LEARNING HUB:
Case Studies
Gaining Competitive Edge with AI-Powered Social Listening
Kerri-Lee Kramer and Ahna Boley
READ
Case Studies
Insurance: Establishing Long-term Community
Discover how a private online community helped an insurance leader cut research costs, engage customers deeply, and make smarter marketing decisions fast.
Kerri Godfrey and Slavica Dummer

Facing rising costs and shifting consumer needs, an insurance leader turned to a private online community to unlock real-time insights and drive smarter growth.

Challenges:

A leading insurance company was faced with the challenge of creating educational material that addressed the concerns, whilst guiding the right consumers towards selecting the right type of insurance. The company needed a solution that was both quick and cost-effective to discover insights about the insurance industry and achieve effective communication with customers.

Solutions:

To address these challenges, listening247 introduced an innovative solution: a private online community platform designed for the insurance company to gain a better understanding of customer perspective when it comes to its products and services. This platform facilitated real-time interactions and allowed the company’s necessary departments such as the marketing and research team to conduct various activities such as bulletin board discussions, surveys within the community and video diaries.

Benefits for the Client:

1. Efficient Decision-Making: The customer quickly gathered initial input from consumers, which guided crucial marketing choices, ensuring they maintained a competitive edge in the market.

2. Enhancement of Economic Strategy: The online community platform minimised total market research expenses by delivering valuable insights, thereby optimizing the return on investment for marketing expenditure.

3. Enhanced Consumer Engagement: Consistent interaction with the consumer base via the platform bolstered brand loyalty and offered more profound insights into the consumer experience, leading to enhancements in marketing strategies and product offerings.

December 17, 2024
Case Studies
From Consumer Insight to Market Strategy: A Cost-Effective Journey
Discover how a global brand used AI-powered social listening and an innovative online community to transform consumer insights across six countries, efficiently.
Kerri Godfrey and Slavica Dummer

A global leader used AI-powered social listening and a dynamic online community to capture nuanced consumer insights across six countries—accelerating decisions and cutting costs.

Challenges:

A global company faced the dual challenge of improving product perception and performance without increasing expenditure. Tasked by the CEO to deliver actionable insights, the Marketing Director needed a solution that was both quick and cost-effective, as traditional market research methods were proving too slow and expensive for the dynamic market landscape.

Solutions:

To address these challenges, listening247 introduced an innovative solution: a private online community platform designed to serve as an advisory board comprising consumers. This platform facilitated realtime interactions and allowed the marketing team to conduct various activities like polls, asynchronous discussions, and video diary sessions.

Benefits for the Client:

1. Accelerated Decision-Making: The client rapidly acquired preliminary consumer feedback that informed critical marketing decisions, keeping them ahead in a competitive market.

2. Economic Strategy Refinement: The online community platform reduced overall market research costs while providing valuable insights, maximising ROI on marketing spend.

3. Deeper Consumer Connection: Continuous engagement with the consumer base through the platform enhanced brand loyalty and provided deeper insights into the consumer experience, improving marketing strategies and product offerings.

November 7, 2024
Case Studies
Global Perspectives: Unveiling Consumer Sentiments in Personal Care Across Six
To win in the personal care market, a global giant turned to AI-driven insights, uncovering real-time consumer sentiment across six diverse countries.
Kerri Godfrey and Slavica Dummer

To stay ahead in the competitive personal care market, a global blue-chip organisation sought to deeply understand consumer perceptions across six diverse countries. Facing the challenge of capturing nuanced attitudes in multiple languages, they partnered with listening247™. Leveraging advanced AI-driven social intelligence, the initiative uncovered real-time, high-accuracy insights that informed strategy, enhanced campaign effectiveness, and aligned offerings more closely with consumer expectations.

Challenges:

A global blue chip organisation need to explore the landscape around a personal care category in 6 different countries to discover consumer perception and attitude towards their product. They goal was to thoroughly investigate consumer perceptions and attitudes around the personal care category to better inform future marketing campaigns.

Solutions:

To tackle these obstacles, listening247 adopted an all-encompassing social intelligence strategy employing sophisticated AI models.  This method entailed gathering data from various digital platforms that covered user posts on public websites in 6 different languages including German where the sentiment accuracy at sentence level was 91%. The data was then carefully harvested, followed by the process of noise elimination to remove irrelevant posts. This data underwent meticulous annotation, detailing information on brands sentiments and topics.

Benefits for the Client:

1. Dynamic Market Reactivity: Utilising the listening247™ platform enabled the client to monitor shifts and adjust promptly, thereby sustaining a competitive advantage.

2. Enhanced Marketing Strategy: The results were leveraged by the client's advertising agency to craft upcoming campaigns.

3. Better Market Alignment: The provided insights enabled the client to synchronise their offerings with consumer preferences, thus improving customer engagement.

May 19, 2024
Case Studies
Young Appetites: Tailoring Quick Service Menus for Millennial Trends
Discover how a top Saudi quick-service chain used AI-driven insights to tailor menus that capture millennial tastes and boost engagement among under-35s.
Kerri Godfrey and Slavica Dummer

A leading Saudi quick-service chain faced the challenge of decoding under-35 consumer trends from vast multilingual data. Using advanced AI and three months of digital insights, listening247 helped tailor menus that boosted relevance, engagement, and informed decisions.

Challenges:

A leading quick service restaurant chain in Saudi Arabia needed to grasp the consumer trends among the under-35 demographic. The challenge was to sift through extensive multilingual digital content from various platforms to extract precise, relevant data.

Solutions:

To address these challenges, listening247 implemented a robust methodology involving the collection of three months' worth of historical data across key digital platforms, using generic keywords to capture a broad spectrum of consumer behaviour and preferences. Advanced AI models were employed to annotate the data with sentiment and relevant topics.

Benefits for the Client:

1. Informed Decision-Making: The insights allowed for data-driven adjustments to the restaurant's menu. 

2. Enhanced Market Relevance: Understanding young consumers' preferences enabled the restaurant to better align its offerings.

3. Improved Customer Engagement: The strategic updates led to higher engagement and satisfaction from the crucial under-35 market.

February 15, 2024
Blog
7 AI Tools That Supercharge Productivity and Lead to Better Audience Understanding
From AI coworkers to instant videos, these 7 powerful tools are helping teams work smarter, faster, and more creatively in 2025 and beyond.
Ian Boronat and Ahna Boley

AI adoption is exploding with over 61% of Americans having used AI tools in the past six months, and 19% engaging with AI every day. Globally, that’s nearly 2 billion users and growing fast (source).

But most people aren’t looking for science-fiction breakthroughs. They want practical AI that helps them:

  • Work faster
  • Spark ideas
  • Remove repetitive tasks
  • Turn raw information into action

So which AI tools are best to improve work and creativity in 2025? We’ve compiled a list of seven practical AI applications that our team at listening247 has tested and have shown significant time saving benefits. From coding, to design, to video creation, each tackle a different part of our business workflow. 

  1. Sintra.ai
  2. Midjourney
  3. Gamma.app
  4. Adobe Acrobat AI
  5. GitHub Copilot
  6. Lumen5
  7. listening247

1. What is Sintra.ai? – A Team of AI Colleagues

Sintra.ai positions itself as a “team of AI coworkers.” It offers pre-trained helpers such as recruiters, sales managers, and copywriters that can assist with tasks that would normally require additional hires. Sintra's "helpers" come pre-trained, and as you provide more information about your business, they get smarter and tailor responses to suit your company needs.

  • Early stage but growing.
  • Augments human teams by adding more roles without adding headcount.
  • A glimpse into the future of AI-assisted staffing.

Your AI-powered coworkers.

More: Sintra.ai

2. What is Midjourney? – AI for Creativity on Command

Midjourney is an AI image generation tool that turns any computer in a design studio. It’s quickly become a creative staple widely used for:

  • Campaign brainstorming
  • Mood boards
  • Fast concept art

It doesn’t replace designers, but it accelerates “what if” visual thinking.

More: Midjourney

3. What is Gamma.app? – AI for Presentations Without the Pain

Most of us spend way too much time in PowerPoint trying to create the perfect slide. Gamma changes that. Drop in your content or ideas and it generates clean, modern presentations and even lightweight websites.

  • Automates slide formatting.
  • Produces clean, modern decks.
  • Lets users focus on storytelling instead of design details.

It’s slide creation, simplified.

More: Gamma.app

4. What is Adobe Acrobat AI? – Read PDFs at the Speed of Thought

Adobe AI integrates intelligent tools into Adobe Acrobat to help you quickly understand and navigate PDFs.

  • Summarise documents, extract key information, or search content instantly with text prompts.
  • Cuts document review time from hours to minutes.
  • Trusted by professionals and teams who work with PDFs daily.

Smarter PDFs, faster insights.

More: Adobe Acrobat AI

5. What is GitHub Copilot? – Your AI Pair Programmer

We’ve all hit roadblocks while coding: digging through Stack Overflow threads, rewriting boilerplate, or debugging for hours. GitHub Copilot changes that by living inside coding environments (IDEs) and generating code in real time with you.

  • Suggests snippets, functions, and full methods.
  • Reduces time spent searching Stack Overflow.
  • Acts like a junior developer helping with boilerplate tasks.

Code smarter, not harder.

More: GitHub Copilot

6. What is Lumen5? – AI for Video in Minutes, Not Weeks

Video is the language of the internet, but producing it has always been slow and expensive. Lumen5 creates short-form videos quickly by combining your own uploaded scripts or prompted text into fully built out scripts with visuals, music, and voiceovers.

  • Optimised for social media campaigns and explainers.
  • Speeds production from weeks to hours.
  • Makes video creation accessible to non-experts.

Video creation at the speed of ideas.

More: Lumen5 | Best Free AI Tools

7. What is listening247? – The Glue That Brings It All Together

All of these tools are impressive on their own (ideation, slides, code, images or videos), but what happens when you combine AI with the ability to listen, analyze, predict and create all in one place. That's listening247.

It combines the above to help brands act fast by turning online chatter into visual marketing campaigns with content that is authentic to its audience. 

  • It listens to real-time conversations across all social media and other sites to understand what audiences are saying. 
  • Learns from the chatter and predicts what signals matter to your audience and offers authentic content suggestions. 
  • Creates branded imagery based on content suggestions. (video coming soon!)
  • Quick, easy interface for iterating on imagery and posting your campaign to social channels.

It’s not just monitoring, it’s social listening + action in one.

More: listening247

Final Word: Why Integrated AI Matters in 2025

AI adoption is high, but fragmented. People jump between Midjourney, Copilot, Lumen5, and others depending on their needs. That’s powerful, but it also creates friction. 

The future isn’t just single-purpose AI apps. It’s platforms like listening247 that bring listening, analysis, prediction, and creation into one seamless workflow. It takes the best of what's out there and weaves it into seamless brand conversations. Because in a world this chaotic and noisy, listening isn't enough. You have to filter, respond, and engage in real time.

Now if only AI could also make my morning coffee. Maybe in next quarter's update.

What other AI tools should we check out? 

September 1, 2025
Blog
Valentine’s Day 2025 Trends and Insights
Chocolate meets strategy this Valentine’s. We dug into 24K+ posts to reveal what’s driving the hype. Curious?
Slavica Dummer and Kerri-Lee Godfrey

From Social Data to Chocolate Success This Valentine's

With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, the chocolate industry is in full swing to make their mark and drive sales and brand engagement. Using listening247’s Social Listening and Analytics, we analysed 24,930 posts from Instagram across multiple regions and languages, including English, Italian, Korean, and Indonesian. Our goal? To uncover the most influential conversation drivers around chocolate, love, and seasonal promotions.

The Sentiment Behind the Chocolate Buzz

Among the posts analysed:

  • 41% (10,382 posts) expressed positive sentiment, highlighting excitement around giveaways, premium packaging, and nostalgic flavours.
  • 57% (14,363 posts) remained neutral, indicating general discussions, product mentions, and brand promotions.
  • Only 2% (185 posts) carried negative sentiment, with users feeling disappointed with discontinued flavours, rising prices, or shrinking product sizes.

The Sweetest Hook

If there’s one thing chocolate lovers adore more than indulging, it’s winning free chocolate. Giveaway promotions dominated the conversation, accounting for 14,884 of the total posts analysed. Brands like That’s It and Choczero sparked engagement through interactive contests, encouraging users to tag, share, and follow for a chance to win exclusive treats. Lindt and Baci Perugina took things further, tying their giveaways to limited-edition Valentine’s chocolates, ensuring their brand stayed top-of-mind as shoppers browsed for the perfect gift.

Takeaway: Giveaways don’t just create buzz; they build brand affinity and amplify visibility across social media. Tying contests to seasonal events maximises impact.

A Chocolate Calendar Moment

Valentine’s Day isn’t the only reason people talk about chocolate; seasonal occasions accounted for 6,085 posts, reinforcing how deeply chocolate is woven into celebrations. Brands like Lindt and Baci Perugina successfully capitalised on holiday excitement with heart-shaped boxes, themed promotions, and limited-edition releases.

Takeaway: Seasonal positioning is key. Expanding holiday-themed promotions beyond Valentine’s Day—such as Easter and Christmas—can sustain year-round engagement.

What’s on the Menu?

Beyond promotions, people are passionate about their chocolate preferences. 3,801 posts discussed chocolate types, from dark and milk varieties to unique flavours. Discussions on discontinued favourites like mango and cream truffles gained traction, highlighting opportunities for brands to reintroduce nostalgic flavours.

Takeaway: Nostalgia sells. Revisiting past favourites or launching limited-edition throwback collections can rekindle consumer excitement.

Limited Editions Drive Demand

Valentine’s Day-specific promotions accounted for 807 posts, with Lindt’s Pick & Mix selections and Baci’s signature love-note chocolates standing out. While consumers embraced these festive offerings, some concerns emerged around pricing. A Valentine’s loyalty programme could be a strategic move to balance premium appeal with affordability.

Takeaway: Limited editions fuel demand, but pricing strategies should ensure accessibility without compromising brand value.

Chocolate as a Love Language

With 493 posts, chocolate emerged as more than just a treat; it’s a symbol of affection. Baci Perugina’s multilingual “Love Note” campaign was a standout, adding a personal touch that deepened emotional connections. Lindt’s Pink Mixed Bar Bouquet and Lindor chocolates, often paired with roses, reinforced the role of chocolate in heartfelt gifting.

Takeaway: Thoughtful packaging and personalised messaging enhance emotional appeal and gift desirability.

Celebrations, Gatherings, and Beyond

Although less frequently mentioned, events and gifting traditions made their mark, with 275 posts discussing chocolate’s role in group celebrations and gifting culture. The Valentine’s Chocolate and Wine Walk was a particular highlight, proving that immersive brand experiences leave a lasting impression.

Takeaway: Experiential marketing, such as chocolate pairing events, can deepen consumer engagement beyond traditional advertising.

The Recipe for Valentine’s Success

Valentine’s Day remains a key moment for chocolate brands.The top-performing strategies? Giveaways for engagement, personalised packaging for emotional appeal, and nostalgia-driven product revival to spark consumer excitement. Brands like That’s It, Lindt, and Baci Perugina demonstrated how interactive campaigns and thoughtful promotions can turn seasonal shoppers into lifelong customers.

As brands prepare for the next big occasion, one thing is clear: chocolate is more than just a treat; it’s a storytelling tool, a memory-maker, and the ultimate symbol of indulgence and love.

February 14, 2025
Blog
8 things data driven organisations do better than their competitors
Data-driven companies crush the competition, making faster, smarter decisions and building lasting success by trusting facts over gut feelings every time.
Michalis. A. Michael

Without a doubt it pays to be data driven. McKinsey Global Institute reports that data-driven organizations are now 23 times more likely to acquire customers, 6 times as likely to retain customers, and 19 times as likely to be profitable as a result.

Some organisations have business intelligence and market research departments, and many others don’t. Those who don’t are typically driven by the decisions of their senior management. What this means is that sometimes a handful of people work together to arrive to a consensus decision, and sometimes a single person - the CEO or the Head of a Department - makes a call based on their judgement alone. Unless their name is Steve Jobs or Jack Welch (well known autocratic leaders who got more things right than they got wrong), chances are their judgement or intuition or gut feeling (call it what you like) will not get them optimal results. 

These are 8 things out of a long list of items that make a data driven company way better than its competitors: 

1. They are built to last:

CEOs come and go, some have great intuition, some less so. Some are extrovert and some are “level 5 leaders” to use a definition from Jim Collins’ book ‘Good to Great’, the sequel to ‘Built to Last’… which by his own admission should have been the sequel.

2. Culture eats strategy for breakfast:

HBS Professor Michael Tushman says so. Being data driven encourages a culture whereby gut feelings and anecdotal information do not carry a lot of weight.

3. Transparent & Publicly Accountable:

There are many sources and types of data. There are structured and unstructured data (such as text, images and video clips). There are facts and there are opinions. We can get opinions by asking questions in surveys and focus groups, preferably through online communities* or by analysing unsolicited opinions using social media listening, social intelligence or social media monitoring, however you prefer to call this new discipline. And then we have our own data from accounting; sales, profit, expenses; you get the idea.

If all these data are available to all employees and everyone’s goals (including the CEO’s) are measured using these data, then we get public accountability through transparency. This point alone is enough reason for a company to decide to become data driven! 

*Did you know you can create and fully customise your own online community? Start your cost and commitment free trial.

4. Fast & confident decisions:

When a business decision is based 80% on data and 20% on gut feeling then it will be fast and confident. Companies that take a long time to debate and decide on something, and then even longer to execute are overrun and crushed by their competitors.

5. Consistency:

When decisions are not based on mood and appetite but on data they tend to be consistent and inspire stability to all stakeholders.

6. Curiosity:

Curiosity is a vital characteristic of innovative people. Data availability allows the curious to find answers to questions. The more the questions and answers the more the successes.

7. Data literate employees:

Abundance of data on its own will not do the trick. We need people to turn the data into information, then into knowledge and then into insight and hopefully foresight.

8. Prediction:

Talking about foresight, predictive analytics is what sometimes produces it. Without data predicting anything becomes a shot in the dark.

Becoming a data driven organisation is not possible from one day to the next. We need data, ways to analyse it and a data hungry culture with people that are data literate and buy into the concept. It takes commitment from the CEO and the management team and it takes perseverance.  Unless there is objective data that supports a decision, regardless of how much we think we know what action to take, we should resist to take it and we should always ask the question: what data supports this decision? 

February 22, 2019
Blog
"Evaluating Social Media Campaigns: Why Traditional Surveys Fall Short and What to Do Instead!"
Social media campaigns are booming, but how do you know if they’re working? Discover smarter, faster, and more affordable ways to measure real impact.
Michalis. A. Michael

Social media for over a decade now have established themselves as a powerful tool for marketers to reach out to their target audience and promote their brands. With the rise of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit and TikTok businesses have found new ways to reach out to their customers. However, the success of social media campaigns can be difficult to measure. In this post, we will discuss the best way of evaluating the performance of social media campaigns.

