At a time when brands are placing so much importance on customer experience (CX), conducting customer sentiment analysis can help you take your brand to the top. Customer sentiment refers to the different emotions that your customers experience — positive or negative — while engaging with your brand. In this age of instant communication, how can brands conduct customer sentiment analysis? Let us find out.
What is customer sentiment analysis?
Emotions are the foundation of strong and enduring relationships. Be it with friends, family, or customers, emotions can bring people together. Consumers undergo a variety of emotions when dealing with brands. They could be delight, excitement, happiness, joy, sadness, frustration, and anger.
Sentiment analysis is the research of words written or said by a person to determine the emotions they are most likely feeling at the time. Analyzing people’s gestures and expressions is also an accepted method for conducting sentiment analysis.
Sentiment analysis helps brand managers and entrepreneurs understand how consumers feel and what they want from their organizations. It is an excellent way to find out what your target customers think about your company and its products or services.
Consumer sentiment analysis will be the driver for customer-centric brands and will set new standards in customer service.
Also read: Application Of Customer Sentiment Analysis In Businesses
Why customer sentiment analysis is imperative for businesses
Contextual conversations and timely solutions to problems improve customer emotions and have a transformational impact on CX. However, it is not practically possible to always meet your client's expectations. Sometimes, prospective clients may not be impressed with the products and services offered or pitched.
Customers expect fast service that works for them on demand at any place, time, or channel. Most customers are willing to use self-service, but they often do not expect it to work. No wonder it is high time for businesses to get self-service right.
Sales and service teams know too well that situations that make customers unhappy can be resolved without delay, resulting in positive outcomes. However, if immediate attention is not given to miffed customers, the situation can swiftly deteriorate. This results in strained ties between the client and the brand, leading to a decline in sales and renewed purchases, low customer satisfaction (c-sat) scores, and, ultimately, churn.
The brand’s reputation takes a hit. The brand’s PR, advertising, and marketing teams will go into overdrive to revive the image, incurring huge financial costs. Sadly, no one can guarantee to restore the organization’s past glory.
Sentiment analysis to the rescue
Now, imagine if your customer-facing teams have a way of knowing what the miffed client or prospect is thinking. That would be a game-changer for sure. That is why conducting a sentiment analysis of customers or prospects can help brands identify where they went wrong in their service or customer outreach program and make amends immediately.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can help brands analyze people’s speech and their expressions and track behavioral patterns. Businesses can use the data from sentiment analysis to drive revenue and guide marketing efforts. Let us look at the various ways one can conduct sentiment analysis on customers.
- Collect Data: Gather customer feedback through social media, surveys, online reviews, emails, and other voice of the customer (VoC) channels.
- Pre-process Data: Remove irrelevant information, such as spam or promotional content, and clean up the data.
- Classify Text: Use natural language processing (NLP) techniques to classify text as positive, negative, or neutral.
- Analyze Results: Identify frequent keywords and topics mentioned by customers, the overall customer sentiment (positive, negative, or neutral), and the reasons behind such sentiments.
- Visualize Data: Create charts, graphs, or other visualizations to help communicate results to stakeholders.
- Take Action: Use customer sentiment analysis to inform business decisions, such as product improvements, marketing strategies, and customer service initiatives.
Are there any tools to conduct sentiment analysis?
A sentiment analysis tool is AI software that automatically analyzes text data to help you quickly understand how customers feel about your brand, product, or service.
The sentiment analysis tool performs semantic analysis to understand and interpret written or printed matter. Semantic analysis is performed on customer reviews received or available across various channels, such as online forums, comments on product/service pages, opinion pieces, and social media, to understand whether the feedback is positive, negative, or neutral.
Insightful information such as context, emotions, and sentiments is extracted from the available data. These insights can give brands a clear picture of their customers' thinking.
Also read: Why Is VOC Critical To Every Business (How To Obtain It)
Summing up
Companies leverage customer sentiment analysis to better understand consumers, enhance decision-making, and grow their businesses. Truth be told, every organization, irrespective of size or industry, should make customer sentiment analysis imperative. It enables you to enhance your business strategy, CX, and brand perception, helping you better understand and classify prospects and customers and make informed decisions.
With ThinkOwl, you can recognize where problems arise in the customer journey and react immediately with appropriate measures. Meet client expectations, ensure there is value in what you have to offer, and amaze your customers with stellar CX. Sign up now for a 30-day free trial.
