Clarabridge Blog

I was watching the news this morning on Channel 4 (http://www.nbcwashington.com) as they talked about the latest controversy surrounding my beloved Redskins [Please no commments isn’t it painful enough having to watch them play]. Redskins linebacker Robert Henson posted the following Tweet after the game on Sunday, "All you fake half hearted Skins fan can .. I won't go there but I dislike you very strongly, don't come to Fed Ex to boo dim wits!!" (http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4492151) . Joe Krebs implicitily made it a point while reading the Tweet and then explicitly stated the irony that since Henson did not use a comma between “boo” and “dim...

I don't know if you've all seen this article from USA Today last week. It had some interesting insights: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009-06-25-twitter-businesses-consumers_N.htm Basically the article profiled some very creative ways businesses are tapping into social media to get closer to their customers. The article recounted some well known stories (ie when Tweeters learned about a power outage during a Stanley Cup Playoffs game, or about how Dell, Comcast, and others are using Twitter to respond to customer complaints or advertise special sales). I think all these creative uses of Twitter are fascinating, and can create real value for customers (who now have a means of communicating directly to each other and to companies via a medium they prefer and are increasingly flocking to). From my vantage point looking at Twitter as a source for Customer Experience Intelligence, I still remain convinced...

There's been a lot of discussion lately about the value that Twitter, Facebook, etc brings to companies looking for customer "insights" or customer "experiences" - the thought process is that if only companies could have a live feed to Twitter or Facebook data that they could keep a finger on the pulse of customer experiences, suggestions, issues, fix problems, and ultimately create a happier, more loyal, more profitable customer base.While there's value in social media tracking, I'm going to take a contrarian position. I believe that web/social media helps identify customer "perceptions" - but it does a poor job helping companies track real customer "experiences" - and thus the social media content is not a good place to track, measure improvements, and ultimately monitor customer experiences.Why is that, you might ask?1) the web is largely anonymous. If a person tweets "I'm sitting in Starbucks, my latte sucks" - you don't really know enough to fix the problem. Where is the customer? What store? Who served it?...

I got a Google Voice account shortly after the service opened up to new subscribers. The service allows a user to establish a phone number that can follow you and ring your work, cell, home office, etc., according to rules as simple or as complex as you like, and the service lets you pick up, transfer, conference, or send a call to voicemail (even letting you "listen" to a call as a message is being recorded and cut in if you like, just like you used to do with the old fashioned tape answering machines). The most useful feature, in theory, is the free transcription service - once a message is recorded, Google does a speech-to-text transcription and forwards the message to your gmail account (or Google Voice phone client) for perusing so you can read it without listening. Here's the connection to customer experience intelligence - vendors like Clarabridge ingest customer feedback (from call centers, surveys, web sites, blogs, social media, etc) and the nirvana of customer experience applications for a...

A few days ago Bruce Temkin, from Forrester research, dissected a report frequently deployed by Clarabridge customers called the "Negative Influence" report.

As stated in his blog: "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."

Rather than reposting his blog - here's a link to the piece. There's some good commentary from readers following the blog that's also worth reading.

http://experiencematters.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/tracking-your-top-10-dissatisfaction-drivers/

Welcome to 2009 – we’re in a recession. Perhaps you are -a retailer -a travel/hospitality company -a consumer goods company -a high tech products company (hardware or software) -a financial services company -a media company In short, you’re like one of the many companies that have decided to use customer experience intelligence solutions, like the Clarabridge Content Management Platform, to establish a text analytics-based voice of the customer initiative. Why, you might ask, should you be looking at such an initiative in 2009 – when companies supposed to be cutting costs, getting efficient, and doing whatever they can to stay profitable, solvent, and alive? Is customer experience a “nice to have,” or a “need to have” solution? Anecdotal insight from existing Clarabridge customers would suggest that it is very much a “need to have” solution. Text analytics, applied to customer experience management, is an important way to weatherproof your company against the economic storm we’re currently experiencing....

Companies need to analyze customer experience feedback 3 different ways:

1) "What are the 10 things my most profitable customers are most upset about THIS MONTH?" - Answering this question requires the ability to mine through all customer feedback, segment the data by business-definable dimensions like time and profitability, and establish an easy to view "dashboard" that quickly distills the answer from millions of pieces of text-based information to a concise answer to the question.

2) "What's new with my customers TODAY?" - Answering this question requires near real-time analysis of incoming customer feedback to see what's spiking over normal levels of feedback, so that an operational manager can quickly respond to a adverse event, service problem, or other customer experience issue that's quickly developed, to avoid the issue growing into a full-fledged problem.

3) "What should I do for the customer who just complained to me about a bad experience RIGHT NOW?" Unlike the first...

Gartner just came out with a listing of the Seven Great Concerns for CEOs in 2009 - and it listed one interesting area that touches on issues of importance to the Clarablog (note highlighted area below).

CEO Issue Three: Loss of Business and Governmental Trust The institutions that were once counted on to safeguard the economy seem to have failed, and the lack of transparency in the economic system has been exposed. There has been a subsequent loss of trust, as well, amid fears that other unknowns are awaiting. Trust is an intangible element in business but is crucial to transact business. IT can help improve transparency in the way business is done through reputation management, e-discovery and business intelligence. Gartner also expects a strengthening of "data driven" management culture as the risks of moving forward with insufficient data become far less acceptable.

They're right, of course. Everyone wants transparency....