, a new face of social media, which is about influencers, about, you know, such a meta expert and also creator. So that was very interesting. And then I went on to work for Microsoft for a little bit. And then I joined a b to b company, which is I know a lot of people think that social listening b to b, they’re not that sexy. You don’t really have a lot to talk about. That’s actually not true. There’s actually a lot a lot a lot of social listening when it comes to B2B industry.

You uncover with, you know, employees and as again, back to influencer, but employee advocacy and also just in general, what the industries talk about. So not necessarily necessarily particular about the brand, but you look at shares of voice, competitors, industry. What are the big market talk about? And that will essentially help from a strategy perspective using social listening. And then as of right now, you know, as a fintech industry, again, because it’s more my job sorry. The company is more a business to consumers. So there’s definitely a lot of conversation. It’s more customer service, customer support driven. But I also feel like, again, the ecosystem is changing.

We look at behavioural insights. We look at, you know, trends. So we’re not now not only looking at trends, we’re looking at AI. We’re looking at forecast and predictive analytics as well. So that is kinda like my low winded, like, of a like, response to you, Jackie, about how my career kinda leading up to this point.

Jackie Cuyvers:
It sounds like an incredible span of kind of diverse approaches to developing insights and and really different audiences. It sounds really exciting. Can you describe your current role and how you’re using insights there?

Ellen Tseng:
Yeah. Absolutely. So before I joined Block as a whole, so including Cash App, Square, Afterpay, they do not they do not have a social listening intelligence program. So I designed it. I established. I kicked off the entire listening intelligence program about three years ago when I joined Cash App. The program basically at the time just really focusing on product monitoring, like product conversation, product pain points, so very similar about voice to customers. And then now we’re looking at the entire survey, the entire landscape as of right now, three years from now, is, again, we go back to look at behavioural insights.

We look at competitors. We look at the industry and how and also even current events, like how, you know, tornado or hurricane will impact your brand because, again, we’re a payment company. And how does that from a behavioral perspective, we can draw signal to the marketing team, to the market research team, to the product, and let them know that, hey. There’s certain things happening through social listening and insights. And then we also look into audience segmentation a lot lot more. Our own channel and also just in general, whoever engaging with Cash App and Block. So that is kinda like my role. And then our role now, instead of sitting silo, we are definitely partner a lot more closely with, like, market research or voice customers.

And even sometimes, I would say risk up, so talking of looking at compliance and regulation and even legal sometimes. So the now it becomes definitely a lot more cross functional rather than people just look at social listening. I thought that’s just a marketing tool or that’s just, you know, again, a part of the voice customer branch.

Jackie Cuyvers:
With working with all these cross functional teams, can you share maybe a recent project you worked on and what you may have learned from it?

Ellen Tseng:
Yeah. Absolutely. So I think last year about earlier last year, there we did a project with a third party agency called Eisenberg. At the time, it was look really looking at the study of a Cash App on social channels, how our content resonated with the audience and also with the community. And it definitely provide us a lot more in-depth look. There were some surprises. We’re not gonna lie. There are a lot of unexpected insights and findings through that exercise.

And we also kinda couple that with market research as well and, like, one on one interviews, some surveys, questions, and kind of pair that with social analytics to find out that, okay, this is where we at right now. This is where we want the audience to get to, what, you know, what kind of content consumption we we want our audience to consume, and then how we gonna get there. So it’s like a three, like, milestones journey, and that was a really good project. I would say I learned a lot through it. I learned a lot from audience segmentation and big shout out. And thanks to Jocelyn Pfizerberg and her team, their team was wonderful. Put provided a lot of toolings and technology and also a lot of in-depth insights for us to learn.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Sounds great. Working with so many different cross functional teams and on different types of projects, what metrics do you rely on?

Ellen Tseng:
Speaking broadly, because we never just rely rely on one benchmark or analytics or measurement. It is really about looking at multiple benchmark and analytics. And when you pair that up, what did that look like? So at the beginning of social listening as expertise, I think we look at a lot of benchmark now is kinda high level, almost vanity, such as volume, which is about exposure, impression, reach, and views, which is about awareness, and then engagements such as comments, likes, shares, and saves. In my opinion, those benchmark are definitely more two dimensional. I will say probably other than shares at this day because shares definitely kind of tap into virality a little bit. But when we look at more three-dimensional, which is more about qualitative analytics. So we are talking about sentiment values and score. If you have a scores, if you have a percentage or formula, how to do sentiment, I think that’s even more helpful.

