Customer sentiment analysis – what is it?

Simply put, customer sentiment analysis is a process by which you can determine how your customers really feel about your products & services by analysing their behaviour and language when they discuss your products on the internet. It is largely driven by automated artificial intelligence keyword processing or NLP algorithms based on machine-learning and big data analytics. But more on that later on. 

To give a simple example, you have customers who have reviewed your services on a review website, discussed it on Facebook with friends, searched on google for similar services, and been to your website (and that of a competitor) multiple times. Customer Sentiment Analysis (CSA) helps you to learn what your customer is really thinking of your service. It offers companies more insights into how to effectively manage and target their existing and new customers. 

So, what are some of the benefits of Customer Sentiment Analysis? 

Well, to start off there are some big benefits for your Marketing & Sales departments, namely: 

• You can build and structure your marketing strategies more accurately and hence maximise your ROI. 
• Taking into account real customer sentiments means you can better manage customer relationships, and segment customers into groups based on their opinions and feelings towards your company, and its services. 
• Better prepare your customer service employees who have real-time data on the opinions and sentiments of customers towards your brand, products and services. 
• Improve engagement outcomes with your customers 

The different forms of Customer Sentiment Analysis 

Manual Processing 

As the name says this is a manual process carried out by human beings – not so A.I. you may think. However, this is still a necessary process (for now) as A.I. is not always able to detect and determine aspects like sarcasm or ambiguous textual content. This is where human intervention is required.  

Keyword Processing 

Well-defined and A.I. enabled algorithms can lead to real-time Customer Sentiment Analysis, which enables your customer service agents to see in real-time what keywords are used by your customers. This information point helps to provide a complete overview for your employees when dealing with a customer. 

Natural Language Processing (NLP) 

Data mining techniques and analytics for both audio and text can eliminate the shortcomings of the previous two methods. NLP also accounts for the emotions being expressed by your customer and factors this into the final overview. 

What would such a situation look like for your company? 

1. Your customer calls your call center 

2. A.I. analyses the call in real-time: An AI bot is quietly conferenced into the call to analyze the caller’s sentiments and emotions. 

3. Business rules trigger actions: Your business rules can prompt the bot to alert a supervisor if the bot’s real-time analysis of the caller’s sentiments indicates a possible customer satisfaction issue. 

4. Experts provide real-time support: The supervisor can coach the agent in real-time via a whisper or text chat, and together they can provide the customer with the best possible service. 

5. The bot broadens its understanding: The AI bot gets better at decoding sentiment and emotions as it monitors the effect of the supervisor’s suggestions. With ever-improving insight into caller sentiments and emotions, the AI gets even better at deciding when to alert a supervisor. 

So, what are the challenges? 

Although this form of A.I. is not commonly adopted yet, it is already making big strides. And with every new innovation, there are some challenges that have been identified. 

Fake opinions 

Sometimes users express fake opinions which distorts the value of the information that CSA generates.  

Limits of Manual Processing 

Using human beings for processing is time and resource-consuming, which does not always have a positive effect on the cost-benefit analysis of CSA. 

Language barriers 

With over 7,000 languages worldwide, CSA is currently most effective in the big common languages like English, Spanish, Mandarin, and French. This means the technology is not yet viable for every language. 

Poor strategy planning 

Effective implementation is often a factor why CSA does not meet its full potential. The increase in data, especially sentiment data from social media, means a huge influx of data at a fast pace which not every organisation is ready to handle. 

Is Customer Sentiment Analysis viable for your business? 

Yes, it is. Every business wants to be better prepared to engage with their customers and truly know what they are thinking to best anticipate and manage outcomes. Yameo is a tech partner to Vonage, one of the leading providers of Customer Sentiment Analysis solutions. Using APIs we can help you get started, or if you are not yet ready, we have a dedicated team ready to brainstorm with you and define your idea. Check out our Discovery Workshops on how our experts can support you.

Property & casualty insurance (or P&C insurance) are some of the most common insurance use cases we support at Yameo. We have dedicated solutions like Video In Person for remote evidence collection, our offline photo application or dedicated whatsapp automation solution. You can learn more about each by clicking the links. But back to P&C claims and where we see blockchain may be currently under utilised by insurance leaders. What is the value of Blockchain in P&C claims and underwriting?

Blockchain in P&C Claims 

So how do I see P&C claims benefitting from blockchain? Well, firstly, new insurance processes and business models built on blockchain will call into question current orthodoxies and challenge multiple pain points that are prevalent across the value chain. These include: 

• Fraud prone 
• Inefficient exchange of information 
• Complex liability assessments for reinsurance 
• Limited Underwriting accuracy 

• Manual claims review & processing 
• Use of middlemen 

Right now, I believe underwriting and claims processing are the areas most dominant where early adopters in the industry see a clear-cut value in blockchain. 