In the Past

Traditionally, brands have used tracking surveys to evaluate frequent campaigns. For ad-hoc campaigns these surveys were conducted before and after to measure changes in brand awareness, perception, and loyalty. While these methods can be useful, they are time-consuming and expensive. Moreover, it can only provide a limited understanding of the impact of a campaign.

One of the main limitations of using surveys for evaluating social media campaigns is that they are based on a sample of respondents. In other words, only a small group of people are asked to provide feedback on the campaign. Some of them agree and some don’t. This can lead to biased results and make it difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about the campaign's impact on the broader population.

Today

In contrast, social media listening and analytics allows for a more comprehensive analysis of the campaign's impact. This method involves monitoring all the posts and mentions related to the campaign, rather than relying on a small sample of respondents. This provides a more accurate and representative view of how the campaign is being received by the public.

Social media listening involves monitoring social media platforms for mentions of a brand, product, or service. This method can provide real-time feedback on the effectiveness of a campaign. Machine learning for text analytics, on the other hand, can help analyse large volumes of data and identify patterns and insights that would be difficult to detect manually.

One of the most effective ways of evaluating social media campaigns is by tracking engagement metrics. Engagement metrics include likes, comments, shares, and clicks. By monitoring these metrics, brands can determine how well their content is resonating with their target audience. Moreover, engagement metrics can help brands identify which platforms and types of content are most effective for their audience.

Another important metric to track is conversions. Conversions refer to the number of people who take a desired action, such as making a purchase, after seeing a social media post. By tracking conversions, brands can determine the ROI of their social media campaigns.

Furthermore, social media listening and analytics can help brands identify patterns and insights that would be difficult to detect through traditional surveys. Machine learning algorithms can analyse large volumes of data and identify trends and themes that may be missed by manual analysis. For example, sentiment analysis can help brands identify whether the overall tone of the conversation about their campaign is positive, negative, or neutral, and adjust accordingly.

It is important to measure the reach of social media campaigns. Reach refers to the number of people who have seen a post. By tracking reach, brands can determine how far their message is spreading and identify opportunities for growth.

Finally, social media listening and analytics can be more cost-effective than traditional surveys. While surveys can be time-consuming and expensive to conduct, social media listening and analytics tools are often more affordable and accessible. This makes it easier also for smaller companies to monitor their campaigns and make data-driven decisions.

Surveys vs. Social Media Listening

Surveys and social media listening produce different metrics for evaluating social media campaigns. While surveys can provide valuable insights into how customers perceive a brand, social media listening can offer a more comprehensive and real-time view of a campaign's impact. Here's a comparison of some key campaign evaluation metrics produced by surveys versus social media listening:

  1. Awareness vs. Reach: Surveys typically measure brand awareness before and after a campaign, whereas social media listening can track the reach of a campaign in real-time. While surveys can provide a snapshot of a campaign's impact on brand awareness, social media listening can offer a more accurate and up-to-date view of how many people are seeing and engaging with a campaign.
  2. Likeability vs. Sentiment: Surveys can measure how much customers like a campaign, whereas social media listening can track sentiment to determine whether the overall tone of social media posts related to a campaign is positive, negative, or neutral. While likeability is important, sentiment can provide a more nuanced view of how a campaign is being received and can help brands identify potential issues or opportunities.
  3. Declared Engagement vs. Actual Engagement: Surveys can ask customers about their engagement with a campaign, whereas social media listening can track actual engagement metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and clicks. While declared engagement can provide some insights into how customers perceive a campaign, actual engagement metrics can offer a more accurate and comprehensive view of how customers are interacting with a campaign.
  4. Purchase Intent vs. Actual Purchase: Surveys can measure customers' purchase intent or declared purchases, while social media listening can track actual purchase behaviour through conversion metrics. While declared purchase intent can provide some insights into customers' likelihood to purchase a product or service, conversion metrics can provide a more accurate and concrete view of whether a campaign is driving sales.

My usual stance is that social media listening, or the practice of monitoring unsolicited customer opinions, can serve to enhance and complement survey results, which rely on solicited customer opinions. However, there are instances where I strongly believe that surveys are not the most effective way to gather feedback. For example, when assessing the impact of an advertisement on social media, it doesn't make sense to rely solely on a small group of survey participants who agreed to give their opinion for a fee. Instead, we can leverage social media listening to gain insights from all the individuals who actually saw the ad online and freely expressed their thoughts about it. By doing so, we can obtain a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of the ad's reception among the target audience.

Conclusion

While traditional methods of evaluating social media campaigns can still be somewhat useful, there are now more effective and efficient ways to measure performance. Social media listening and machine learning for text analytics have made it easier to track engagement, conversions, sentiment, and reach. This method provides a more comprehensive analysis of the campaign's impact, allows for real-time feedback, and can be more cost-effective. By using these metrics, brands can gain a better understanding of the impact of their campaigns and make data-driven decisions to improve their brand strategies.

“You don’t have to be a major multinational brand to be able to afford social media listening, as a matter of fact such an approach is way cheaper than the traditional one.”

June 2, 2023
Blog
Discover the Secret to Predicting Consumer Trends Before Your Competitors
Unlock the secret to predicting consumer trends before your competitors with AI-powered insights that go far beyond outdated surveys and focus groups.
Michalis. A. Michael

The discovery of emerging trends has become increasingly important in recent years. Product development and innovation executives are constantly searching for ways to predict what consumers will want before their competitors. In this post, we will explore how trend discovery was done in the past, and more importantly, we will highlight cutting-edge Natural Language Processing technology that can help you identify emerging trends before they become mainstream.

The process of discovering consumer trends has undergone a massive transformation over the past 15 years, primarily due to the advent of social media and Artificial Intelligence. 

In the past, companies had to rely on traditional market research methods that were time-consuming and expensive. However, with the rise of social media listening tools, it has become much easier for companies to track and analyse consumer behaviour, preferences, and opinions. In this post, we will explore the challenges faced by companies in discovering consumer trends 15 years ago, compared to the ease with which it can be done now.

In the Past

To be more specific, in the past, companies relied primarily on surveys and focus groups to understand their customers. These traditional methods were often expensive, time-consuming, and had a limited sample size. Companies had to go through a rigorous process of recruiting participants, conducting the survey or focus group, analysing the data, and then interpreting the findings. This entire process could take weeks or even months to complete, making it difficult for companies to innovate and be competitive.

Moreover, surveys and focus groups were often limited to a specific geographic area or demographic, making it difficult to get a broad understanding of consumer behaviour. This lack of data often led to companies making assumptions about their customers' preferences, which could result in costly mistakes.

According to various studies, the failure rate for new products is estimated to be between 70% and 90%. In other words, most new products that are launched fail to achieve their business objectives, such as generating sufficient revenue or profitability. This underscores the importance of conducting thorough market research, testing, and analysis before launching a new product to increase the chances of success.

Today

With the rise of social media, companies now have access to a wealth of data that can be used to uncover consumer trends. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have billions of users, and each one of them is creating content, sharing opinions, and engaging with brands. Social media listening tools have made it easier for companies to monitor these conversations and extract meaningful insights.

Social media listening tools allow companies to track specific keywords and hashtags related to their brand or industry. These tools analyse the data and provide valuable insights, such as sentiment analysis, conversation drivers, engagement metrics and virality. This information can be used to identify emerging trends, monitor brand reputation, and engage with customers in real-time.

In addition, social media listening tools allow companies to track their competitors' activities, which can provide valuable insights into their marketing strategies and product development. By monitoring their competitors, companies can identify gaps in the market, and create products or services that meet the needs of their customers.

Furthermore, social media listening tools have made it possible for companies to connect with their customers in a more personalized way. By monitoring social media conversations, companies can identify individuals who are influential in their industry or have a large following. These individuals – the influencers - can be targeted to become brand advocates or ambassadors and to propagate offers, which can lead to increased engagement and more sales.

listening247 has developed a proprietary approach to discovering emerging trends that involves the following steps:

  • Gathering consumer posts from various social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, Quora, as well as blogs, forums, news, and reviews.
  • Utilizing a custom machine learning model for product category and language to automatically label the posts with relevant topics, sub-topics, and attributes.
  • Identifying themes that are being talked about online, even if they are only mentioned in a few posts, that grow exponentially in volume from one day to the next.
  • Selecting a rapidly growing theme as an emerging topic, which is highlighted as a potential trend.
  • Allowing listening247 users to perform more in-depth research using the drilldown approach to verify the early indicators of the trend and determine what actions to take as a result.

By using this approach, listening247 provides valuable insights into emerging consumer trends that can help companies stay ahead of the competition and better understand their customers.

Conclusion

The process of discovering consumer trends has evolved significantly over the past 15 years, thanks to the rise of social media listening tools such as our Social Listening and Analytics Solution. These tools have made it easier for companies to monitor and analyse consumer behaviour, preferences, and opinions. They have also provided valuable insights into competitors' activities and enabled companies to connect with their customers in a more personalized way. With the help of social media listening tools, companies can stay ahead of the competition and create products or services that meet the evolving needs of their customers.

June 2, 2023
Blog
Who Should Own Your NPS Tracker? CX or Insights Teams?
Who should own your NPS tracker, CX or Insights? Learn how both teams can contribute and why clear ownership is crucial for driving real customer impact.
Michalis. A. Michael

According to research by Forrester, 53% of companies worldwide have a dedicated CX department, while the remaining companies may integrate CX responsibilities into other departments, such as marketing or operations, or may not have a CX function at all. In some cases, customer care or customer service may be the only CX related function, but this setup often falls short of the lofty goals of optimizing the overall customer experience.

Customer experience (CX) and insights are both critical components of understanding and improving customer satisfaction. While they may be closely related, they are distinct disciplines that require different approaches and skill sets. Therefore, it's essential to have clarity about the ownership and responsibilities of these functions, particularly when it comes to measuring customer experience with NPS trackers and by analysing customer calls and messages.

