AI-powered sentiment analysis is the most impactful way to assess customer opinion

Right from the outset of commerce in ancient times, it has always been about the customer. If the customer is happy with your product and services, he will make a purchase. Despite knowing that 'Customer is the King', most brands fail to understand their customers and their perception of the brand.

In nearly 96% of the cases, customer perception of a brand, and the likelihood to make a purchase is dependent on the experience offered by the brand. Companies that accept this truth, review and modify the customer journey offered by them, outperform their rivals and generate up to 5.7 times more revenue than the competitors.

By revamping customer experience through strategic changes to operational processes and integration of advanced technologies, it is possible to gain an in-depth understanding of the customers.  That's where AI-powered sentiment analysis comes across as the most impactful way to assess and enhance customer experience.

For businesses, customer sentiment is not the same as emotions. It is an insight generated by carefully measuring the way customers feel about the product or the service they purchase. When a business undertakes sentiment analysis, it provides greater insights such as:

• Is there a particular day, product, or aspect of customer service that is making the buyers like or dislike it?

• What is the customer opinion about an ongoing marketing campaign or any activity undertaken by the company?

• Is the opinion of the customers changing, and if yes then whether the change is pro-brand or anti-brand?

Sentiment analysis allows a business to know what it should keep doing more of and what it immediately needs to stop doing. Making changes to a product or service, introducing a new offering, or any other strategic changes can be made through this process.

The Need to Revamp Customer Feedback Mechanism

When you contact the customer care department of any regular business, you would typically be asked to rate the CSR with whom you had a conversation or the chatbot that served you, on various parameters such as product knowledge, behaviour, language, responsiveness, etc. Almost all business organizations ranging from the biggest e-commerce portals to niche local firms are now focusing on listening to customers and taking action on the inputs.

This awareness and focus on customer experience augur well for the business as knowing that there is a need is the first step. However, the nature of survey-based feedback is such that it can only generate point-to-point insights. For instance, if a customer states that their problem got resolved, it might not indicate the annoyance at having been on hold for several minutes or some other issue.

Thus, despite being aware of the importance of customer experience, and having put up a mechanism of feedback, a business might still be losing customers.

Sentiment Analysis in Improving Customer Experience

To overcome the above-mentioned challenge of struggling with CX, even after having the feedback mechanism in place, businesses need advanced AI and data analytics-based sentiment analysis platforms. These solutions have the ability to transform the way customer experience is measured, simply because they allow for complete listening and understanding of the communication journey across mediums such as voice, chat, or email with the brand.

These are world-class platforms trained to analyse recorded conversations on a variety of parameters to pick up clues such as anger, disappointment, irritation, etc., and indicate the efficiency and accuracy of the customer service.

There could be many factors that the regular 'Rate the call on a scale of 1 to 5' feedback option might not be able to highlight. Most customers who are happy and satisfied with the response might not fill out the feedback form and only the negative aspects might have been recorded.

However, when a business is able to accurately listen to each of them, and assess the true, 100% customer sentiment, the outcomes are often game-changing.

If you are a business, would you prefer to continue bleeding revenue, without knowing why? Or would you adopt an available, scalable, and advanced tech-driven solution to ensure that you have a good grasp of the customers' pulse at all times? Think and act before your customers switch to your rival brand!

Author:

Jnanankur Ghosh, Head of Marketing, Mihup customer perception, a leading conversational AI platform founded in 2016. With over a decade of experience in managing multiple product portfolios across different industries, Jnanankur brings exceptional value to Mihup. He is responsible for leading the overall marketing initiatives of Mihup.

Jnanankur is an aspirational marketing leader with experience in leading product companies like Fujitsu, Subex, Cypress Semiconductors, etc. His expertise includes managing product launches & GTM strategies, partner marketing associations, digital marketing, analyst relations among other things.

Prior to Mihup, Jnanankur was the global product marketing manager at Fujitsu wherein his primary responsibilities included planning and executing product launches, go-to-market strategy development, supporting campaigns, channel and country marketing, sales team, and other stakeholders. As the product marketing manager at Subex Ltd, he planned and executed the go-to-market strategy and overall marketing activities for two major product portfolios. He has also been a panelist speaker at Product Marketing Alliance's Asia Summit in 2021.

Jnanankur has a BE in Computer Science from Visvesvaraya Technological University and an MBA in Marketing from Punjab Technical University.