All Text Analytics Systems are NOT the Same
Posted: August 1, 2011 by Kurt Williams - CTO
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?
- CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING
Employee Loyalty = Customer Loyalty = Financial Success
Posted: July 22, 2011 by Jon Sanderson - VP of Marketing
We’ve all been to that coffee shop. Every week there’s a different overly-pierced twenty-something behind the counter. You wish your experience was more like an episode from “Cheers” where you walk in and everyone says “Norm!” (even if that’s not really your name) and the employee already knows what you want and has it ready by the time you reach the counter. Or if you don’t have a “usual,” you at least wish the employees stayed long enough to learn your name and greet you with sincerity.
The biggest key to creating everlasting sales is to build customer loyalty. The first step to customer loyalty is employee loyalty. Customer loyalty is all about an emotional connection – relationships between customers and employees/products/services. High employee turnover kills credible relationships with customers.
Every business with high employee turnover seems to have some sort of excuse for it. “We’re a college town so kids go home for the summer,” or “It’s a stepping stone for the next best job,” or “We don’t have the money to pay annual bonuses and raises.”
CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING
Voice Analytics Should Be Equal to Text Analytics
Posted: July 15, 2011 by Erich Dietz - Vice President, Business Solutions
Your Voice Analytics Should Be Equal to Your Text Analytics
Text Analytics is a hot topic right now. Companies with successful customer feedback programs are using Text Analytics. At its very basic form, Text Analytics provides keyword search and a word cloud of topic frequencies so businesses know what’s important to their customers. But many Text Analytics engines do much more than that: trending, root-cause analysis, automatic comment categorization, and much more.
What about Text Analytics’ up-and-coming brother, Voice Analytics? Only a handful of VoC (Voice of the Customer, or EFM – Enterprise Feedback Management) vendors even offer Voice Analytics. And most of those Voice Analytics engines only provide the basics: keyword search and word cloud topics. Why? Because Voice Analytics engines don’t transcribe the whole comment, they listen for keywords within the comment predetermined by the user. For example, if a fast-food manager wants to stay on top of his location’s French fry quality, his Voice Analytics will be tuned to flag comments that mention “fries.” Then, the manager has to listen to that comment to find out what it says.
Frankly, that’s pretty weak technology. But that’s the state of current Voice Analytics engines.
CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING
Analyzing “Analytics”
Posted: July 8, 2011 by Kurt Williams - CTO
It seems you can’t swing a baseball bat without knocking over three or four people asking for analytics: Text Analytics, Predictive Analytics, Social Media Analytics, Decisiolytics, whatever (Mindshare’s CEO recently coined the term “Decisiolytics.” Your guess is as good as mine). The list seems never ending.
What exactly does everyone mean by “analytics” anyway? For most, I think it refers to the application of arcane mathematical and statistical techniques to mass quantities of numbers. It’s when data geeks and quant freaks in white lab coats pour over reams of data, invoke some sort of mystical incantation, kill a chicken or two, and out pops some kind of interesting “insight” – whatever that is.
Well, that’s all changing. More and more the term “analytics” refers to a packaged-up application that hides the complexity and does the analytics for you, providing the uninitiated workers the ability to take action based on the data. Mindshare’s CoachTM product is a perfect example. Store managers don’t have to know anything about ordinal-logistic-dogeewhatsists. They are directed what to do and they just take action. There was a great article last month that discussed this topic in Information Week:
“It’s official. The term “analytics” no longer refers only to advanced statistical methods and operational research. It’s now shorthand for what people really want from business intelligence: concise, actionable insight that lets them (1) respond to what’s happening now, and (2) anticipate what will happen in the future, rather than just react to the events of last week or last month. Enter prebuilt analytic applications. As the name suggests, these are off-the-shelf apps, ready-made for specific industries …”
Small, pre-built, easy to consume nuggets of analytic goodness.
Yep. Analytics. Mindshare has it.
Making the Audible Actionable: Mindshare’s Unique Approach to Voice Analytics Raises the Bar
Posted: June 10, 2011 by Jon Sanderson - VP of Marketing
Whether on the road or on the couch, automated phone surveys are the simplest, quickest, most comfortable feedback method for customers (Erich’s drive-thru experience is a good example). Customers of Mindshare’s clients often choose to use their phone to take surveys; including customers of QSRs (fast-food), fine-dining restaurants, insurance providers, and retailers. Businesses often receive higher survey “take rates” with phone surveys.
Automated phone surveys allow you to rant and rave to a company without an awkward exchange between you and another person. You can let it fly! Plus, neither your hands nor your eyes are busy while responding to a phone survey. In fact, I JUST took a phone survey while I wrote that last sentence! That’s how simple they are!
The Problem
Open-ended “unstructured” feedback via phone surveys provides so much insight into your operations when combined with traditional multiple choice, “structured” feedback. But unstructured feedback needs to be seen/heard by the people who can use it: the manager or regional supervisor. Unfortunately, they don’t have the time to listen to every audible feedback response, analyze those responses, track them for further research, and still do their regular duties.
CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING