Thought Leadership

As I’ve discussed many times before, these days it seems like many brands are fearful of social media and the potential for it to be a channel for consumers to quickly share negative experiences, or one-off incidents of bad employee behavior. Nobody wants to be associated with the next viral video of employee bad behavior or a viral story of product quality issues. You could argue that some of this stems from the general cynicism that seems to have taken over much of the world since we entered this great recession. Lately though, I’ve been noticing an interesting trend of more good news than bad in my social streams. Perhaps people tweeting and sharing more good news than bad is a sign that the economy may finally be pulling out of this never-ending recession.

A case in point is a fantastic story that recently went viral about a simple good deed done by a manager of a Red Robin restaurant.

You can read about it here.

For those of you who may not be familiar with this story, here is the short version.

• An obviously pregnant woman visited a Red Robin location for dinner
• The manager noticed her pregnancy and gave her a free meal along with a nice message attached to the receipt wishing her good luck.

A simple gesture, but a gesture that created a story worth telling, and more importantly a story worth sharing.

The reality is that, in the restaurant world, incidents like this happen every day. The nature of dining out is that every restaurant visit should be a special occasion. Whether for the sake of not having to cook on a hectic weeknight, or to celebrate a special occasion such as a birthday, brands need to be able to make every dining experience feel special.

One of the challenges that local restaurant managers have is that with the hustle and bustle of day to day operations it’s difficult to stay on top of staff to ensure they are doing all the little things that make a difference all the time. That’s where the action driving capabilities of today’s CEM solutions can come in to play. These action driving tools are designed to be coaching tools rather than the reporting tools of the past. By providing not only a snapshot of current team performance, but also proactively suggesting the small front line actions that can add up to better guest experiences, these tools go from simply being reactive reporting, to proactive performance improvers.

When they are successful in providing all the little touches that can make these occasions feel so special, such as was done by the Red Robin manager, then it’s become increasingly important for restaurants to provide these happy customers with an easy way to share their stories with their friends.

Again, this is where a well thought out CEM solution can come into play. By their very nature, these solutions will be able to help you identify and filter out your happiest customers. By taking that as a starting point, and providing those same happy customers with an easy way to share great experiences, CEM can become an ideal platform to generate the type of positive social sentiment that most brands deserve, but unfortunately don’t get.

You should get credit for your efforts! After all, you work hard every day with the hope that your guests will share their great experience.

Siri

Chances are, you have already heard about Apple’s infamous iPhone personality. Through extensive marketing campaigns, Apple unveiled Siri, a feature that allows users to interact with their phone by speaking to it. Yes, that’s right, by speaking to your phone.

Say you wanted to know what the weather was going to look like, all you would have to do is say to your phone, “Weather.” Your phone then proceeds to reply with the weather forecast in your area. Want to check how busy your day is? Just ask, “What’s my day look like?” Your phone will then report your day. Is Siri the beginning of pocket artificial intelligence? It (she?) very well may be.

Why am I talking about Siri? Because Siri demonstrates the real-life application of some very cool speech-to-text technology. Speech-to-text is the ability of a computer to transcribe spoken language into usable text. This type of technological ability is very new but maturing rapidly.

Watson

Yet another famous piece of artificial intelligence that you’ve likely heard of, Watson is an IBM supercomputer that gained wide acclaim by appearing on Jeopardy! and defeating two of the game show’s top champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

Over three days of trivia, Watson racked up $77,147, whereas Ken and Brad took in $24,000 and $21,600 respectively. As the Jeopardy! clues were being displayed visually to the other two contestants, Watson was receiving them through a direct text feed. Once the text was input, Watson didn’t just recognize the words, he (it?) understood how they related to each other. With that understanding, he analyzed 200 million pages of information to find the correct answer—all in the time it takes to sneeze.

Is Watson the first step toward machines taking over the world? Quite the opposite, actually. The IBM technology that fuels Watson has the potential to be one of this generation’s greatest allies. It’s already being used to improve the medical diagnosis process by combining symptoms, family history, current medications, doctor’s notes, and other information to suggest a diagnosis.

