Positive customer sentiment is at the heart of any successful brand and can point organisations to new ways of attracting potential customers and retaining existing ones. Understanding this sentiment allows brands to identify important trends and shifts in customer opinion rapidly, and make any adjustments necessary to keep customers loyal.

This is why many companies are harnessing the power of customer sentiment analysis, which allows entities to analyse contextual information to scrutinise consumer reactions and opinions to develop an accurate vision of how customers feel about their brand.

With this trend in mind, cybersecurity leader Digimune recently debuted DigiInsight, a tool that provides both customer sentiment analysis and employee screening.

The voice of the customer

The former includes the overall positive, neutral and negative sentiment of all major social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, as well as the general sentiment online about the brand based on Google search results. This includes news articles, features and other sites that offer customer review platforms, YouTube, and other brand mentions.

Over and above the breakdown of the type of content seen on all major social media platforms and other sources mentioned, the solution provides recommendations on the ways in which to improve overall sentiment on each major social media platform in terms of strategy, content and hashtag use.

It drills down into the data to the level of the number of followers on each major social media platform, activity levels and engagement rates on all major social media platforms, and any comments that have been made by the organisation’s account that are reactive or inappropriate.

It also informs about any negative comments or reviews and, importantly, insight into the possible reasons behind these.

“Having customer sentiment analysis helps companies to ensure their customers are heard, to help them make better informed business decisions and to keep customers coming back again and again,” says Digimune director Simon Campbell-Young.

He says this type of analysis can’t be done manually given the flood of data that is drowning enterprises today. “Having the right tools helps organisations process large amounts of textual information from their customers to produce reports about how their customers actually feel about an aspect of a product or their customer experience in general.”

The information gathered from customer sentiment analysis is key to discovering crucial information about consumers as well as how brands can elicit positive responses from their customers.

CX, the game changer

“With customer experience (CX) becoming the key differentiator – above even price or product – having an accurate picture of customer sentiment, can help brands avoid seeing consumers move to their competitors. According to a report by Emplifi, four out of five respondents would leave a brand to which they are loyal after three or fewer instances of poor CX, and one in five after only a single instance.”

Campbell-Young says that without a thorough understanding of customer sentiment, companies are far more likely to lose consumers – and with them revenue. “Customer sentiment reports are designed to gauge the online sentiment of a brand or business which in turn helps the organisation to do better.”

With DigiInsight, companies gain an understanding of what customers like and dislike about their brand, as well as insight into the kinds of issues they are having with their products or solutions. It gives them a finger on the pulse in terms of where marketing could be improved, and ways to speak directly to any pain points. By learning how often their brand is being spoken about, and on which platforms, businesses can formulate a social listening strategy to stay informed.

More informed hiring

The use of social and digital media has skyrocketed over the last decade, and the use of this data has become more and more integral to effective decision making.

The DigiInsights employee screening tool compiles screening reports from the analysis of 2 498 social and digital media data points to reveal the true individual behind the data. The company’s expertise in combining artificial and emotional intelligence delivers incredibly accurate online behaviour profile results, which can help companies to make more informed hiring decisions, increase business profitability and reduce the risk of damage to an organisation’s reputation or brand.

Says Campbell-Young: “This can be a very powerful tool. For example, during an interview a candidate might tell you they are involved in animal welfare, and volunteer at a shelter on the weekend. Our system goes and looks for the contextual differences and it will pick up that the person is in fact an animal abuser, a neo-Nazi or someone equally repellent that no company would want associated with its brand.”

He says HR departments can improve their retention, productivity and diversity, while reducing disciplinary records and customer complaints. “Through this tool, they can identify high-risk employees, internal culture matches and trends within high-performing business units.”

Moreover, HR practitioners can identify high-quality candidates faster, reduce legal liability, and reduce both cost per hire and the time needed to fill positions.

About Digimune
The digital world is so much more than mere bits and bytes, algorithms and apps. It’s people doing business, learning, gaming, falling in love … and committing crimes. At Digimune, we don’t believe that the threat of fraud, ruined reputations and bullying should be allowed to cast a shadow over your digital life. That’s why we design ahead-of-the-curve solutions that provide comprehensive protection for your digital devices. By eliminating threats and providing cyber-protection education, we offer meaningful support to victims – giving you back your freedom to connect to people, knowledge, products, services and businesses. As the industry leader in digital risk protection, we say to you: live free.