CX Team

CX is about creating and delivering an exceptional experience for the customer throughout their journey with the company. CX teams focus on understanding customer needs, pain points, and behaviours to design and optimise the customer journey. They collect and analyse data from various sources, such as surveys, customer feedback via contact centres, and predictive analytics, to identify areas of improvement and create strategies to enhance the customer experience.

CXM – a popular acronym used in this context - stands for customer experience measurement or customer experience management. When it comes to the latter there is no doubt that the CX team is responsible for it. When it comes to measuring though the Insights team is well positioned to offer support or even own it.

Customer Experience (CX) teams are primarily focused on identifying actionable insights at the individual customer level. They typically rank customer pain points based on their frequency of occurrence and then identify both proactive and reactive solutions to address them.

Insights Team

On the other hand, insights teams are responsible for gathering and analysing data to generate insights that can drive business decisions. Insights teams use a wide range of data sources, including customer data, market research, and internal business data to identify trends and patterns, support new product development, monitor business performance, and generally inform decision-making.

Insights teams are primarily focused on discovering strategic insights that are actionable at the total market level, rather than the individual customer level. 

The process of discovering a true market insight is not straightforward. It requires multiple sources of data to be integrated, an actionable hypothesis supported by synthesised data, and a little intuition and gut feeling.

NPS Tracker

When it comes to NPS trackers, the lines between CX and insights can get blurred. NPS (Net Promoter Score) is a widely used metric for measuring customer loyalty and satisfaction. It involves asking customers how likely they are to recommend the company to others, on a scale of 0 to 10. The NPS score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors (0-6) from the percentage of promoters (9-10) while ignoring the passives (7 & 8). The score provides a benchmark for how well the company is meeting customer needs and expectations.

Both CX and insights teams can benefit from NPS data. CX teams can use the score to understand how customers perceive the company and its products/services and identify areas for improvement in the customer journey. Insights teams can use the data to track overall customer satisfaction and loyalty, compare the company's performance against competitors, and identify factors that influence customer behaviour.

So, who should own the NPS tracker if CX is a separate department? The answer may vary depending on the company's size, structure, and culture. In some cases, CX and insights functions may be combined, and one team may be responsible for both functions. In other cases, the teams may be separate, and the ownership of the NPS tracker may depend on the purpose and goals of the survey or simply where the budget sits.

CX teams, if they have the skillset, could take the lead in designing and implementing NPS surveys since they are more closely related to the customer experience. Dedicated CX teams should have the expertise and experience to design surveys that capture customer feedback effectively, analyse the results, and translate them into actionable insights for the business.

However, insights teams can also play a crucial role in analysing and interpreting NPS data. Insights teams have a broader perspective on the business and can provide valuable insights into how customer satisfaction and loyalty relate to other business metrics. Insights teams can also identify trends and patterns in the data that can inform strategic decisions.

At listening247 we published a lot of articles on the importance of not just relying on a sample of customers who agree to take a survey but listening to all customer interactions using AI for natural language processing.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the success of a company's CX and insights functions depends on collaboration and communication between the teams. Both functions are essential for understanding and improving the customer experience, and both have a role to play in measuring customer satisfaction with NPS trackers. The roles of the two functions have to be well defined to avoid confusion and misunderstandings. 

By working together, CX and insights teams can ensure that the NPS data integrated with all the other customer interactions tagged with sentiment (such as phone calls, chats, emails etc.) are used effectively to drive business decisions that benefit both the customer and the company.

September 10, 2025
Blog
Revolutionize Your Contact Centre with AI: Top 5 Reasons Why You Need It Now
Unlock higher efficiency and smarter service; discover the top 5 reasons why AI is the must-have tool to revolutionize your contact centre today.
Michalis. A. Michael

AI can boost Call Centre Efficiency and Customer Satisfaction. 

Call centres are a vital part of many businesses, providing customer support and assistance. In recent years, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly prevalent in the call centre industry, and for good reason. By leveraging AI, call centres can increase revenue and improve their overall performance. 

Throughout the rest of this blog post we will use “Contact Centres” instead of “Call Centres” as it is a more appropriate description of what these organisations do. They do not just respond to calls but also to chat messages, emails and sometimes even social media posts.

Here is a list of the top 5 reasons why a contact centre should use AI to “listen” to all customer interactions:

  1. AI can be used to monitor and analyse customer feedback and sentiment. By using natural language processing (NLP) algorithms to analyse not only the calls and chats but also customer reviews, comments, and social media posts, call centres can gain valuable insights into customer satisfaction levels and identify areas for improvement. This data can be used to make tactical and strategic business decisions and improve the customer experience, ultimately leading to increased revenue.

    Our research shows a revenue uptick of 5% in a year just by calling back customers that end a call expressing negative sentiment

  2. Another way in which contact centres can leverage AI is by using predictive analytics to identify and respond to customer needs before they become big problems. By analysing data from previous customer interactions, AI can help CX organisations using contact centres to identify emerging pain points early on.

    Unlock the Potential of Your Contact Centre: AI-Powered Predictive Analytics

  3. By using machine learning algorithms to analyse past interactions, AI can rank customer pain points based on frequency of mention daily. This ranking can be the compass that directs the CX department’s activity in producing proactive and reactive solutions to customer problems.

    Ranking Customer Pain Points with AI: The Key to Proactive Solutions

  4. Contact centres can leverage AI to reduce cost using chatbots. Chatbots are AI-powered virtual assistants that can answer simple customer queries and direct them to the right department or representative. By automating the initial stages of customer interactions, contact centres can reduce their operating costs and handle a higher volume of calls. The problem is: it is not so clear how customers feel about talking to a chatbot rather than a human.

    AI is Boosting Contact Centre Efficiency
  1. Last but not least, AI can automatically populate an agent performance evaluation scorecard for all the calls or chats in which they are involved. This means cost savings from not having to employ supervisors to listen to 1-3% of all the calls, which is the norm. An even bigger advantage, however, is that all calls are evaluated, and supervisors can focus on training agents whose performance is below par.

    Say Goodbye to Costly Supervisors: How AI is Transforming Agent Performance Evaluation in Contact Centres

Conclusion

Call centres can leverage AI in a variety of ways to reduce cost and even increase their revenue. By automating customer interactions, using predictive analytics, improving call routing, and analysing customer feedback, call centres can improve their efficiency, reduce costs, and provide better customer service. As AI technology continues to advance, the opportunities for call centres to use it to increase revenue will only grow.

listening247 uses proprietary machine learning models on its AI platform that are customised for each subject or product category, achieving a minimum accuracy of over 80% each time, in any language. Often, the accuracy is over 90%, depending on the amount of training data used for the custom models. 

While there are ML models available for anyone to use (e.g. open source, Google, AWS and Microsoft), free or paid, the problem with those is that they are generic to a language, which means not specific to a product category. Thus, they can never reach acceptable accuracies without custom training data as top-up. Typically, their accuracies linger below 70% at best and usually around 50%-60%.

June 21, 2023
Blog
Liz Truss an easily predictable train wreck
Buried for over a month, this AI-driven report accurately predicted Liz Truss’s collapse, long before the public or polls caught on.
Michalis. A. Michael

On September 7th we gave the report below to our PR agency and asked them to publish what our analysis of online posts was telling us about Liz Truss. 

Sadly, the Queen passed away the next day, so the news cycle moved on from the PM’s election. 

The report below was never made public but we decided to post it on our blog and in the form of a Medium article almost a month and a half later as it is an illuminating illustration of the kind of robust AI driven “social intelligence” that is now possible – you can check, at the bottom of the report, the actual posts that were shared. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The report that never got published until today

Introduction:

This is the 4th report produced by listening247 with data gathered from social media and other public online sources between July 11 and September 6 2022 on Politicians. The 1st report was based on data collected between Sept. 15 and Dec. 14, 2021. The 2nd Dec. 15, 2021 to March 15, 2022 and the 3rd March 16 to July 10, 2022.

The sources of posts included in this report are Twitter, news, blogs, forums, reviews and video.

It is important to make a strong distinction between polls/surveys which are based on a sample of respondents – plenty of those exist and they are not necessarily accurate - and social intelligence which is not based on a sample - this is a unique report and the first of its kind. The data collected by listening247's CXM as well as Social Intelligence and Text Analytics platform are based on the universe of all the posts about the names included in the research (not a sample of posts) and it is the unsolicited opinion of the people who posted these posts – in contrast to polls they were not paid to answer questions, so they had no incentive to cheat or write an opinion that was not theirs.  

The main KPIs used to rank the subjects of this research were: 

  1. Share of Voice (SoV) calculated based on the total volume of posts for each politician. The total number of posts for all within a category was used as the base to calculate the shares.
  2. Net Sentiment Score (NSS) a metric coined, and trade marked by DMR to measure sentiment using a single KPI. Online posts were automatically labelled with sentiment using a proprietary AI model that listening247 trained to do this job with high accuracy.
The Share of Voice of the 3 politicians included in this 4th report:

In the table below the 3 politicians are ranked based on total number of posts from all sources. 

It is now the 3rd time that the total number of posts or share of voice is predictive of who will win an election

In the previous report we published Rishi was leading in this metric and he was the one elected with the highest number of MPs. Now from July 11 to September 5th the tables turned. Liz has more than double as many posts as Rishi and won the vote of the 170,000 conservative members.

                                                                                 

Fig.1: 3 politicians ranking based on total posts– Online posts collected and analysed by listening247 between July 11 and Sept. 5 2022
The Net Sentiment Score of the 3 investigated politicians:

In terms of net sentiment score during the 24 hours post Liz’s election the ranking is almost turned on its head

Keir has positive 3% whilst Rishi Sunak is closer to him with negative 3% and Liz has negative 8% a whole 11% worse score in public sentiment than the leader of the Labour Party.