Speech-to-Text

If you want the analytical powers of a supercomputer like Watson (and, trust me, you do), you need text. In a world that still communicates verbally first and written second, we need more than a computer with Watson’s brain; we need one with Siri’s ears.

That’s the role of Speech-to-Text. Combine an advanced speech-to-text engine with an analytical supercomputer and you have the key to immense possibilities. In an article written by Jon Gertner and published in Fast Company, the author builds on the words of IBM’s chief of research, John Kelly, to point out this very thing:

“IBM executives have come to believe that Watson represents the first machine of the third computer age, a category now referred to within the company as cognitive computing. As Kelly describes it, the first generation of computers were tabulating machines that added up figures. ‘The second generation,’ he says, ‘were the programmable systems—the mainframe, the first IBM 360, PCs, all the computers we have today.’ Now, Kelly believes, we’ve arrived at the cognitive moment—a moment of true artificial intelligence. These computers, such as Watson, can recognize important content within language, both written and spoken. They do not ask us to communicate with them in their coded language; they speak ours.”

Pearl-Plaza

We live and breathe the voice of the customer (VoC) trade every day. We collect millions of surveys every month from the individual customers of our clients. We have held the benefits of speech-to-text and IBM Watson technology in our hands. And they are stunning.

Using these universal-grade systems, our ability to analyze customer surveys and reviews for real-time, actionable insights has leapt forward to include all unstructured, unsolicited feedback across multiple written and spoken world languages.

Let me walk you through just one scenario: a phone survey. Last year, we collected 113,000 phone surveys for one of our clients. To put that in perspective, it would take that client 1,000 hours a year to listen to every survey—that’s one full-time employee listening to surveys non-stop for six months, and that doesn’t even take into account the time involved with organizing, analyzing, and reporting the results!

Is this how you plan on hearing your customers? Is it even worth it to listen to your customers anyway?

Yes. It is. The reality is, you can’t afford not to. When business analysts are telling you to care about every single one of your customers, they are not just speaking ethically, they are speaking financially. The quality and quantity of research on the matter has now made it undeniable.

Using Forrester’s customer experience index (CXi), for instance, statistics bear out the fact that U.S. businesses maintaining above-average CXi scores make millions, if not billions, more each year than businesses maintaining below-average CXi scores. The key to a high CXi? Listening and responding to customer feedback (Forrester, “The Business Impact Of Customer Experience, 2012,” referenced here). Recent studies have also shown that customer retention efforts are more profitable than those to acquire new customers (Bain & Company, “The Economics of Loyalty”).

At Pearl-Plaza, we provide the tools to capture and use the voice of the customer in real time. This includes both speech-to-text and IBM analytics, two of the most powerful technologies the business world has ever seen.

Your customers expect to be heard individually and addressed personally. The Speech-to-Text and IBM content analytics we use at Pearl-Plaza make that possible.

We live in an age of information. More than just an interesting sounding catchphrase, businesses today are sitting on vast amounts of data, more than any other point in history. Data tracking internal processes, data tracking supply chains, and data tracking customers amongst others.

Naturally, customer feedback is a part of that. While a simple feedback survey seems quite straightforward from the outside, when you think about the amount of data that can be generated through a typical customer experience management (CEM) program, the numbers can quickly become quite impressive. Most programs will receive 30 or more responses per month per location. For a brand with 250 locations that means close to 100,000 customer surveys each year. If you consider that most surveys will be made up of 20 or more questions, then suddenly if you’re a customer experience program manager you’re looking at 2 million individual points of customer feedback.

The question is – What insights are locked inside all of that data?

Some are obvious, location comparisons, average performance, overall scores, trending etc… answers to those questions have always been the biggest values of a CEM program. In fact if a program is well designed and the questions asked are of an appropriate nature, these are exactly the type of insights that can drive great brands to continue executing on a day-to-day basis.

