Say what? 3 ways sentiment analysis can help uncover your brand’s reputation

Today’s customers don’t just want more from companies – they expect more from companies. McKinsey research shows 70% of the buying experience is based on how customers feel they are being treated, which essentially puts customers in the driver’s seat and leaves companies scrambling to provide the types of experiences customers are looking to have.

But hold it right there: Word of mouth is still the primary driver of consumer purchasing decisions. Add to that complexity the influx of social channels and online reviews and it’s easy to see the critical nature of consumer opinion.

So what can your company do to take actionable steps to provide an improved experience for customers? Sentiment analysis, which provides insight into a customer’s feelings about an organization’s product, service, brand, employees, etc., is one solution.

Here’s a look at 3 ways sentiment analysis can uncover your brand’s reputation and meet customer needs:

Unlock the Voice of the Customer

While there are a number of different ways to get a sense of the voice of the customer (forums, discussion boards, surveys, etc.), none are as powerful as unlocking VoC in real time. Why? Because these real-time insights give you the ability to positively impact the customer experience (and overall impression of the company) while it’s still ongoing.

Sentiment analysis involves measuring the acoustic characteristics of a caller (i.e., physical stress in the voice, changes in the stress, and the rate of speech) and seamlessly meshing these acoustic measures with the overall context of the conversation. By combining acoustic characteristics and conversation context into a single score, agents can take swift action on issues before they escalate.

Deliver Faster Speed to Intelligence

As noted in IQPC’s Executive Report on Performance, Operation, and Technology, 92% of organizations offer live phone agent support. What this means is there is tremendous potential and opportunity for companies to determine customer sentiment, especially with “telephony continuing to reign as organizations’ primary customer service channel.”

With CallMiner Eureka’s Semantic Building Blocks, a new feature that allows analysts to leverage categories as building blocks for subsequent searches or categories, your company can more rapidly gain insight into customer attitudes on services, products, campaigns, or other topics. By enabling the reuse of this critical data, you’ll benefit from faster speed to intelligence that can work to improve the customer experience.

Improve the Quality of Service

With IQPC’s research indicating the majority of companies rely on telephone as a primary communications channel, it becomes critical to manage and improve the quality of service provided by live agents. The reason is simple: Customer service quality has a direct impact on the customer experience, which translates into the way your customers view your company (and, in turn, how others may view your company as well).

As noted in a Call Centre Helper article, however, random call sampling fails to provide a quantitative assessment of the customer experience across all customer interactions with agents. “Rather than taking a traditional ‘hit or miss’ approach with a review of randomly selected calls, a call center can leverage automated sentiment analysis to identify and measure broad areas of concern,” the article states. “With this bigger picture, sentiment analysis helps the organization to uncover repeated patterns that may be indicative of broken systemic processes, or that may be related to the performance of a specific department or representative.”

Final Thoughts

In today’s customer-centric landscape, the power to influence a company’s brand and reputation often lies within the hands of the customer. By using sentiment analysis, your company can take back control while realizing key benefits such as VoC insights, faster speed to intelligence, and improved customer service performance.

How does your company take advantage of sentiment analysis to improve the customer experience? Do you agree with the points referenced above?