Each of the sentiment, you know, formula will be slightly different, one company than the other because our product is different, our product landscape road mapping is different, the brand value, reputation is different, brand value is different. And then we look at authentic conversation scores. Again, how does that look like? Do people actually engaging with your content? Is it actually people using your support channel? And attribution funnel, And then we also talk about affinity, like competitor, which is share voice, industry scores. So those are the things that now, in addition to what we just talked about, what I call two dimensional benchmark, which is, you know, really, really good still to have because that’s basically a baseline. But when you tap into in-depth, and that’s really where I will say the core essence of your insights coming from, and it probably should be your benchmark. So that will that’s kinda what I feel about measurement and benchmark.

Jackie Cuyvers:
I like your nuanced view of it and how kind of, obviously, different teams, different projects, different brands are going to need different measurements and metrics. So how do you approach collaboration and teamwork in social insights projects, and what skills do you think are essential for success in this field?

Ellen Tseng:
Yeah. I think there is a lot of I feel like people people feels like default is should happening, but it’s not actually. So when we how do how do I mean by that? Is there’s a lot of basic, I think, skills when it comes to collaboration. Again, people tend to overthink or tend to own their thinking, underestimate. So cross functional communication between teams is definitely my number one when it comes to collaborating projects. This is not just because there might be misalignment. There might be goals we miss or, you know, we get, you know, kinda distracted along the way. It’s really about what is the data analytics look like, collaborate across multiple teams.

This is about swim length. This is about work stream. Again, it’s very tactical, not necessarily social listening driven, but also yet very, very crucial important. There are many, many times I will do a collaboration project with another team and redundancy always happen. And things get mixed up, communication, you know, again, misaligned. We tend to misunderstood the goals. Those are the things that always happen, and that’s always I kinda uncover that usually was 70 p 30 70% of the time why the project was delayed was, you know, we need to redo again. So that’s why to me, communication actually is the top one priority.

Always. Always have a project manager on your side or always, you know, documents where things are at. So there’s always have to be a product status or product tracker. Also timeline milestone. Right? So those are all kind of including that funnel. And again, I know this sounds very project management driven, but actually still very necessary. The second piece is about clear methodology and framework. This is about how do you, again, communicate, how do you establish structure approach, a framework for data collection, analysis, and reporting ensure consistency and credibility.

This piece I found out a lot when I collaborate with multiple or many, many insights teams. So for example, if you’re collaborating with market research team, data science, voice of customer. I think it’s always good to kinda talk about your parameter. That way, when all of these data is combining together or come together, put it in a a presentation. Everybody understand the nuance. Everybody understand the approach so they can also know that, ah, this is how we’re gonna frame this narrative. This is how we’re gonna, you know, put an emphasis on this particular insights and findings that we we did along the way. There’s many times methodology also get mixed up.

People will thought that, oh, I thought you were collecting public mentions, but not private messages, which is like social cases if you have support social media support for your brand. Again, those are just example that very much how can, you know, cross you know, get get it confusing when you’re not when you don’t have a structure approach and framework. And last but not least, the storytelling insights narrative act activation. So kind of coupled with the second points, how do you craft a consistent compelling narrative that kind of resonate with your executive and decision maker, especially you have to align the goals of the project. Many times, again, when there’s no communication, when there’s no no clear methodology, that’s why those two points of the first two, I found it very, very often, very frequently. I look at the project and I realize that, ah, voice of customer have their own narrative. Market research have their own narrative. Social listening have our own narrative.

All the narrative does not it looks like a piecemeal. It looks like we’re all talking about our own story, but don’t have a consistent or coherent insights throughout the entire life study. So I will say this three points is probably the most I value the most when it comes to collaboration and teamwork.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Those are some great best practices. It sounds like they might have come out of some frustration or or challenges.

Ellen Tseng:
Right.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Can you talk about a time when maybe you had to challenge conventional wisdom in your work and what you learned from that experience?

Ellen Tseng:
Generally speaking, it is very tough to communicate sentiment to stakeholders. Even when you’re doing collaboration project, especially with market research, especially with voice customer, sentiment is always something that we all have our own nuance and context of background. And trust me, even we’re just talking about three teams right now. And when you kind of present it to the executive, they’re they also have their own, you know, interpretation when it comes to sentiment. Because, again, everybody have their own, like, version of, I think this is a positive sentiment. Some people will say, no. That’s a neutral because it’s a question. So sentiment is always very challenging in my opinion to explain, to find it in a scientific way to say, this is our score.

This is why we deem. This is what the sentiment is all about because it involves nuance, because it involves contacts. And we just need to keep the interpretation as neutral. When I say neutral, not sentiment wise, but as, like, we don’t have any emotionals in there. This is what usually what brand feels the sentiment will look like. Because, again, it’s very subjective. So I always feel our sentiment is really, really arbitrary and very, very hard to communicate to anybody outside social listening world.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Can you talk about a time when you maybe had to pivot or change direction in a project due to unexpected findings in your data?

Ellen Tseng:
Oh, yeah. All the time, actually. Usually, we do not we’re trying to my t and I, when we receive a project or receive a ask or ad hoc or a research plan, My t and I tend not to look at what the preexisting data already happened because we don’t wanna go in with a bias or particular hypothesis, let me put it this way, until we fully vet through the raw data on our end. But there will be times we know there’s specific goals on the project. Let’s say the people will say, we would like to know what people hate about this particular product or hate about this particular brand. So again, the hypothesis is already there. Right? But when we went through the raw data, I think this is where we always try to maintain neutral, but there are many, many times we did not know their specific goals because the again, the stakeholder will come at us, display a very high level questions that we would like to find out, you know, how people feel about this. And then we later, you know, down in the line, maybe like midway through the project and realize that, oh, stakeholder actually do have a certain expectation, certain goals for this particular ask.

They will say, well, we’re trying to find out that white people hate this. And we’re like, well and that’s when we need to change direction. We need to kinda go back to our insights, go back to our raw data. Not necessarily manipulative, but it’s more like, okay. Looking at our findings, how do we phrase it? How do we put in the narrative that based on their actual goals? So, yeah, this happened to us all the time. There’s also other times that we found our raw data or when it come out of it, that is actually a contradiction, what they think of. So for example, go back to the to the project. They say, oh, we would like to know what people hate about this brand.

And it turns out they don’t hate about it, like, from a social listening perspective. So how do we phrase that as a counterpoint? And then and then also, again, keep in mind aligned with the goals of the project. Right? Well, actually, people do not really hate that brand. They actually have positive praises to this based on x, y, and z. The reason probably we feel people hate this brand is because x, y, and z. So we offer our own point of view and also we offer counterpoint based on the data. But go back to hypothesis, which is why the, you know, original goal is. And then, again, we kinda used our data to kinda say, maybe this is why you have that hypothesis from the beginning. But, yeah, this this happened all the time in your project.

Jackie Cuyvers:
I think that’s one of the areas where it’s really important to understand what the stakeholder intends to do with the information. Right? Like, sure. I can I can answer that for you, but what are you gonna do differently? And how is that going to impact the business? And what are you actually capable or or have the funding or the approval to do with this information? Because, you know, asking, you know, an opinion about something or or, as you say, the sentiment is very different if you’re trying to do new product innovation versus brand campaign planning or something. So definitely makes a difference understanding the objectives and, like, how it will be actioned.

Ellen Tseng:
Yeah. 100%. And I think this also involves a lot of business questions as well, is I tend to we tend to feel that when stakeholder reach out, they have specific against specific hypotheses already in mind, but we also found out that that’s not really it’s not really helping asking the business questions and that’s what we also kinda help them and guide them kinda come back and say, we understand this is what your hypothesis was and that we understand where you’re coming from. But looking at the business questions, we don’t feel like this data will answer that business questions or your hypothesis will actually answers that question. So we kinda go back to the roots and say, where we want that business question, like, what are we trying to do? You know, fulfill like you said, Jackie, like, how does that fulfilling the business goals, especially, you know, for the brand and for the company?

