Sponsored Article
Delivering superior customer experiences (CX) is a powerful differentiator. Businesses that excel in CX can reap the benefits of long-term customer loyalty and retention. Listening and responding to customers should be a priority. McKinsey research has shown that CX-focused companies achieve growth rates twice that of their competitors.
Yet there’s evidence that companies aren’t adequately prioritizing CX. In June 2024, Forrester reported that customer experience quality among U.S. brands had reached an all-time low — marking a third consecutive year of decline. Several factors contribute to this issue. Many companies fail to provide seamless experiences for both customers and employees. Digital interactions are often underwhelming, leaving customers dissatisfied. Additionally, growing concerns about financial stability and the broader economy are heightening consumer anxiety.
Further, Accenture found that 37% of people believe companies prioritize profits over customer experience. Customers feel increasingly neglected and their trust is eroding.
One way to improve CX and address these negative sentiments is by listening to customers and responding to their feedback. Understanding customer needs is a top CX challenge according to recent Hubspot research. However, the way companies listen and respond to customers has dramatically evolved, thanks to today's AI-driven tools. The rise of AI capabilities (particularly in open-text analysis) has opened new avenues for understanding customer needs and sentiments in ways that were previously unimaginable.
The results are in and the case is clear: Companies that prioritize CX often have greater growth and higher revenue than their competitors. Improving customer experience starts with understanding what these new technologies are capable of. By harnessing these technologies, you can gain a competitive edge in the market.
The Power of Open-Text Feedback
Customer feedback comes in various forms, each with its own advantages and challenges. Structured feedback, such as responses to multiple-choice survey questions, is quantifiable and easy to analyze. However, it often lacks the nuance needed to fully understand what customers are going through at any given moment.
This is where unstructured feedback — free-text responses from surveys, social media posts, reviews and more — becomes invaluable. Unstructured feedback offers rich insights into customer sentiments and allows businesses to improve the customer experience. Soliciting unstructured feedback doesn’t have to be complex or revolutionary — adding an open-text follow-up question to an NPS survey can do the trick. A simple “Why did you give us that score?” will tell you more than the score itself.
But the scale of customer interactions can make unstructured feedback analysis challenging. Let’s take FinServ as just one example. In this industry, the majority of customers prefer digital experiences and 73% of them expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations, according to research. Having so many customers interacting with you digitally can produce a wealth of data that can be difficult to parse manually.
Webinar
Sep
25
CMS Briefing: A Live Look at What’s Next in AI-Driven Platforms
Learn how leading organizations are using AI‑driven tools to publish faster, personalize smarter and stay secure.
Register
Webinar
Sep
25
Call Spoofing Trends Financial Institutions Can't Afford to Ignore
Don't let robocalls sabotage your customer relationships. Learn how to secure your voice channel.
Register
Webinar
On demand
Ready or Not: How Data-First Organizations Are Unlocking Agentforce Potential
Learn how to cut through the noise, activate Agentforce and build a Salesforce AI strategy that actually delivers.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
CX Reality Check: What Your Customers Are Really Thinking
Register now and get the insights you need to not just meet rising expectations, but exceed them.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
Content Leaders Collective: What a Good CCMS Actually Looks Like
Discover how content leaders transform clunky systems into growth engines — and why your competitors are ahead.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
From Hype to High-Impact CX Strategies That Actually Scale
Turn buzzworthy AI and outsourcing trends into measurable CX wins with fresh 2025 data.
Watch Now
However, with the advent of AI, this process has been revolutionized. AI-powered text analysis delivers a massive reduction in the cost of analysis, saving both time and money. It captures the subtle nuances of open text responses and tracks the drivers behind your key CX metrics, providing valuable insights.
Going beyond an NPS or CSAT score, you can tie metrics to things that are actually happening in your business and how your customers react to their experiences. These capabilities are particularly crucial for businesses looking to align their CX strategies with real customer needs and prove the ROI of their CX investments. Organizations can make NPS and CSAT actionable by incorporating open-text insights. By correlating changes with operational data, they can measure the actual impacts on business performance. This approach provides a clearer understanding of how customer feedback influences overall success.
Key Features of a CX-Focused Text Analysis Solution
For companies integrating AI-driven analysis into their CX strategies, selecting the right text analysis platform is critical. Here are four key features to look for:
- Text Analysis: Advanced AI algorithms can quickly, accurately and precisely summarize and categorize large volumes of open-text feedback, identifying key themes and sentiments at scale. Such analysis is presented consistently for a more uniform experience.
- Analytics: Tools to track and visualize feedback metrics help you understand the why behind CX metrics and how customer sentiment evolves over time.
- Dashboards: Customizable, real-time dashboards break down silos and provide actionable insights across teams, aligning everyone on the key outcomes.
- Workflows: Automated workflows trigger alerts for critical events (such as a drop in NPS or surge in complaints), allowing for immediate action.
How AI-Driven Text Analysis Enhances CX
The integration of AI into customer analysis makes it easier than ever to understand and act on customer needs, driving better outcomes across the board. First, it provides a direct link between customer feedback and business outcomes. This linkage helps customer experience and marketing teams connect their efforts to the overall success of the company.
Second, it allows for real-time monitoring of customer sentiment at scale. This capability allows teams to deliver quick responses to emerging trends. Finally, incorporating AI allows you to scale your feedback channels (relational, transactional and others) without getting overwhelmed. This means CX professionals can both maintain or improve customer satisfaction scores. They can also gain a more holistic view of CX and align their work to tangible business metrics.
Leveraging AI for Superior CX Strategies
As CX continues to face significant challenges, AI-powered text analysis offers a way forward. By harnessing the wealth of insights hidden within large amounts of unstructured feedback, companies can improve retention. They can also refine the customer journey and ultimately deliver a superior customer experience. According to Hubspot, 77% of customer experience teams are already using AI. If your team isn’t one of them, you can be almost certain your competitors are.
Platforms like Alchemer Pulse are at the forefront of this AI revolution, enabling CX professionals to move from mere data collection to deep understanding and actionable insights. As AI continues to advance, so too will the ability of businesses to meet and exceed customer expectations. Unlock the value hidden in your open text feedback by using AI-powered text analysis to understand exactly how your customers feel — in their own words.
Learn how you can use open text analysis to improve your customer experience at alchemer.com/pulse.