For underwriting: 

Risk assessment 

• Enable verifiable sourcing of data 
• Transparency on existing or past insurance policies and claims associated with a P&C claim 
• Enable shared interfaces with trusted third-party data providers such as real-estate registries, notary services and others.

Quoting 

• Smart contracts to capture obligations and terms binding between insuree and insurer. 
• Transparent quantification of risk leads to higher accuracy of pricing.

Onboarding 

• Provide fast and seamless experiences in binding policy to insurees. 
• Capture better quality and verifiable information 

The benefits 

I believe the main benefits for underwriting will be in improved risk profiling, information exchange, and automation via smart policies. These benefits, if realised, open the opportunity for new business models where an insurance provider can offer real-time and with greatly improved accuracy services to insurees via an automated process where no human intervention is required and where the whole process (including binding of the policies with insurees) is recorded, stored and near impossible to tamper with. 

For P&C Claims Processing:

Claim Registration 

• Trusted and verifiable claim data submitted 
• Automated pre-assessment of loss coverage against policy 
• Smart assets/property enable auto-submission of claims through a secure and transparent process. 
• Reduce response times by automating responses with preferred repair & assistance providers. 

Claims Assessment 

• Enable automated determination of loss liability 
• Automated assessment of loss coverage for reinsurance 
• In case of complex claims – auto-escalate to human decision-making intervention. 

Payment & Closing of claim 

• Via smart contracts provide auto-payment 

• Provide clear and transparent proof of claim settlement. 

The Benefits 

Faster, cheaper, and more reliable. Sounds great, doesn’t it? To be honest, those are the benefits I see for P&C claims processing with blockchain. As an insurance company, you can be faster through automation, process more claims, reduce fraudulent losses, and automate claims registration, handling, and payment -giving you an edge over your competitors in terms of customer experience.

Yameo builds industry expertise having worked with in the Insurance market for over 17 years. When we write bout Blockchain in P&C claims and underwriting, we do so based on our experience and customer discussions. Want to read why we focus on this Industry expertise, check our blog article.

Software development can be as easy as you like – it all depends on who you ask for help.

Yameo has been active since 2005 and we have helped 45 organisations build over 100 solid software solutions. You will note that we have over 100 projects, yet 45 customers. This is intentional, because what we do is build solid software for top leaders – end2end software development. People understand value and what we deliver is value. Reflected in the fact that on average we are building 2 to 3 solid solutions for a customer. Of course our relationships with customers starts with 1 project, but as is often the case this becomes a second and third project.

We like seeing our customer’s succeed, because in the end it means we succeed.

End2end Software Development – explain it to me

Throughout our history and what you can read in our Use Cases is that we have always been of value in supporting a customer from beginning of a project with things like ideation, critically analysing their idea, infrastructure planning etc – all the way through development and deployment & launch. This is only half of the value we offer, and where other software houses often end their relationship with a customer. Where we go further is not just in SLA’s, maintenance and hosting of solutions – but in being a partner who understands your industry and the trends that are important to you and offer up-front recommendations, feedback and ideas on how you can continue to grow.

Hardware

Although not our speciality we work with partners who can help with hardware – such as our Tellma use case where together with Tellma GmbH we provide a full software and hardware video banking kiosk terminal solutions to banks in Europe.

Read the use case!

“Customer success is our success”

This can be such a cliche saying to use – however in our case this is reality. Like I said we only have 45 customers yet we have done over 100 projects. Time and time again customers return to us to develop new solutions after they were satisfied with our previous work and the results they achieved.

We therefore focus on building solid software for top leaders.

“At Yameo we focus on delivering exceptional work not just because we know a customer expects it, but because we know there is always more to develop. And if a customer remembers you and sees you as a valuable and trustworthy partner – they will return to you when they have new ideas. This is our focus at Yameo and this is how we have built long-term partnerships with some of the biggest organisations in the world like DEKRA, WorldVision International and AON. And above all we pride ourselves on being expertise in healthcare, finance and insurance solutions where we have a lot of domain expertise and experienced development teams.” – Maciej Krajewski, CEO Yameo

We focus on the whole customer journey

We understand that end2end software development has to make sense for both customer and end-user. We therefore try to understand the full customer journey, all processes involved and all use cases that are possible. Only then can you truly be a valuable partner for your customer. If you adopt the customer journey and all its processes and keep this in mind while being an ideation partner, developing or even launching and maintaining a solution you will know what is relevant and effective for a customer and what is not. With this mentality we have approached our customers for 17 years and why we have 45 customers but 100+ successful projects.

Software development can be as easy as you like – it all depends on who you ask for help.

Who will you ask for your next software project?

Interested to read some Use Cases? Click here.