Jackie Cuyvers:
So, I mean, you you sound so passionate about this subject. How do you stay motivated and inspired in your work? I mean, you’ve been doing this for some time now.

Ellen Tseng:
Yeah. Funny enough, I love social listening so much. I’ve been doing this since my first job. Right? And I’ve been doing it for thirteen years. The social listening is technically my hobbies. I do it for my current work right now. I also have applied it outside of work to do, like, nonprofit. So I try to I always feel very motivated and inspired when just looking at a lot of people come as people talk about social listening in general.

So there’s a lot of social media experts, you know, on LinkedIn. We know a lot of social media expert in our field since this field is very small and very niche and they all provide a very refreshed perspective sometimes. And I think it’s very inspiring and also made me think a lot just on daily basis. But people and current events happen around us and how is social listening play a part of that, you know? And I think that’s where I get really motivated, I get really inspired. Not only that, I actually look at a lot of market research publication, like Pew Research, eMarketer. I I just think research and insights in general, even just data or analytics, just in general, that really hype me up because I’m a data nerd. I just wanna know where is this data coming from? How does this data gonna look like? Especially social media ecosystem. Now we found out that people just tend to comments on everything.

A lot of commenting become very private. People tend to share stuff with their friends and family more than just commenting on a Facebook post, commenting on a x post, commenting on Instagram post. People like to share, you know, again privately, even now through Telegram, now through WhatsApp. Discord is a big channel as well that people just talk among the community. Now I think it’s about exclusivity when it comes to social media. That also post, I think, again, how do you get motivate, inspire your work with the ecosystem evolving? Your approach about data, about social listening needs to evolve as well. So I think that’s all these things are saying this is kinda making me really motivated, very inspired because this is just more than social. Yeah.

Jackie Cuyvers:
So you’ve evolved in your career. And as you say, the way that people use social media is changing and evolving. But what about, like, you know, traditional media, books, or publications? Like, what what are your go tos that have inspired you or you’d recommend to other insights professionals?

Ellen Tseng:
Yeah. So there was one book called Contagious. I can’t remember what the author is. So Contagious is probably one of the best book I ever read when it comes to insights and also behavioral patterns and just user behavior. Kinda what I mentioned about my first job is in in an entertainment agency for movie studios. That was the job I was taught to look at social listening from an anthropology perspective rather than, oh, social insights. This is what people talking about. No.

Everything is like tribal behavior, is about anthropology, is about how the society, again, behave. So Contagious, definitely, the book is talking about people, just people, not just talk about online. We’re not talking about just online. He the book is just talk about in general, how people behave one way or the other from anthropology anthropology perspective. So I really, really love that book. The other one is hug your hater. I love this one because I didn’t found out about, like, two, three years ago. It’s really about how do you embrace negative feedback.

The book is not really talking about insights. The book is talking about how customer support, not only you need to look at a positive, you actually wanna value the negative more than positive. So how do you embrace and handle negative feedback? So how does that apply, like, to my job? Is oftentimes when we’re presenting insights, when we’re presenting data analytics, we know there’s gonna be disagreement. We know there’s gonna be these be dissents coming from stakeholder, even from your I’ll be honest, from your collaborative team as well, kind of back to what we talked about. People have different narratives from their own insights. But Hug Your Hater, that book really teach you how to look at the sense, disagreement, negative feedback, you know, from multiple angles and how do you embrace it. So I really, really appreciate that book, teach me a lot. And then how to be better at collaboration from that book, and also how do you look at feedback and even criticism sometimes, and how do you take that to kinda shape your leadership skills and also shape your personal skills a little bit in career, like, in your professional area?

Jackie Cuyvers:
Wow. Sounds like two incredible books to add to my bookshelf. Thank you so much.

Ellen Tseng:
Yeah. No problem.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Can you share your advice for individuals interested in pursuing a career in social listening and insights, and maybe what qualities or skills you think are essential for success?