Fig.2: 3 politicians Net Sentiment Score (NSS)– Online posts collected and analysed by listening247 for the 24 hours after the announcement of Liz Truss as the new PM on Sept. 5.
Post examples of non conservative supporters (mostly Labour):

The examples of posts below are a representative sample of what most people post about the next national election in January 2025:

  • "She’ll be a disaster > General Election> Labour win. Job done, the country rejoices."
  • "-The Conservative Party is done! The Brits to welcome Labour in their next general election."
  • "Thank God Liz Truss got it Conservatives should lose the next election in that case 😁"
  • "This is a great opportunity for Labor to take back Great Britain. The conservative very unstable in the past 7 years with resignations from David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, soon Liz Truss will end up resigning or lose the next election with the biggest lost in Britain history."
  • "At least they have a higher chance of being voted out at the general election now"
  • "I think if you want the Tories out, you want Liz Truss as Prime Minister because even her own supporters don't think she can win in a General Election."

It is quite clear that they all think Liz was the worse PM to go against Keir.

Conclusion

Three numbers are very important to keep in mind and understand what they represent: 

  1. 350 
  2. ~170,000
  3. 46 million.

The two final candidates (Liz+Rishi) of the conservative PM race were selected in multiple voting iterations by ~350 conservative MPs.

On September 5th ~170,000 conservative members voted and elected Liz Truss as the Prime Minister.

The total electorate for parliamentary votes in the UK has over 46 million voters.

Our report reflects the opinions of the 46 million voters; thus, the ranking may be able to predict what would happen if the vote for the election of a conservative PM was put to a national vote yesterday. To better interpret our rankings above we should keep in mind that in 2022 around 85% of the UK population are social media users. 

From that we can infer that the online posts gathered from various sources between March and September this year may impact up to 85% of the voters; it could be a bit less because the older population who do not have access to social media are all voters whereas the 85% (people with access to social media) includes children below 18 who are not voters yet. Having said that online News is one of the sources (the media) which is editorial and impacts the opinions of everyone who are exposed to the media.

The discussion in our previous report about possible scenarios was inferring that the conservative members should pay attention who was the most likely candidate to win the national election in January 2025 and let that inform their decision. 

Unfortunately, they did not do that.

The social media data indicates that Rishi would have a better chance to beat Keir.

The question now is if this data was predictive for the last two finalists and for the September 5th vote - which it was - will it also be predictive for the national election results in 2025? It looks like it is when 2 out of 2 times the share of voice predicted the outcome!

Stay tuned for more data from listening247 on the subject.

----------------------------------------------------------------

 

This is what we wrote on September 7th, 2022. I think for the 4th time unsolicited citizen opinion from social media and other online sources proves to be much more predictive than polls which are based on samples of respondents (who sometimes lie and sometimes forget what they said or did a week ago) that may not be representative.

We think that it is about time for social media listening and analytics to take its rightful place in the political forecasting business.

June 27, 2023
Blog
What are the opportunities and practical applications of AI in research and insights?
Unlock the power of AI in research; turn vast unstructured data into actionable insights, transforming how we understand markets, customers, and trends.
Michalis. A. Michael

There is a relatively simple formula which describes “weak” or “narrow” artificial intelligence: AI = ML+TD+HITL. To be more specific, this is the definition of supervised machine learning, which is the most common method to produce artificial intelligence. The acronyms in the formula stand for:

  • AI = artificial intelligence
  • ML = machine learning
  • TD = training data
  • HITL = human in the loop

Strong artificial intelligence - as defined by the Turing test - is when a human has a conversation with a machine and cannot tell it was not a human, based on the way it responds to questions. The optimists believe that strong AI is 10-15 years away whilst the realists/pessimists say not before the end of this century.    

How can “weak” AI be applied in research and insights:

Over 90% of all human knowledge accumulated since the beginning of time, is unstructured data. That is text, images, audio, or video. The other 10% are numbers in tables which is what quantitative market researchers usually use. The qualies, they are the ones using unstructured data, but the volume is limited to a few pages or a few video clips that a person can read/watch in a couple of days.  

Other than reading, listening to, or viewing unstructured data, 15 years ago there was no other way to discover their content and understand their meaning. Thankfully (especially if we are dealing with big data) today there is a way to discover and understand the information hidden in mega-, giga-, tera- or n-ta-bytes of data; you guessed it, it is AI. Machine learning allows us to create models that can process large files of text or images in seconds, and annotate sentences, paragraphs, sections, objects, or even whole documents with topics, sentiment and specific emotions. Sentiment and semantic analysis are the two most popular ways to analyse and understand unstructured data with the use of machine learning or a rules based approach. When the unstructured data to be analysed is in text format, the discipline falls under Computer Science (not linguistics funnily enough) and is called Natural Language Processing (NLP) or Text Analytics. 

Semi-supervised-, unsupervised- and deep-learning are other forms of machine learning, used to a smaller extent in a market research context, even though deep learning implementation is picking up speed - especially for image analytics. 

Use cases for unstructured data analytics:

There is a multitude of users, data sources and use cases within an organisation. Let’s take a look at relevant data sources first:

  1. Social Media; this is the most popular source and the related discipline is social intelligence
  2. Other public websites
  3. Answers to open ended questions
  4. Transcripts of in-depth interviews and focus group discussions
  5. Call centre conversations with customers
  6. Organic conversations on private online communities

ESOMAR mainly caters to the market researchers in organisations globally, but there are many more users of text and image analytics solutions sitting in different departments, that can benefit from using AI to understand unstructured data. Here is a combined list of users and use case examples for each one, which is not exhaustive by any means:

  1. Market research - for insights from social and other unstructured data sources
  2. Public relations - to manage brand and corporate reputation
  3. Customer service - to respond to questions, complaints and requests
  4. Advertising - to leverage positive testimonials
  5. Marketing - to find and leverage influencers
  6. Product Development - to learn about missing product features or ones that are not appreciated by consumers
  7. Innovation (beyond new product development) - to learn about emerging trends and new product use cases
  8. Competitive Intelligence - to gauge how competitors are doing in an industry or product category
  9. Operations - to learn about issues that need fixing
  10. Finance (together with marketing) - to find out about sentiment towards pricing
  11. Board - to benchmark and track sentiment on governance
  12. Sales - to find sales leads who express purchase intent

Questions that social intelligence can answer perfectly:

If we agree that social intelligence is currently the most popular application of AI in research and insights then it does make sense to review possible questions that can be answered using it. 

  1. How successful was my advertising campaign on social media? What do people say about it?
  2. How can I improve my advertising campaign on social media while it is live?
  3. How does my brand performance on social media benchmark against competitors in terms of engagement and sentiment?
    • Likes, shares, video views, followers
    • Positive/negative sentiment
    • Net sentiment score
    • Engagement ratio
    • Top 3 and bottom 3 posts in terms of engagement
  4. Which types of marketing campaigns work on social and which do not?
  5. What are my customers happy and unhappy about?
  6. What are my competitors’ customers happy and unhappy about?
  7. Which are the conversation drivers online?
  8. What digital content should I be sharing to help engage and help my brand’s performance
  9. What product or service features are customers not happy with?
  10. What product or service features would they like to have that are not available?
  11. What operational issues do people complain about when it comes to my brand versus competitors?
  12. What is my brand’s share of voice overall and for individual sentiments?
  13. What specific emotions do consumers express for my brand and its competitors?
  14. What is my share of posted images?
  15. What are the stories around the consumer posts that include images?
  16. What are the sentiment trends by brand?
  17. What are the topic conversation trends by brand? What are the popular sub-topics of these topics?
  18. When do conversations peak? What are the subjects, sources, times that usually online posts about a topic peak?
  19. Which online sources are the most important for my brand and for the category?
  20. Is there any white space when it comes to post volume on topics and sentiment by brand?
  21. In which languages is my brand most mentioned compared to competitors?

Social Intelligence and traditional market research methods:

If you are amenable to a bold statement such as “social intelligence may replace some traditional market research methods used to solicit consumer opinions” then here is a list to consider:

  1. Usage & Attitude studies (U&A)
  2. Exploratory FGDs to discover how consumers talk about a subject
  3. FGDs to find out which brand image attributes to measure
  4. Advertising Campaign Tracking
  5. Brand Equity Tracking
  6. Volumetric forecasting
  7. New product development research
  8. Customer Satisfaction Surveys, customer experience measurement
  9. Qualitative - Landscape Framework

Of course whether social intelligence can replace them altogether or enhance them depends on the country, language and product category.  If you have not embraced the use of AI yet, to tap into the wealth of unstructured data available to us everywhere, then at least keep an open mind and keep asking questions that will help you make an informed decision when the right time comes.

May 2, 2019
Blog
listening247 Answers to the ESOMAR 26 Questions
Discover how listening247 answers the ESOMAR 26, offering cutting-edge, multilingual market research through AI-driven social intelligence tools.
Michalis. A. Michael

Company profile and capabilities:

1) What is the company’s core business – the services offered, and verticals served?

listening247 answer:

listening247 is a technology company in the market research sector offering platform access as well as end-to-end market research services to Agencies, FMCG, Retail, Financial Services, Telecoms, Tourism & Hospitality, Healthcare, Automotive, Government & NGOs.

2) What are the typical deliverables?

listening247 answer:

  • Online and offline dashboards
  • Annotated data in CSV files
  • Excel tables with aggregated data
  • Periodic Executive Summaries
  • PPT reports with conclusions and recommendations
  • Presentations and action plan meetings 
3) How is pricing determined?

listening247 answer:

The pricing for social intelligence is based on product category, language (not country) and period covered. A rule of thumb is that an average product category is defined by up to 12 competitive brands. These 12 brands are used as keywords for harvesting from the web. The frequency of reporting and the delivery mechanism also have an impact on cost.