But 2 million points of data are a lot. What else might be hidden in that data? Sometimes there’s more to the data than just the surface level trends, it just takes a bit of deeper analysis to get to it. Today’s technology tools allow anyone with a deeper level of curiosity to dig deeper and discover some of the additional layers of nuance within pools of customer survey data.

Some more nuanced questions that can be answered with customer survey data would include:

• Which factors in the experience hold the most weight when measured against overall satisfaction?
• How overall satisfaction is perceived across different demographic segments?
• How different product categories impact satisfaction?
• How can I measure a cross section of all of these questions looking at products and their impact against satisfaction across different demographics?

The challenge is being able to segment the data appropriately and easily. That’s where a flexible data analysis product can come in handy. Rather than having to rely on external resources program managers should be empowered to be able to quickly slice out interesting segments of customer feedback to make informed decisions. Or at least be able to use these slices of data to be able to follow a single train of thought through to some kind of conclusion or hypothesis.

In today’s world having data is no longer enough. We need to be able to harness the power of actually using it, to be able to effectively drive change.

It is one of the oldest adages in business — “the customer is always right.” While this is true in most circumstances, there is also the missing other side of that statement that holds true too — “customers want to be heard.”

This is supported by the consumer insights research that we do here at Empathica. Interestingly we have found that most customers are willing to provide feedback to the brands they frequent in some manner. In fact, a recent consumer insights study we ran showed that up to 85% of consumers are willing to provide feedback to the restaurants and retailers they frequent.

That same research also uncovered an interesting disconnect however. Of those same consumers polled, only 46% believe their feedback is used to improve the customer experience.

This shows on one hand a real desire from customers to become a more active part of the brands where they shop and dine. On the other hand, the current perception consumers have is that brands do not share a desire to listen to the feedback being provided.

Brands can do a lot to change this perception by adopting some simple habits in how they build dialogue and connect with their customers. Here are some of our tips that may be helpful to you and your business, gleamed from Empathica working with leading brands for over a decade:

Creating a dialogue is not only asking for feedback but also acknowledging that you’re listening and using your customers’ voices to improve.

Everyone can relate to the frustration of feeling as though you’re not being heard. CEM programs at their core are all about using customer feedback to improve your business. Make sure you’re using the most of your customer feedback and actually making improvements with it and not just allowing it to collect dust.

Upset or at risk customers can be acknowledged and helped, and delighted customers should get a chance to tell the world through social media.

Acknowledging customers directly who have either very good or very poor experiences can be a powerful way to build loyalty through direct interactions. Well thought-out CEM programs should have the ability to allow managers to intervene when a customer has a very poor experience, as well as allowing very positive experiences to be shared with staff as a motivational tool.

Feedback can also be shared in a more public manner.

Some brands have even gone so far as to publicly share their feedback scores on corporate websites and other assets. For brands that are successfully running advocacy programs, why not embed those messages directly into your website or other only marketing activities to truly turn the voice of your customers into your marketing message.

It doesn’t need to be said but customers really are the lifeblood of any business. For brands to acknowledge this fact and make them feel a part of your growth and success requires that businesses of all shapes and sizes do a better job of listening to them. That’s where a well thought out customer experience management program can play a role. After all, customer feedback is all about better listening.

DATA: Facts & Statistics

What is data and why would I want it?

I remember learning the secret of what “data” means and being very unimpressed with what I learned. I was in a business information systems class when the teacher put this definition up on the board:

Da•ta noun: 1. Facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis.

My teacher then went on to confuse me by saying data is useless. Well, it took me a while to care enough to figure out why data is useless, but I get it now: You don’t want data; you want information.

INFORMATION: Data with Context

Information is data with context. Context, in this case, means clarifying elements like date, time, location, etc. These bits of contextual reference change data into information. What my teacher said makes sense, then—who would want data when they can have information!