Ellen Tseng:
Absolutely. So I will say the must have for the individual interested in this particular area. You definitely need to have strong passion and interest in social media and data. This is a must have because kinda go back to what I’m saying. If you don’t, you will be really hard for that person to be sensitive about how the entire ecosystem evolving. So that’s social media. And from a data perspective, you need to have a strong interest of data because that’s where all the analytics and all the, how we call it, the foundation to back up your qualitative insights. So you need to be very kinda have a not only do you like it, you love it to the point that you are very sensitive.

When there’s uptick, if there’s a abnormal anomaly, you can spot it right away. That’s where the strong passion interest coming to, you know, come to play. The second is you have to be curious at fault. At times that you ask question to the point the your stakeholder, your teammates, your managers, which is sometimes myself, or my my my manager gets so tired of you asking question, but that’s how you’re gonna thrive because you’re so curious. You wanna find out why this data acting this way, why this behavior is acting this way, why there is a trend line acting this way. You’re so curious. You wanna you wanna find out why. So I I would say curious at fault.

And you also love to observe on social media platform. So this is kinda go back to the first point, is because you has such a strong passion and interest about social media, you love to look at what people talk about on social media platform in general. You love to look at how x is being involved. You love how threats is being used. You love how Discord now is being used, from a brand perspective and how the other brand you know, talk about other brands like Wendy, Duolingo is the perfect example. Those are the things that you’re gonna find enjoyment. You’re gonna find enjoyment and also just happy when you observe and monitor on social media platform. So those three, I would say, is the must have.

When it comes to nice to have, the reason I say these are nice to have is these are more like a hard skills. Hard skills can be trained. Hard skills can also, you know, kinda unique experience. You need hands on experience to be a little bit better in this area. So, like, data analytics, Power BI. Right? Or you have, you know, Tableau skills even when you have SQL or Python, data science’s fire background. Those are very nice to have, but, again, these are the things that you can learn. Social media marketing, again, about content creation, content strategy, or social media strategy from a brand perspective.

Look at everything from a bird view landscape. But, again, the reason I say nice to have is because those are hard skills that can be trained. The must have is the soft skills. You cannot train. You have to kinda have them within within in yourself. So that’s kinda where I feel, but that’s gonna be my advice for the individual interesting in pursuing this career.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Knowing what you do now, how would you advise future women in insights in pursuing, educational or career path for opportunities in social listening and social intelligence?

Ellen Tseng:
Yeah. I will say not afraid to make mistakes. Support one another and the community. We have this big community. Right? You, me, and also, the people we know, Jillian from, you know, from Social Intelligence Lab, there’s many, many wonderful women that are in this in this career, in this expertise, and we all kinda support one another as a community and we talk about data. We talk about social listening all the time, exchanging ideas. Not afraid to have uncomfortable but necessary conversations. This is this is professionally, meaning that sometimes you need to challenge your stakeholder, your executive, your decision makers to think about how the insights work, how they look at social listening, but those are very uncomfortable conversation that we need to have.

And also, always kinda stand up for yourself and speak the truth. I think this is this last piece is something that in my career, there are times I will dodge a little bit. I’m not gonna lie because the stakeholder, the executive, my challenging my idea and say, I don’t really think this insight is accurate. How do you know your truth and say, no. This is wrong raw data. I’m just repeating the data. How do you stand off? Not only that’s not for you, but it’s you actually stand up for what you believe in, which is what this expertise, what this career is all about.

Jackie Cuyvers:
That’s fantastic advice. Thank you so much, Ellen, for sharing your passion and your expertise and, your guidance. Really, really, really appreciate your time.

Ellen Tseng:
Thank you, Jackie, for having me.

Jackie Cuyvers:
And that’s a wrap for this episode of the Women in Social Listening and Insights podcast. I hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation and taken away some valuable insights and advice from today’s guest. If you like this episode, please be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Spotify so you never miss an episode. And don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn for updates and additional resources. I’d like to take a minute to once again thank our interviewee for taking the time to join us on the show today and sharing her story and insights with us. Your contribution to the world of social intelligence is truly invaluable, and we’re so grateful for you sharing your time and expertise. And finally, if you listeners know of anyone else who would make a great guest on our show, please don’t hesitate to introduce us. We’re always on the lookout for new and inspiring stories.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Until next time, I’m Jackie Cuyvers, and this is the Women in Social Listening and Insights podcast. Thanks so much for listening.