The pricing for any text or image analytics processing and annotation through an API, regardless of data source,  is charged per annotated post or image. 

4) Are there case studies that can be shared?

listening247 answer:

Yes, for many different product categories and languages and in different formats e.g. PDF decks, infographics, one pagers and demo dashboards.

Data sources and types

5) What data sources does the company rely on?

listening247 answer:

For Social Intelligence listening247 harvests data from social media and any public website such as Twitter, Blogs, Forums, Reviews, Videos, News and also Facebook and Instagram with some limitations that apply to all data providers.

The listening247 text and image analytics technology is source agnostic and can therefore ingest client data from open ended questions in surveys, transcripts of qualitative research, call centre conversations or any other source of unstructured data.

6) How does the company gather the data?

listening247 answer:

For social intelligence listening247 uses all the available methods to harvest data from public sources i.e. direct APIs, Aggregator APIs, Custom crawlers and scrapers, RSS feeds etc. When doing so listening247 abides by the ESOMAR code of conduct, the law and the Terms & Conditions of the sources.

For client data - see answer to Q6 - the client can share its own data by email, on FTP, on cloud drives or through APIs.

7) Does the company provide historical data from its sources?

listening247 answer:

For social intelligence yes - as long as the posts still exist online at the time of harvest.

Software design and capabilities

8) What types of unstructured data analysis is the software capable of producing?

listening247 answer:

Text, images, audio and video can be harvested from the web or taken from other sources (see answer to Q5). listening247 - the listening247 software - does offer the capability of data harvesting from online sources. It provides buzz (word counts), sentiment, 7 pairs of opposite emotions such as ‘Love Vs Hate’, and semantic (topic) analysis. The topic analysis provided is inductive (bottom-up) and top down. Topics can be broken down in sub-topics and sub-topics in attributes and so on. listening247 can also analyse images for objects, brand logos, text (extraction) and image theme (aption). It uses 3rd party technology to turn audio to text, followed by its own text analytics capability to analyse for sentiment, emotions and topics.

9) Does the software use machine learning or an engineered approach to produce the analyses?

listening247 answer:

The listening247 software represents the implementation of years of R&D funded by the UK government and the EU. It includes supervised, semi-supervised and unsupervised machine learning as well as deep learning for data “cleaning”, sentiment, emotions, topics and image annotations. For data “cleaning” and topic annotations listening247 uses a combination of engineered approaches and machine learning. All listening247 custom models and set-ups continuously improve their accuracy. The user can also provide improvements to the supervised machine learning models by adding training data any time.

10) What is the resolution of automated text analysis?

listening247 answer:

The text analysis is done at document, paragraph, sentence, phrase, or keyword mention

level. This is the choice of the client. The analysis extracts named entities, pattern-defined expressions, topics and themes, aspects (of an entity or topic), or relationships and attributes – and it offers feature resolution, that is, identifying multiple features that are essentially the same thing as the example in the guidance (Winston Churchill, Mr. Churchill, the Prime Minister are a single individual.)

The sentiment or emotions analysis is ascribed to each of the resolved features or at some other level; the user may choose the resolution of e.g. sentiment/emotion and semantic annotation.

11) Does the software provide document level data (e.g.individual posts to social media or specific survey open end) or only analytics based on document aggregation (i.e. quantitative analysis on a dashboard without the capability to drill through to the verbatims)?

listening247 answer:

listening247 provides document level data with the capability to drill through to the posts/verbatims, making it possible for users to verify the accuracy of all the annotations made by the models.

12) In which languages can each of the automated analyses mentioned in questions 7-9 be carried out at the advertised accuracy?

listening247 answer:

In literally all languages, including the likes of Arabish (Arabic expressed in Latin characters) and Greeglish (Greek expressed in Latin characters), since the automated analyses are done using custom models specifically created for the particular product category and language. The only trade-off is that it takes 1-3 weeks to create the set-up that guarantees the accuracy as advertised. 

13) Does the company use third party software or Web services(APIs) to produce the analyses or has it developed its own capability for market research purposes?

listening247 answer:

listening247 uses its own proprietary software and models to produce all the analyses. It provides fully configured customised models; the end user is not responsible for that training but has the option to participate or improve if they wish to do so. 

14) Can the system extract or infer a data subject’s demographic characteristics such as age, gender, income, education, and geography, and, if so, how (e.g. via metadata extraction, text analysis, or record linkage to external systems)? What validation processes are applied?

listening247 answer:

When it comes to social intelligence, limited demographics are available in the meta-data of normally harvested posts - see Q6. Any and all demographics can be inferred/predicted using a custom machine learning model which is trained to classify authors based on the way they write. The accuracy of prediction can be validated by testing it on new annotated data that was not used to train the model.

15) Is there any data sampling involved or needed, and if sampling is required or offered, what methods are applied?

listening247 answer:

For social intelligence listening247 typically harvests and reports all the posts from all the keywords and sources included. This is called census data as opposed to sample data. Data sampling is only done at the training data generation part of the process when the approach used is supervised machine learning. A random sample of 10% or up to 20,000 posts whichever is smaller is used as training data annotated by humans.

When it comes to sources other than the web, lower samples are needed to train the machine learning algorithms in order to reach the minimum accuracy. 

16) What is the intended, target function of the system or service?

listening247 answer:

listening247 was originally designed for market research purposes (in any language) thus the focus is on data accuracy and data integration with other sources such as surveys and transactional/behavioral data for insights. A few years down the line, it is now also being used for sales lead generation and identification of micro/nano influencers. 

Data quality and validation

17) How is the data cleaned to ensure that only relevant documents are used for the intended analysis?

listening247 answer:

For social intelligence, listening247 uses a combination of boolean logic and machine learning models to eliminate irrelevant posts due to homonyms. The priority and focus during the set-up period of a social listening tracker is to include all the synonyms (also misspellings, plurals etc) and exclude all the homonyms. Typically the data processed is over 90% relevant i.e. only a maximum of 10% is noise. 

18) At the resolution mentioned in Q9 what is the minimum guaranteed accuracy of the analysis carried out by the software?

listening247 answer:

listening247 offers a money back guarantee for the following precisions in any language:

  • Sentiment >75%
  • Topics >80%
  • Brands or Keywords >90%

Recall is usually at similar levels but it is not deemed as important as precision for market research purposes because if we end up with say 50% of all the data (50% recall) the sample is still hundreds if not thousands of times higher than the samples we use to represent populations in surveys.  

For image captioning the committed Bleu-1 score is >75% 

19) Is the user able to check the accuracy by themselves without any support from the software vendor?

listening247 answer:

Yes

20) What is the method for identifying spam in social media?

listening247 answer:

Different users have different definitions of spam. These are identified at the beginning of the project and eliminated during the set-up process described under Q17 by using a combination of boolean logic queries and custom machine learning models. Clients are also enabled to flag and remove spam themselves should they find any. 

Ethical and legal compliance

21) Does the company comply with the relevant legal data protection requirements in the jurisdictions in which it sources, processes, and shares data?

listening247 answer:

Yes absolutely. Even more than that since listening247 complies with the ESOMAR code of conduct which is stricter than the local laws.

22) What specific processes are in place to ensure the above described compliance?

listening247 answer:

listening247 abides by the ESOMAR code of conduct and not only stays informed about changes with the laws and terms & conditions of specific sources it actually gets actively involved in making sure the clients/users of these services stay well informed (e.g. the initiative to create this document under the auspices of ESOMAR). listening247 uses the highest standards of security in storing and transmitting data.

23) What codes of conduct and industry standards does the company abide by?

listening247 answer:

The codes of conduct and industry standards including the ICC/ESOMAR International Code on Market, Opinion and Social Research and Data Analytics; the Market Research Society in the UK (MRS).

24) How does the company ensure that data subjects are not harmed as a direct result of their data being collected, processed, and shared?

listening247 answer:

By abiding to the codes of conduct mentioned in Q23. In the occasions when an author of a post is contacted by listening247 the etiquette of the medium where the post was found is strictly followed and the medium/platform allows such contact and is usually expected by the authors of such posts. No offers are made unless the author indicates acceptance in the process of following the contact etiquette.

25) How does the company safeguard the privacy of data subjects in what it shares with users?

listening247 answer:

Only data from public sources are shared with users without masking. If the data is not from a public source then it is only offered in aggregated form or masked. 

26) What information security practices are in place to ensure the security of data? Does the company allow clients to audit said processes?

listening247 answer:

Most of the data in social intelligence is public but in the occasions when the data is owned by the client or is sourced from a non-public source cutting edge security measures are used. listening247 uses secure sites and encrypted transmissions to protect the data in its custody.

All the communication from and to listening247 happens through a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to ensure the encryption of communication client-server. In addition our hosting partner has successfully completed multiple SAS70 Type II audits, and now publishes a Service Organization Controls 1 (SOC 1), Type 2 report, published under both the SSAE 16 and the ISAE 3402 professional standards as well as a Service Organization Controls 2 (SOC 2) report. In addition a PCI (Payment Card Industry) DSS (Data Security Standard) Level 1 certificate has also been received. The users are welcome to carry out their own audits. 

March 18, 2019
Blog
MR Predictions: My 2015 “batting rate”
In 2015, I made 10 bold predictions for market research. Now it's time to face the music: what did I get right, what’s still evolving, and what flopped?
Michalis. A. Michael

Humans are inclined to think linearly. We overestimate the short-term and underestimate the long-term when we forecast. Quite often, linear trends are interrupted by “hockey sticks” that no-one could foresee. For example, no one predicted the exponential growth of computers and smartphones but we have been forecasting flying cars for over 30 years.