But there’s still such a thing as “information overload” (turns out it’s not actually all that helpful to go from “too much data” to “too much contextual data”). Even once we’ve transformed our piles of data into piles of information, we still can’t make decisions. We still can’t act!

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: Information Organized

The next evolution arose from this inability to make decisions. Business Intelligence (BI) is the industry’s attempt to manage the information overload. BI systems are designed to process huge amounts of information in a way that helps get you closer to a decision.

When I think of a BI system, I envision a bunch of technicians in lab coats working around a giant machine (think Wizard of Oz). Despite the fact that these technicians are neatly organizing your information, the main problem persists:

You aren’t being led to a final decision! You are still only being shown a more refined form of data. Why? Because the people researching the questions are not the people who need the answers. The disconnect between the researcher and the end user is the problem.

To get to the solution, it takes one more evolutionary step. The person with the question must be empowered to find answers, make decisions, and act!

ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE: BI Distilled to a Decision

Actionable Intelligence (AI) is the distillation of complex Business Intelligence down into its salient pieces. For a store manager or a call center manager, this translates to direct and predictive recommendations about specific problems.

Mindshare’s Local Dashboard (Coach™) is an example of an AI system for your people at the point of service (customer service representatives). Wherever the rubber meets the road—that’s where AI excels. Give the right information at the right time, in a format that can be acted on by the person who can make a difference. That’s what Actionable Intelligence is all about.

Mindshare Technologies works with various predictive technologies that can manipulate huge amounts of Business Intelligence, distill it, and distribute it as Actionable Intelligence. Check it out!

Customer feedback is not about numbers; it’s about delivering great customer experiences. Empowering each frontline staff member to deliver great experiences is the best way to differentiate your brand in a challenging economy. Consumers remain cautious and selective about where they spend their money, so exceeding their expectations is more important for brand success than ever.

Great customer experiences can drive active advocacy. In fact, 69% of consumers are willing to share great experiences with their friends and family. The best CEM programmes capture the unique ‘essence’ of your brand and help operators to understand why their customers become advocates and how to harness the power of recommendations.

Let’s start at the very beginning. You need to gain a deep understanding of what a great experience looks and more importantly feels like for your customers. What drives people to your brand? What causes them to be loyal and become advocates? What experiences will they share with friends and family?

But which questions are going to give you the customer insight you need to make your brand stand out from the competition? Customer engagement is an over-used phrase but you do need to connect with your customers at an emotional level to understand what really makes them tick. There’s a world of difference between asking whether a store appeared clean and whether the customer felt it to be welcoming and inviting. The right questions should always be personal to both your brand and your customers.

So, once you’ve gained insight into what your customers really feel and want, how are you going to harness this knowledge to give your brand a competitive advantage? It’s easy to try to be the best at everything – but unfortunately, this isn’t usually an achievable goal. You need to focus on your own brand strengths and exploit competitors’ weaknesses.

Let’s take a fast food restaurant example. Restaurant A may score highly on factors such as menu variety, speed of service and price. But Restaurant B could tap into the market opportunity to produce high-quality food delivered with exceptional service in an extremely welcoming environment. The food may be a little more pricey and it may take longer to prepare – but most customers appreciate that you generally get what you pay for. As the saying goes, all good things come to he who waits.

It’s only by asking the right questions that you can gain valuable insight into what real customers think and feel about your brand, giving you the knowledge you need to help your brand succeed. The best CEM programmes help brands to stay ahead of the competition by empowering them to turn research into experiential reality.

It’s been said before but it’s worth saying again. The Internet has changed the way consumers make purchasing decisions. The vast quantity of information online has shifted power into the hands of consumers when it comes to how educated they can be before making a purchase.

In no industry is this more apparent than in the automotive sector.

In my own recent experience, I spent many hours researching before making a new car purchase. Not only did I go through traditional sources like magazine and newspaper reviews, I also joined a few Facebook fan pages and online forums. It was from the owner fan pages in social media where I was able to get some very direct pro and con advice from a large pool of owners of the cars I was most interested in. Many owners were also quite open about sharing pricing information and negotiation advice.

Best of all was all the research that I was able to conduct entirely on my own without the influence of the manufacturers.

By the time I got around to test driving a few cars I knew exactly what I wanted and the price I was willing to pay. On top of that I also knew, from all the owner advice I got, what to expect and what to look out for once the test drive began. I was a buyer with a much higher level of education and comfort in the product – that would have been unheard of only a few years ago!

In this new world it’s clear that car manufacturers face a huge challenge when it comes to attracting customers to physically come visit their dealer lots. There is a huge opportunity however in online channels where dealers can leverage owners to provide user testimonies to encourage others like myself to visit the dealers who provided them with a great product surrounded by great experiences. Message to dealers: turn happy customers into active advocates.

This is an organic marketing process that some dealers are beginning to explore with impressive results.

In just 90 days one American dealer who kicked off an advocacy initiative engaged with over 726 customers who visited their website, service department, and sales department. Their effort uncovered 126 advocates that communicated their personal and authentic dealer recommendations to over 16,377 people in just 3 months.

Rather than relying exclusively on traditional advertising channels to attract new customers it’s clear that it can be equally, if not more, effective to use today’s social channels to build a base of new customers by leveraging your best asset…the customers you already have.

Customer feedback has immense value.

We’ve been saying that (and, might I add, proving it) for years. And its immense value is only ever realized once insights have been extracted and strategies have been executed to create a powerful customer experience. Anyone who’s worked with Mindshare should recognize the process I just described.

The service we provide our clients has worked well in the past, it’s working wonderfully now, and, according to the numbers, it will work even better in the future. That’s right, some new big numbers have come across my desk in the recent weeks, and it’s sharing time!

In a report titled “The Business Impact Of Customer Experience, 2012,” Forrester writer Megan Burns presents extensive research and the latest findings to reaffirm and quantify the revenue advantages that a company like Mindshare Technologies can offer today’s service companies.*

As usual, Forrester is following all the best practices you’ve come to expect from them, using a sample size of nearly eight thousand U.S. consumers and accounting for gaps between the number of people who say they will do something and the number of people who actually do. In short, the numbers I’m about to share represent a very realistic representation of the full market opportunity for companies who employ a dedicated Voice of the Customer (VoC) service provider.

The report presents detailed portrayals of 12 different industries, including airlines, retailers, TV service providers, hotels, banks, wireless service providers, and medical insurers. Using Forrester’s own customer experience index (CXi), statistics bear out the fact that U.S. businesses maintaining above-average CXi scores make millions, if not billions, more each year than businesses maintaining below-average CXi scores.

In the report, the revenue advantages enjoyed by these top companies are attributed to three areas strongly tied to the customer experience and customer loyalty (this is where the money is):

1. Additional purchases

Forrester found a high correlation between consumers’ CXi rating of a company and their willingness to buy from the company again. Similarly, they found an inverse correlation between a brand’s CXi score and customers’ likelihood to switch business away, which means that the better the customers’ experiences, the lower the number of customers looking to defect.

2. Churn reduction

Forrester models show that revenue lost by low CXi, and retained by good CXi, can reach up to $825 million for hotels, where customer volume is extremely high.

3. Word of mouth

Forrester found that firms can see incremental sales from positive word of mouth that range from $2 million for retailers to $65 million for airlines (where a variety of social media sites, such as Flyertalk.com, help create extensive word of mouth).

It’s also important to remember that the Forrester models in this report only account for revenues gained from having a better customer experience. As shown in previous Forrester reports, other significant bottom-line gains can be achieved through improved operations that save millions in excess sales and service costs.

For companies to build a top service experience in their industry—and to claim the available revenue—they must be in tune with their existing customers, and aware of their operations at every level.

Mindshare Technologies continues to partner with companies who understand these principles, and we’re happy to see real revenues resulting from increased attentiveness to customers. Across the business world, good behavior is being reinforced and rewarded. Hooray for that!

