CAPTURING THE VOICE OF YOUR CUSTOMER A MODERN APPROACH - by pulseM Team

CAPTURING THE VOICE OF YOUR CUSTOMER
                                                    A MODERN APPROACH

                                                                   by

                                                               pulseM Team

S p e e t r a I n c , P l a n o , Te x a s , U . S . A . • !                 w w w. p u l s e m . s p e e t r a . c o m

Current Systems are BROKEN!!                                                                                             2

Opportunity!                                                                                                             3

Designing Modern Solutions!                                                                                              4

S p e e t r a I n c .!         C a p t u r i n g t h e Vo i c e o f y o u r C u s t o m e r : A M o d e r n A p p r o a c h

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Current Systems are BROKEN!
We live in the age of information where the traditional word of mouth spreads at the speed of
twitter. Your customers are part of social networks that are constantly sharing experiences and
recommending businesses. Social networks provide a fast and efficient mechanism for your cus-
tomers to broadcast their experience to their peers. Compare this to traditional paper and web
based survey methods that businesses continue use to capture customer experience, and the
sheer gap in methodology and technology is glaringly obvious. Clearly, current solutions are
inadequate as they:

•       fail to create the necessary motivation for customer participation,

•       fail to capture the moment as it happens,

•       fail to provide an effortless method for capturing the experience, and

•       fail to provide a system in which the customer experience is delivered to stakeholders in an
        efficient and effective manner.

S p e e t r a I n c .!                              C a p t u r i n g t h e Vo i c e o f y o u r C u s t o m e r : A M o d e r n A p p r o a c h

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Opportunity
The advent of internet and mobile smartphone technology has made information exchange
seamless and effective. Businesses are already using mobile solutions that assist in sales, cus-
tomer loyalty, promotions, marketing etc. Solutions for capturing and processing customer ex-
perience for intelligence and analysis are also bound to adopt modern technology. Businesses
that subscribe to the new approach will benefit in a number of ways:

•       Quicker Realization of Gaps

•       Faster Innovation Time

•       Better understanding of customer behavior and needs

•       Increased awareness of the market and customer

S p e e t r a I n c .!                          C a p t u r i n g t h e Vo i c e o f y o u r C u s t o m e r : A M o d e r n A p p r o a c h

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Designing Modern Solutions
Traditional methods of capturing customer experience rely on surveys which are either pro-
vided to the customers immediately after the experience (e.g., surveys handed in restaurants) or
they are conducted several days later via a personal phone call/email/mail etc. Even when the
surveys are handed immediately after the service, customers are likely to complete the survey
several hours (or days) after the experience. It can be argued that customers are more likely to
provide feedback when the experience is fresh. For example, people are more likely to comment
about the “awesome dessert” just after the meal or “great service” as they drive off with their
newly serviced cars. In the contemporary world, media, social networks and businesses are
constantly competing for the customer’s attention. Therefore, if the customer’s experience in not
captured “in the moment”, then the opportunity is perhaps lost forever. Clearly, the next gen-
eration solutions for capturing customer experience must allow for information capture in real-
time (“as it happens”).

Not only is timing critical for capturing the experience, it is also critical for businesses to ana-
lyze the experience in real-time and take next steps to enhance customer experience. For exam-
ple, it would be beneficial for businesses to know about an unhappy customer right away so
that corrective steps can be executed right away to retain the customer. On the other hand, it is
S p e e t r a I n c .!                          C a p t u r i n g t h e Vo i c e o f y o u r C u s t o m e r : A M o d e r n A p p r o a c h

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also beneficial to offer loyalty programs to happy customers as they are more likely to sign up.
Solutions that provide the described operation have the potential to take customer satisfaction,
retention and general management to a whole new level.

Traditional techniques also rely on long surveys (often containing several multiple choice ques-
tions) to capture information about (i) the customer and (ii) the experience. It is fairly common
for customers to perceive traditional surveys are time consuming and unproductive, thereby
lowering participation rates. This perception is well founded since a typical survey can take
several tens of minutes to complete. To increase customer participation, new solutions need to
be quick, effortless and to the point. Instead of businesses asking customers multiple questions,
customers need to speak their mind and share the experience in a natural way (and this is ex-
actly what happens on social networks today). Speaking is perhaps the most natural way of en-
gaging and describing one’s experience in the most effortless way. Writing is perhaps a close
second. Modern solutions need to let customers express their opinions and feelings freely.

S p e e t r a I n c .!                        C a p t u r i n g t h e Vo i c e o f y o u r C u s t o m e r : A M o d e r n A p p r o a c h

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pulseM: Natural, Real-Time and Actionable
pulseM combines the convenience of mobile technology with the power of human language
technology (HLT) to provide an user experience that is natural, and analysis that is both real-
time and actionable. When a user leaves a feedback using the pulseM app, a number of infor-
mation data points are collected, namely,

•       Objective sentiment (positive, neutral, negative)

•       Subjective sentiment (user’s narrative in speech or text), and

•       User’s location (GPS) and time

From pulseM perspective, user sentiment contains two parts: (i) how customers feel? and (ii)
why customers feel the way they feel? pulseM employs HLT to automatically extract opinions
from the user’s comment. Particularly, automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology is em-
ployed the speech comment into text. Subsequently, the text is processed by natural language
processing (NLP) technology to extract sentiment/opinion words and phrases. The sentiment
words/phrases are also used to generate a pulse-index, which plots the user sentiment on a
scale from 1 to 10. The NLP engine focuses on the richness of the comment, i.e., it looks for ad-
S p e e t r a I n c .!                             C a p t u r i n g t h e Vo i c e o f y o u r C u s t o m e r : A M o d e r n A p p r o a c h

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jectives, adverbs, nouns (and a number of permutation/combinations) in order to compute the
pulse index. This richness is also examined by the algorithm to assign a utility score to the
comment. In general, a comment with higher utility score is more likely to be informative, and
therefore actionable.

The pulseM platform uses the algorithmic output to drive valuable user interface components.
For example, all comments are delivered to the live report module immediately. In fact, the user
is alerted if a negative feedback is received. This design delivers immediate value to business
owners who can immediately take corrective actions in case of negative comments. Meanwhile,
the HTL technology processes the comments in the backend to generative valuable analysis,
namely,

•       Comment Summary: We use utility scores (mentioned above) to rank and select the most
        informative comments for you. These comments are delivered to you once a month. Listen
        to these comments and become familiar with what customers are feeling and why (in a mat-
        ter of minutes).

•       Demographics: Using speech processing technology, we can automatically detect the gender
        based on the customer’s speech comments. Use this information to determine the demo-
        graphics of your customer base.
S p e e t r a I n c .!                          C a p t u r i n g t h e Vo i c e o f y o u r C u s t o m e r : A M o d e r n A p p r o a c h

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•       Location Heat Map: We can show you the geographical distribution of customer’s com-
        ments.

•       Sentiment Browser: You can browse through the comments using an intelligent interface.
        Use key opinions words/phrases to filter through the comments. Learn more about what is
        working and what is lagging in your business (from a customer’s perspective).

S p e e t r a I n c .!                           C a p t u r i n g t h e Vo i c e o f y o u r C u s t o m e r : A M o d e r n A p p r o a c h

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