One of the trends with voice of the customer programs is the increasing analysis of unstructured data. To demonstrate the power of this information, I asked Clarabridge CEO, Sid Banerjee, to share one of his firm’s standard reports:  “Negative Influence Report.” Companies can use this report to track and raise awareness about the top drivers for dissatisfaction.

 

Here’s how Banerjee described this report:

During the feedback collection process, it’s not uncommon for a company to collect two critical pieces of information:

  1. the customers’ overall assessment of the experience – typically a 1-5 score where 1=bad, 5=good experience.
  2. the customers’ open-ended feedback on the experience – typically a few sentences to a few paragraphs of unstructured feedback.

The Clarabridge Negative Influence report correlates the negative experiences described in the open-ended feedback (based on the specific categories of experiences that are described with accompanying negative sentiment) with a low score and also weights the ranking of most negative influences based on frequency – how often a specific experience is most often associated with negative assessments.

 

The Negative Influence report comprises of the following metrics:

  • Total Comments – Count of the total comments for the given category
  • Satisfied – Count of the scores at a 5 out of 5 level
  • Dissatisfied – Count of the scores at the 1 – 3 out of 5 level
  • Sentiment Index – A score derived from the sentiment of the comments in the given category. (Processed by the use of Clarabridge’s natural language processing engine) 1 is the highest possible sentiment (positive), and 0 would be the lowest (negative).
  • Weighted Category Influence* – Weighing in the sentiment, dissatisfied volume, and category influence to determine the most important issues driving negativity, and presumably the top issues on which to focus.
  • Weighted Influence Rank – A ranking of the weighted category influence.

 

*The weighted category influence uses a chi-squared algorithm to provide the ranking. It measures whether a correlation exists between the category and a measurable distinction in the break out of satisfied/dissatisfied compared to the rest of the categories and also is weighted by the number of occurrences of the category. The higher the category influence score, the more likely that this category is a factor that drives people to dissatisfaction. This score does not indicate which direction this category will pull people towards, just whether or not it seems to have a measurable impact on people’s choice dissatisfaction.

 

The bottom line: Keep attacking your customer’s top problems

P.S. Clarabridge is not the only vendor that provides this type of analysis.

This blog post was originally published by Temkin Group prior to its acquisition by Qualtrics in October 2018.