Credible forecasters in their quest to become better, look at their past predictions and measure their “batting rate”. This is what Greenbook asked me to do with my 2015 predictions about market research.

There is one dynamic about forecasting that needs to be explained. It may sound like an excuse for getting a prediction wrong but really it’s a compliment to the forecaster. When a prediction puts governments, companies or people in a bad place in the future, then the affected parties do their utmost to avoid that future. Case in point: blockchains were predicted to be the end of traditional banks as we know them due to their power of disintermediation; according to a FinTech rep at a conference in London, Bank of America owns 82% of all blockchain related patents in the US. This article does not mention the percentage but it quotes BofA as the leading company with the most patents in the field!!! 

Below are my 10 predictions published on this blog on February 9, 2015 along with commentary on whether they came true, are still valid, or proven wrong:

  1. 2015 Prediction: The traditional market research agencies that refuse to change will go out of business
    2019 Comment: It is consolidation time again, many have changed or are in the process of changing. This mostly affects smaller companies. The large multinationals will find a way to adapt.

  2. Prediction: DIY market research will catch on even more and will democratise our sector.
    Comment: SurveyMonkey is thriving and other tech companies double down in DIY tools for market research; automated coding, online community tools, visualisation tools. Qualtrics was sold for 20 times revenue to SAP! 

  3. Prediction: Social listening analytics will be a must-have for every marketing and market research manager
    Comment: Not the case yet but there are real signs of traction. Reuters predicts the spend in social analytics to be US$ 16 Billion by 2023 (up from 3.4 in 2017).

  4. Prediction: Agile research will become mainstream and will be facilitated by online communities
    Comment: Not the case yet, long term online communities seem to be a hard nut to crack. Some end clients are still trying to make them work, short term communities thrive. 

  5. Prediction: Micro surveys and intercepts will eventually replace long monthly customer tracking studies
    Comment: Not the case yet, this was a longer term prediction. There is definitely a trend in reducing the length of surveys, especially trackers.

  6. Prediction: Processing behavioural data in motion and delivering real-time micro insights will be a core competence of any insights expert agency
    Comment: Not the case yet still in play many tech companies are working toward this future.

  7. Prediction: Adjacent marketing services such as customer engagement, enterprise feedback management, customer advocacy, will become solutions offered by the market research companies of the future
    Comment: We see signs of this happening. Think Qualtrics, Medallia and Ipsos Customer Experience who is trying to compete with them. There are more domains that can now be added, such as sales lead generation and micro-influencer marketing.

  8. Prediction: Data scientists will be the new insight experts, utilising a lot more predictive analytics than rear-view mirror analytics
    Comment: Well no-one can deny that there is a hell of a lot more of them. They have still not replaced the insights experts. It looks like there it might be a different skill-set after all. Crunching numbers and text coming up with accurately annotated and well organised data is not the same as discovering “gold nuggets” of actionable insights.

  9. Prediction: The code of conduct of market research associations such as ESOMAR and MRS will be revised as it does not apply to the digital economy. If not, the new breed of MR agencies will refuse to be members of such archaic organisations, and the latter will die out.
    Comment: They are definitely awake and they are listening. Some have been revised, there are new guidelines that cover social intelligence.

  10. Prediction: Nielsen will no longer be the largest market research company in the world
    Comment: Nielsen still is the largest market research company in the world but it is about to break up in two pieces. Give it a couple more years.

Here is how I score myself on the above 10 predictions:

Happening: 4

Not Happening (yet): 4

Possibly happening: 2

Two years later - in 2017 - I published a new list of predictions. As you will see below the quality of my forecasting improved a lot. 

Getting the hang of it!

  1. 2017-2022: The total spend on social listening and analytics from market research budgets will be US$ 9 Billion by 2020, up from US$ 2 Billion. 2019 Comment: We are on track to hit the 9 Billion by the end of 2020 and we are looking at 16 Billion by 2023.
  2. 2017-2022: Social media listening will be about integration with surveys and other data sources instead of a single customer insight source. 2019 Comment: We still stand by this.
  3. 2017-2022: Market research online communities will replace a lot of the “asking questions” part of market research, possibly 50% of all spend by 2020. 2019 Comment: A recent survey in the UK by the British Research Barometer has found online communities to be the star of all methodologies.
  4. 2017-2022: Listen-probe-listen-probe using a social listening platform in conjunction with online communities will become mainstream by 2020. 2019 Comment: A couple of online community platforms in addition to listening247's communities247 announced the integration of text analytics tools.
  5. 2017-2022: Micro surveys that will intercept customers while they perform a relevant action and ask about the experience will grow exponentially by 2020. 2019 Comment: This is part of the customer experience measurement offering already.
  6. 2017-2022: Traditional customer tracking surveys will become a lot shorter in the meantime, until they will at some point during the next 5 years be replaced by a combined approach of intercepts + social listening + online communities. 2019 Comment: We still think this will happen.
  7. 2017-2022: Artificial intelligence will become mainstream in analysing data for customer insights in the next 5 years. 2019 Comment: Definitely.
  8. 2017-2022: A lot of the market research solutions in existence will become available as DIY in the next 5 years. 2019 Comment: No doubt about that.
  9. 2017-2022: As a result of point 8 market research will be democratised as a service i.e. become affordable for SMEs. 2019 Comment: It would be very odd if this doesn’t happen.
  10. 2017-2022: I will chuck this last one in the category of “self-fulfilled prophecies”.  A very powerful notion that has to do more with the persistence and drive of the “prophet” to make something happen. By 2020 DigitalMR will become a global powerhouse in the market research industry or it will be acquired by a global multinational player who will emerge as a winner in the current consolidation wave. 2019 Comment: Hmmm, no comment.

My new batting score is way better than that of 2015:

Happening: 7

Not Happening (yet): 1

Possibly happening: 2

From 40% to 70% in two years…. not bad if I may say so myself :)!

One last prediction (from Reuters this time) which we endorse: The social analytics market will be US$16 billion by 2023.

August 14, 2019
Blog
CX measurement cannot be complete without unstructured data.
This post covers combining data to uncover CX and customer insights.
Michalis. A. Michael.

Data Fusion - Data Integration - Data Merge

Unlike one of my recent blog posts titled Social Listening - Social Analytics - Social Intelligence, the 3 bigrams in the sub-heading are not part of a continuum, they are synonyms.

Synonyms are words that do not necessarily look or sound alike, but they have more or less the same meaning, while homonyms are words which are spelled the same, although they mean different things.

For the social intelligence discipline, synonyms and homonyms are treated in a diametrically opposite manner: the former are included when gathering online posts whilst the latter must be excluded; failure to do so results in another bigram we so often use in the data analytics business: “Garbage-in…”!

Sometimes, depending on the popularity of the homonyms, more than 80% of the posts gathered - using a social media monitoring tool are irrelevant - referred to as “noise” (as opposed to signal). Only if we have a way to remove the noise can we avoid completing the popular saying mentioned in the previous paragraph with: “…Garbage-out”.

But I digress…

This post is about efficient and meaningful ways to integrate unstructured and eventually structured data sources as part of an organisation's customer experience (CX) measurement or customer management (CM) process - a relatively new more encompassing term gaining ground on CX - in order to discover actionable insights.

This new process of beneficial unstructured data fusion from multiple source types can be described in the following 8 steps:

1. Transform to text

First a quick reminder as to what constitutes unstructured data:

  • Text
  • Audio
  • Images
  • Video

Text analytics is the easiest to perform (as opposed to audio analytics for example) hence the idea to transform all forms of unstructured data to text for easier manipulation.

One of the most useful sources of unstructured data for businesses is their call center audio recordings, with conversations between customers and customer care employees. These audio files can easily be transformed to text (voice-to-text) using specialised language specific machine learning models. An accuracy metric used for the transcripts produced is WER=Word Error Rate which should be lower than 10%.


Another popular source of insights are images e.g. posted on social media or shared on a business client community. A deep learning model adequately customised can produce a caption describing in text what is illustrated in each image (image-to-text).

When it comes to video, a combination of voice-to-text and image-to-text tech can be used.

2. Ingest on a text analytics platform

When all sources of unstructured data are turned into text, they then need to be uploaded onto a text analytics platform, usually in the form of a JSON or CSV file.

If the same platform has the capability to provide data from additional sources, such as online posts (text and images) from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, reviews, forums, blogs, news etc. so much the better. It can serve as both a social intelligence and text analytics platform.

If needed, text from each source type can be uploaded or gathered and saved separately and merged at a later stage,  so as to take a bespoke approach to cleaning and subsequently annotating the text using custom machine learning models for each source.

3. Clean

When it comes to client/user owned data they are all intrinsically clean (read relevant) since the source types are:

  • Email threads between customers and customer care employees
  • Website chat message thread with customers
  • Customer private messages on social media such as Facebook or Instagram
  • Answers to survey open ends
  • Transcripts of qualitative research e.g. focus groups or discussions on online communities
  • Loyalty systems

As for the data gathered from online sources – what is commonly known as social listening or social media monitoring – that is where a thorough data cleaning process is required. The problem as already indicated above is the homonyms. When a Boolean logic query is created to gather posts from social media and other public online sources, using a brand name like Apple or Coke or Orange as a keyword invites a lot of “noise” as you can imagine. The platform is required to offer easy ways to eliminate posts about apple the fruit, cocaine and orange the colour or fruit..

There are two ways to get rid of the irrelevant posts which sometimes make up more than 80% of all posts gathered.