*For a full copy of the report, visit the Forrester site.

I came across a Twitter post recently from one of my most trusted customer experience management resources, Bruce Temkin, which I found to be especially impactful. Bruce was relaying a comment made by Scott Hudgins, VP of Global Customer Managed Relationships at Disney about moments in a customer journey.

“No one owns the guest but someone always owns the moment.”

Scott couldn’t be more correct and the idea of owning the moment is critical to the success of any retailer. Now more than ever, retailers need to understand which moments within their customers’ journeys are those that can create the most delight and opportunity for competitive differentiation. If a retailer is able to correctly identify, own and act upon those moments then chances are good that a great customer experience will be the result. I think we all have had the pleasure of a great shopping experience where everything seems to magically come together and it sticks with us as a benchmark that we compare all others to. Did that experience happen by chance? Of course not and most likely it was the result of a well thought out CEM strategy that began with looking at the multiple points of interaction between consumers and the retailer, or put in a different way the customer journey.

In order to identify the most actionable moments in a shopping experience it’s critical for a retailer to engage in this exercise. It is a process that allows retailers to walk in their customer’s shoes and understand the way points along the journey that may be encountered. In addition to location visits, the journey mapping process should include more in-depth research such as sitting down with groups of front line stakeholders, including store/restaurant/branch owners, managers, and front line staff, to facilitate an understanding of the various “moments of truth” that are encountered by customers in their journey through a transaction with the brand. To do this, it’s important to follow the chronology of a customer experience:

• What is observed through the customers’ eyes (and nose, touch and ears)?
• What emotive senses become involved at each functional stage of the visit, be they pleasure, expectation or impatience?

From the very beginning of the exercise, starting from the outside looking in (the view from a parking lot, the street, or mall) all the way through to what is experienced as a customer leaves, you can deepen your understanding of the important moments in the environment that build (or detract) from a great customer experience. The facility’s visual layout, the product and its positioning, the communication boards (be they aisle signs in grocery and shops, posters in a branch, or menu boards in a restaurant) and the experience touch points with people – all these are examined as potential key moments to own for imposing brand standards and consistency in operations to ensure every visit is a perfect one.

As a retailer, make sure owning the moment is part of your CEM strategy and start with journey mapping. If done correctly you’ll determine the magic moments that need to be built, managed and monitored to ensure a differentiated and compelling shopping experience.

Food services and social media are a natural fit. Going out to a restaurant or bar has always been a social activity, even if it’s a quick lunch with co-workers. And diners have taken to social media enthusiastically, taking pictures of their meals before they dig in, racing to check each other into Facebook places, and competing for the position of Mayor of their favorite restaurants on Foursquare.  Savvy restaurateurs have made social media part of their marketing plans as well, taking advantage of Facebook and Twitter to promote their brands and keep in touch with their customers.

There is a down side to the rapid adoption of social media and mobile technology, of course. It’s just as easy for a dissatisfied customer to broadcast a negative experience to their peers as it is for them to praise you for a positive one. Consumers are dining out less, yet their expectations remain high. A negative post or tweet may persist and remain searchable for some time, influencing the decisions of others who are researching where to dine this evening.

Customer rescue strategies and experience management

Social media platforms are more than merely broadcast channels, of course; they are places where conversations and discussions happen. The same tools that allow consumers to research brands can also help business owners to find out what is being said about them and act on those reviews. A negative “tweet,” for example, is an opportunity to initiate a dialogue and, ideally, a customer rescue – by letting a customer know you are listening, and have a sincere interest in improving their experience.

The next logical step is to develop a proactive, rather than reactive, approach. It’s important to act quickly, and on a personal level, to win back a negative reviewer. But is there a way to close the barn door before the horse escapes? Can a restaurant owner do anything to help ensure that the messages that get posted online are positive, rather than negative? The goal of Customer Experience Management (CEM) is precisely that – to use customer feedback in a measured and strategic fashion to fine-tune business practices and generate increased customer loyalty.

