Benefits of Customer Sentiment Analysis in Call Center

Measuring customer satisfaction is important for business growth. But how do you get real-time information on how they are feeling about the product or service? The answer to this question is customer sentiment analysis.

Although the concept originated in the 1950s, the process has changed with the times. It is now a trending topic in the field of customer experience (CX). Customer sentiment analysis is a great way to learn how people feel about a subject, product, or idea. It is a process where new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are used to analyze vast amounts of data.

In this article, we will learn a little more about:

• What is customer sentiment analysis?
• Its relevance to business
• How is it different from customer satisfaction?
• How do you use it to improve customer satisfaction?

First, let’s look at the meaning of customer sentiment.

What is customer sentiment?

Customer sentiment is a metric used by businesses to measure how customers think or feel about their brand, product, service, or customer support. It tracks whether the customer has a positive, negative, or neutral opinion about your company, products, and services.

Customer sentiment analysis is the process of mining customer opinions from different sources. That is why another name for this process is opinion mining. Algorithms that analyze customer sentiment use two criteria. One is the polarity of the opinion (negative or positive). The other is the magnitude, or intensity, of the emotion.

Opinions are gathered from text data like tweets, blogs, social media, news, reviews, and more. Then, NLP, statistics, and machine learning methods are used to analyze the data.

Sentiment analysis is relevant to businesses as it helps them identify consumer emotions, understand customer experience, and improve customer service. Customer sentiment is more relevant now due to higher customer service standards. Social media has made it easier for customers to express their opinions. They are quick to complain or post negative sentiments reviews.

One negative post can snowball into hundreds if many customers relate to the experience. It can be detrimental to your brand’s image.

Below are some ways customer sentiment analysis can help your business:

• Gives valuable insights into customer interactions, satisfaction, loyalty, and preferences.
• Tracks online reputation and brand mentions.
• Helps improve products, services, marketing campaigns, and pricing.
• Helps improve customer loyalty, satisfaction, and retention.
• Helps tailor messages and offers for better customer communication.
• Identifies promoters to boost referrals and word-of-mouth.
• Speeds up the resolution of customer issues.

No. Customer sentiment is not the same as customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction measures satisfaction with products, services, and businesses. Customer sentiment measures the opinion of your brand or image.

Satisfaction is measured after a customer has used the product or support service. In comparison, sentiment is gauged in real-time and focuses on how a customer feels in a moment.

Customer satisfaction is measured with a tick or a numbered scale. But customer sentiment is only perceived and uses text to gauge a customer’s opinion.

Regardless of how different they are from each other, both metrics are vital to a business’s success.

Many customers don’t fill out customer satisfaction surveys. This leaves companies with a small sample size to work with. Moreover, customer satisfaction surveys cannot pick up on all the customer’s emotions. This is because the company prepares all the questions.

The same doesn’t happen in sentiment analysis. Here, you are not directly soliciting the customer’s opinions. But you are gauging their opinions based on online posts and comments.

Here are some tips to improve customer satisfaction with sentiment analysis:

1. Implement customer sentiment analysis at contact centers for product improvements

   Use sentiment analysis at your contact centers to measure customer satisfaction. It will help your teams improve the product according to the customer’s needs. It can also help you enter emerging markets or develop new products by aiding your market research.

2. Use AI-driven sentiment analysis tools to monitor customer opinion

   Today, there are many AI-driven software that can run customer sentiment analysis. This is a process where AI is used to recognize emotions expressed in text. They use data from social media, product reviews, comments, and more for analysis. Then, they categorize customers’ opinions as negative or positive and assign scores based on intensity. These are known as customer sentiment scores. This way, you can learn a lot about your customers.

   AI-driven tools and software will make it easier for you to process vast amounts of data. So you can learn what your customers are feeling in real time. Monitor customer sentiment and make data-driven decisions to improve user satisfaction.

3. Identify customers who need extra attention

   Customer sentiment analysis helps you discover a customer’s true feelings about your brand. Use this data to find out which consumer needs more of your attention. They could be customers struggling to pay. They could be those who are irritated with the customer support staff. They could also be users ready to end their customer relationship.

   After identifying the problem customers, plan ways to improve their experience and satisfaction. You can also use the data to identify consumers who can be brand promoters. These would be customers who are vocal about their positive experiences with your brand. Turn them into influencers.

4. Create personalized experiences

   Sentiment analysis can also give your insight into the purpose behind a customer’s comment, review, or post. This is known as intent-based sentiment analysis. The software can determine whether the text is a complaint, query, command, or desire.

   Understanding the intent can help you create personalized customer experiences. For example, you can create informative content to address customer inquiries. Or compensate customers who have had a negative experience. You can also use it to improve ads.

5. Identify problem areas

   When gathering data on customer opinion, you may also discover problem areas. These could include certain departments, products, or call center services. For example, you can use call center sentiment analysis to analyze customer feedback and agent-customer interactions, and gauge emotions, attitudes, and opinions. It checks phone calls and chats to find words that suggest positive or negative sentiments. It gives supervisors an overview of how calls with customers are going.

   If the opinion is negative, you can use the customer’s suggestions to prepare a training program. Train your customer service reps and give them the necessary resources to improve.

6. Research your competitor’s customer sentiment and avoid the same mistakes

   A wise person learns from others’ mistakes. The same applies to business. Learn what not to do by researching your competitor’s customer sentiment. See where they have gone wrong and avoid those mistakes.

   If you already make the same mistakes, take proactive steps to correct yourself before it is too late. Customers appreciate it when brands correct their mistakes on their own.

7. Reward good customer support agents

   Happy employees result in happy customers. And what is the best way to keep your employees happy? Recognize their efforts and reward them for their excellent work. Use sentiment analysis to identify which employees leave a good impression on your customers. Reward such employees through various methods. Name them “employee of the month” or reward them with coupons or paid trips.

8. Respond to positive and negative opinions

   Many companies don’t respond to online comments, regardless of whether they are positive or negative. This is a mistake, as it can give the impression that you don’t care or that you are being aloof. Online posts and comments are a form of customer feedback. Engage with your customers and reply to their reviews or complaints online. Assure them that you will resolve their issue. Thank them for their positive sentiments.

   Responding to comments might not seem worth your time, but it means a lot to your customers. It makes them feel like you care and are open to conversation.

How do you measure customer sentiment?

Some popular methods of measuring customer sentiment include using NPS and CSAT surveys. NPS surveys measure customer experience sentiment based mostly on how likely they are to recommend the company to others. Meanwhile, CSAT asks customers to rate their satisfaction with different interactions, like after a call with customer support.

Sentiment analysis is a useful tool to gauge public opinion of your brand. It can also help you identify issues and opportunities for improvement. Modern analytics use NLP and machine learning to give you real-time customer sentiment. Some tools even categorize sentiments and assign values to show severity.

Use sentiment analysis to improve your products and identify problem areas. You can also use it to identify difficult customers and potential promoters.

You can expect an increase in customer satisfaction when you take these steps.