Significant improvements in customer experience (CX) are actively attributed to consumer analytics. As an advanced form of business automation, consumer or customer analytics involves the collection and processing of consumer data so it can provide essential insights into consumer satisfaction, retention, loyalty, and overall CX work.

This article highlights some essential pointers in transforming consumer text into CX insights.  

Getting Started With Text Analytics

Small businesses looking at innovative but cost-efficient ways to boost their CX should focus on consumer text, specifically, texts extracted from various touchpoint (e.g., social media and product websites). Text analytics is a category of customer analytics that focuses on finding insights from unstructured texts (e.g., consumer feedback) using algorithms. Businesses can use these insights to understand CX and sales questions better:

• What is causing the increased or decreased demand for a product?
• When are consumers likely to avail service X? When are they less likely to get service X?
• Does offering an alternative product work for a specific group of customers?

• What are features causing issues for consumers?
• Are there other aspects of the product or service that customers bring up? Like delivery, packaging, or the website?
• What texts suggest opportunities for upselling or cross-selling?

Furthermore, adoption is not a problem for small businesses. Small and medium-sized enterprises have been using text analytics for a while. Experts observed increased adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic. For business owners considering text analytics, some factors to think about include:

1. The consumer texts
2. The best text analytics software
3. The CX team

What does your consumer text look like?

The more touchpoints your business provides, the more expansive your consumer texts are. Some companies collect customer feedback through online or printed surveys. Others capture input and recommendations through their website. Existing and potential consumers also tend to engage via social media.  

A consumer text is likely to highlight a positive or negative CX. You can harness the power in numbers, especially with recurring content. For example, comments may express interest in your product or services. But it is challenging to use a big chunk of consumer texts. These texts need to be organized so businesses can find relevant CX insights. Text analytics software can address this challenge.  

What’s your ideal text analytics tool?

To sort out the kind of tool for your business, consider the types of analysis that the software can do:

• Thematic analysis – mining for themes and patterns from the consumer text
• Sentiment analysis – determining if consumer text is positive, negative, or neutral
• Combination of thematic and sentiment analysis

Back to the consumer text, small business owners should consider the software's coverage. These consumer texts’ sources include:

• Surveys
• Contact center
• Support tickets
• Complaints
• Customer relationship management or CRM notes
• Review sites
• Forums
• Social media

The text analytics market continues to expand. By 2030, experts predict this market to reach $29 billion. The growth highlights an increasing demand for business automation tools like text analytics. 

Is your team ready to engage with text-based insights?  

In selecting the best text analytics software, consider your CX team. Some text analytics offers a comprehensive set of tools that only fewer employees or those who are data science experts have access to.

But some text analytics software is designed with an eye for general use. It means anyone in your team can access the insights that they need. Also, an onboarding team can provide support for setting up the software. The unit can get the software running within days instead of weeks.  

Leveraging Text Analytics To Boost Your Business’s CX   

Customer service had a lousy rapport due to being a “cost center.” With changing preferences, customer service and CX can determine a customer’s buying decisions. Customer service and CX aren't defined through star ratings or word-of-mouth anymore. Instead, CX consists of a collection of consumer data, which business owners can use to improve CX. 

Furthermore, some consumers remain wary of sharing personal information with companies. It affects their level of engagement with brands. Yet, a growing group of consumers who choose to make their CX public provide enough data. They also don't have any problem engaging with companies online or offline. Small business owners can use this resource to understand their customer's needs better. All without hiring a big team or getting expensive software with features they don't need.