Successfully applied, a CEM program can help you to:

• Capture customer feedback in a timely fashion and identify rescue candidates early in the process
• Analyze and quantify feedback so that it can inform adjustments to your operations
• Improve your customers’ brand experiences to encourage repeat business and advocacy
• Motivate brand advocates to recommend your restaurant to their peers through social media

In a sense, a CEM program takes what the social media-aware business owner does on a one-to-one basis with a single negative Twitter review and applies it at the brand level. Inviting feedback at point of sale can help diffuse and reverse the effects of a negative brand experience, while at the same time providing you with an opportunity to turn negative feedback into constructive criticism – which then can be leveraged to improve the brand experience for all your customers tomorrow.

Learn more about Customer Experience Management solutions for the Food Services industry.

Claiming that all Text Analytics solutions are the same is like saying all forms of transportation are the same. They’re not.

Research your Text Analytics options. Ask your vendor, even Mindshare, all of these important questions. You’ll be happy you did.

• Does the vendor’s text analytics platform categorize comments with similar-themed keywords and phrases for comparing and trending? (For example, would the comments “lukewarm cheeseburger” and “the hamburger patty was cold” both be classified under “Hamburger” and “Temperature”?)  Or would you have to mentally group terms such as “cold” and “lukewarm” to understand the scope of a problem.
• Does the vendor’s text analytics accurately identify the key topics in each comment individually as they come in? Or does it require a large sample size and batch process?
• Does the vendor’s product ensure the highest quality results by using custom-tuned Natural Language Processing (NLP) semantic rules? Or is it based on simple keyword extraction or statistical probabilities?
• Is their insight tagging at least 90% accurate overall? Or is it only slightly better than flipping a coin?
• Does the vendor’s solution minimize setup time with pre-tuned, industry-specific models? Or is the vendor’s solution generic, lacking industry domain knowledge and requiring extensive time and effort?
• Does their text analytics product seamlessly integrate with your current EFM system (Enterprise Feedback Management) or will you have to manage two separate systems? (E.g. Will you benefit from the cost savings of a fully integrated EFM and text analytics platform?)
• Does the product automatically highlight correlations between structured survey data (like location, time of visit, and satisfaction ratings) and unstructured survey data (open-ended comments and social media)? For example, would your product be able to find that the phrase “on … cell phone” is highly correlated to poor customer service scores? Or will you have to connect the dots yourself?
• Does their system send instant alerts when a key issue is detected in a customer comment? For example, if a customer reports “slipping and falling” on a wet floor, is an alert email sent immediately to your corporate office? Or will you find out much later?
• Are their text analytics results reported in real-time and available 24/7 to managers at all levels of your organization (permission-based)? Or will the results be stale? Can the reports be pre-scheduled to email to managers or must you always log in every time to get what you need?
• Do they have a turnkey product that can identify the central themes and sentiment in customer comments? For example, could it identify that the phrases “rude cashier” and “check engine light” are showing up frequently in negative context? Or do they require significant training, setup time, and resources to reach that insight?
• Can the vendor customize their solution to tag comments in categories unique to your business, such as products, programs, competitors, etc.? Or is it limited to measuring generic insights only?
• Can you navigate directly to source comments about key performance areas or are their results limited to high-level statistics? For example, assume that several feedback comments mention the cleanliness of floors in a store; can you instantly pull up those specific cleanliness comments to identify the root of the problem?
• Do they support more than seven major languages? Or are they limited to English and not much else?
• Is their solution fully up and running (already developed) and ready to deploy within just weeks, or are they selling something you’ll have to wait months and years to ever see.
• Does a team of professional, full-time text analytics experts guide their text analytics solution? Or is their text analytics package just a piece of software with no support?
• Are they confident enough to show you an unscripted live demo of their solution?  Will they allow you to test it with your own comments to see real results using a sample of your own data?  Or are they hiding behind a staged presentation?