Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research™

Q&A Prior to Monday’s Free Text Analytics and Customer Service Webinar

Steve Rappaport, Director, Knowledge Solutions of The ARF (Advertising Research Foundation) and author of Listen First! Turning Social Media Conversations into Business Advantage interviewed me on his blog this week.

Ahead of our joint ARF Webinar on using Text Analytics for Customer Service, he asked me three rather interesting questions, one of which was, “[As] sentiment is notoriously difficult to assess at the individual message level. What should a company do to respond appropriately?”

I’m faced with this question quite often, and realize current text analytics software, from the point of view of the research analyst, does leave a lot to be desired. That said, my advice to anyone using current sentiment analysis accuracy as an excuse to wait on leveraging text analytics for their business is, GET OVER IT!

Human coders have never been to accurate with sarcasm, slang and other jargon either. The field is in hyper growth, and while we are currently improving, the tools currently available are already very useful to those who invest the time to learn how to answer the “So What?”question.

Feel free to read my answers to Steve’s questions on his blog here. There is also a link where you can sign up for our free webinar this Monday where Steve and I will discuss customer service listening, including an Anderson Analytics case study from the hospitality industry.

@TomHCAnderson