Every company today knows that delivering exceptional customer experiences is the key to sustainable growth. Unfortunately, delighting customers on multiple channels isn’t easy. Business leaders need an in-depth understanding of their target audience, which means going beyond simply listening to what they say in a conversation.
To truly impress, and retain customers, organizations need an insight into what each of their buyers are thinking and feeling. In other words, they need to measure customer sentiment.
Here’s your guide to customer sentiment, how you can measure it, and the steps you can take to improve the sentiment of your target audience.
What is Customer Sentiment and Why is it Important?
Customer sentiment is essentially a metric that measures how customers feel and think about a company, its products, services, and approach to customer support. In the contact center, measuring customer sentiment consistently allows companies to identify how consumers perceive their brand, and pinpoint opportunities to improve customer experience.
Ultimately, what customers are feeling during any interaction isn’t always clear in the words they say. Their true feelings are hidden among various nuances, such as their tone of voice. Measuring customer sentiment ensures companies can make informed decisions about which factors negatively or positively influence a customer’s loyalty towards their brand.
Used correctly, customer sentiment can increase customer retention and satisfaction rights, provide valuable insights for product enhancement and development, and provide companies with the tools they need to maintain competitive advantage.
How to Measure Customer Sentiment
Over the years, companies have used a variety of tools and strategies to measure customer sentiment. One of the most common strategies include using social listening strategies to track what customers say about the business online, and across review websites. Many organizations also regularly send out surveys to measure things like Net Promoter Score, or access insights into how they can improve.
However, while these strategies are useful, they often provide a very limited view of true customer sentiment. These methods rely on customers to share clearly how they feel, rather than allowing businesses to look for meaning behind the words.
Alternatively, AI sentiment analysis solutions use advanced algorithms to provide a complete insight into what customers really think. They leverage natural language processing and machine learning to draw insights from call recordings, and even provide instant feedback during conversations.
For instance, XCally’s artificial intelligence solutions enhance quality of service and customer experience by analyzing sentiment in every conversation, regardless of the customer’s chosen service channel. They can even provide guidance to employees in real-time, continuously monitoring conversations, and suggesting personalized responses based on a customer’s sentiment.
Best Practices for Strategic Sentiment Analysis
Measuring sentiment analysis gives businesses an excellent opportunity to intelligently enhance customer experience based on valuable insights. It empowers businesses to better identify their customers needs and wants, and even minimize churn, by ensuring teams can quickly detect dissatisfaction and frustration.
Here are some of the key best practices you should follow when implementing sentiment analysis into your customer experience strategy.