  1. Boolean query iterations by adding exclusions for known and newly discovered homonyms after checking a sample of gathered posts
  2. Train a custom machine learning model to discern between relevant and irrelevant posts, with the latter treated as noise.

If data cleaning is done properly, we can expect brand/keyword relevance over 90%.

4. Annotate

Natural language processing is the umbrella discipline that takes care of this step in the process. Ideally the use of machine learning models to annotate text in any language works best, but sometimes a rules-based approach may be a shortcut to enhancing the annotation accuracy.

A good text analytics tool offers multiple options i.e. the ability to train generic & custom unsupervised machine learning models or using native language speakers as well as a taxonomy creation feature using a rules based approach.

Text can be annotated for sentiment, topics, relevance, age or other demographics of the author (if not otherwise obtainable), customer journey etc. A minimum accuracy of annotation should be declared and aimed for, and the users need to be able to easily verify the annotation accuracy themselves.

This step can happen before or after the merging of the various data sources, depending on their homogeneity.

5. Merge

For the longest time data fusion or integration or merging from different sources meant weeks or months of data harmonisation, so that the different sources could fit together and make sense. Merging 5-10 source types of unstructured data after steps 1-3 above only takes a few minutes, not months. It would take a few hours from start to fusion.

6. Explore

A powerful filtering tool is required for the user (data analyst) to be able to drill down into the data and discover interesting customer stories which might lead to actionable customer insights. For example, the user could first filter for negative sentiment, then for a specific brand, after that a topic and finally a source type before they start reading individual interactions to get an in-depth understanding of the WHY and the SO WHAT.

7. Deliver

Once the data is cleaned, merged, annotated, and explored, it can be delivered in multiple ways such as:

  1. CSV or JSON export of the entire merged dataset with meta data and annotations for each customer interaction.
  2. Detailed Excel tables with all possible cross tabs that will enable a market research practitioner or data analyst to produce PowerPoint reports
  3. Data in predefined templates for Tableau, Power BI or other platform native or 3rd party data visualisation platforms
  4. API access to feed a client’s own dashboards

8. Visualise  

Data visualisation via PowerPoint slides, drill down or query dashboards and alerts work best. Ideally the data formats should be flexible so that they can work with multiple data visualisation tools.

Who is this for?

For now, data fusion included in a CX/CM program is a better fit for larger corporations, for two reasons:

  1. They can afford the budget for a continuous 360-degree customer experience measurement.
  2. They already have CX measurement and CM programs and dedicated staff in place.

Hopefully soon there will be versions of SaaS products that will make this process efficient and inexpensive enough for SMEs (SMBs) to be able to afford it.

That is what we call the democratisation of data analytics and market research.

Conclusion

The more data sources we integrate the more likely it is for a data analyst, the user of a tool such as listening247, to be able to synthesize actionable insights in their true meaning.

It seems that the biggest gain from this newly found ability to accurately annotate text in any language and fuse/integrate/merge from any source type in a matter of hours is in the discipline of customer experience (CX) measurement and management (CM).

CX and CM are increasingly seeking to encapsulate market research, business intelligence, customer care and other business disciplines and are meant to perfect the customer path to purchase, minimise brand defectors and maximise the number of advocates.

May 18, 2021
Blog
Integrating unstructured data sources in a matter of hours - not months
95% of human knowledge is unstructured. A lockdown project showed us its untapped power.
Michalis. A. Michael.

Unstructured data makes up over 95% of all recorded human knowledge.

It was a lightbulb moment during lockdown; a few days after the team completed a piece of work, it suddenly hit me. Online posts from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, blogs, forums, news, reviews and videos were fused with call centre audio files and survey verbatims in just 3 days, done for the first time and done right. Albeit from very different sources, involving both solicited and unsolicited opinion, this data had something in common - it was all unstructured data.

For the uninitiated market researcher or data cruncher unstructured data exists in different formats such as:
  • Text
  • Image
  • Audio
  • Video
Structured data on the other hand is numbers in tables such as:
  • ad expenditure data by company/brand/variant
  • market shares from retail audit reports
  • brand health reports from a survey tracker
  • accounting data (sales, profit etc.)

When I compare the amount of effort that is required to integrate structured data, with what we experienced integrating text and audio (unstructured data) during the “light bulb event” the contrast could not be more surprising!

If you are dealing with numbers in tables, you’re looking at column headings, product names, units and rigid time periods, so integrating various sources means that everything should be harmonised, for example:

  • you may have market shares by brand variant from a NielsenIQ or IRI retail measurement report, but you only have ad expenditure data at the total brand level.
  • there could be different descriptions for the exact same product e.g. coke 6 pack 330 ml vs 330 ml coke cans
  • a survey could be carried out monthly, while the retail measurement report is available every two months, and social intelligence is reported daily.

Harmonising structured data to import it into one platform and then further manipulate it to integrate the various sources in order for meaningful analytics to be possible takes weeks, sometimes even months, compared to the 3 days to import, integrate, annotate, and explore unstructured data from various sources.

The data fusion process

With unstructured data the integration process is simple; all data in text format can be annotated for relevance, brand, sentiment and topics in an automated way using machine learning models or taxonomies. Data in other formats (such as image or audio) can be converted into text in order for the same process to follow. This makes it possible to annotate call centre conversations or images from social media, just as easily as text in online posts  and responses to open ended questions from surveys.

Fig. 1 Ingesting survey verbatims on listening247

The difference that makes all the difference (pun intended) when it comes to integrating structured vs unstructured data is that with the former the intelligence is already an added layer before the data fusion takes place, whilst with the latter the text is ingested and integrated before consistent intelligence is added to the dataset as a whole e.g. brands, sentiment/emotions and topics. Once the data is integrated it is already homogeneous (since it is all text) so it is straightforward to annotate it using custom or generic machine learning models and taxonomies - without having to worry about harmonisation.

Fig 2. Annotated online posts with brand topics and sentiment on listening247 Data Explorer

There are some obstacles to integrating and annotating unstructured data other than text such as audio that needs to be transcribed and images that need to be captioned with text; only when that happens can the accurate annotation of all the integrated data sources take place. There are even more obstacles if the data to be fused involves multiple languages.

Fig. 3. Image caption example, image-to-text

Thankfully, technology is available to enable voice-to-text and image-to-text transformation, as well as accurate annotations. Without accurately adding layers of intelligence, big data and especially text is not only useless, but with the wrong labels also harmful.

Conclusion

A data analyst cannot be expected to read millions of online posts, but what they can do is use a smart filtering tool to drill down and explore the annotated documents (e.g. social media posts or call center threads) and discover the “gold nuggets”, the elusive actionable insights.

The future of unique and actionable insights lies in data fusion of unstructured + structured data. Some of this data will belong to the companies e.g. sales data, and some they will need to procure e.g. 3rd party online posts or survey results.

Integrating unstructured data is more effortless and straightforward than you might think. You only need a good unstructured data analytics tool.

April 9, 2021
Blog
Social Listening – Social Analytics – Social Intelligence
Are Social Listening, Analytics, and Intelligence just buzzwords, or stages in a seamless journey?
Michalis. A. Michael

S-L-A-I

Social Listening, Social Analytics, and Social Intelligence - are they the same or are they integral parts of a sequential process, a so-called continuum?

Quite a few pundits have discussed this question in their articles, blogs, and essays. The most controversial of the three is social intelligence; if you Google it you will find its Wikipedia definition on first position explaining that it is “the capacity to know oneself and to know others”.

Of course, the alternative definition, the one that was coined after social media monitoring and analytics became popular only appears on page four of Google search - which you would only know if you are me and you search for social intelligence. In this secondary context, this bigram* means: the knowledge and insights that organisations can extract from online posts (mainly on social media platforms) published by their customers and other stakeholders.

The precondition to get to actionable insights is to avoid “Garbage-in” during the so-called data harvesting process, and to use appropriate machine learning models to maximise the accuracy of brand, topic, and sentiment annotation.

But let us look at the three bigrams one at a time,*combination of two words.

1. Social Listening

Social listening is short for social media listening, and to some a synonym of social media monitoring. Most people use social listening as an all-inclusive term for all online sources from which online posts can be gathered or harvested. However, in addition to popular social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, we also can harvest data from blogs, forums, news, and reviews. There are other sources that are country specific, such as Weibo for China and VK for Russia.

It is of paramount importance to harvest for all synonyms and avoid all homonyms (garbage-in) which can be over 80% of all harvested posts. A homonym is a word that is spelled the same way as the keyword for harvesting but means something entirely different, which makes it irrelevant for the project at hand. The classic example used to explain this problem is: wanting to harvest posts about Apple the company but ending up with lots of posts about the fruit or juice; let alone Apple Martin who is Gwyneth Paltrow’s daughter and if not excluded will invite a lot of noise in the dataset rendering it not only useless but dangerous for the user!

2. Social Analytics

Social analytics is what happens after the posts are harvested from the various sources and irrelevant posts are removed as “noise”. For data analysis to take place, accurate intelligence needs to be added to the dataset using machine learning and/or rules-based NLP methods. The most common annotations added to each post or relevant snippet within the post (this is a longer story that requires its own blog post) are: brand, sentiment, emotions, and topics/subtopics/attributes.

These annotations can be added for text in any language, and the accuracy sought after – measured in precision, recall and F-score – should be over 75% in all cases. It is even possible to reach F-scores that are over 95% with focussed and context related training of suitable machine learning algorithms.

3. Social Intelligence

Social intelligence is the wisdom discovered by exploring the intelligent dataset. You see, adding brand, sentiment, emotion, and topic annotations to a dataset makes it “intelligent” but in order to find wisdom or “actionable insights” a lot more than just accurate annotations is required.

For the time being, an intelligent data cruncher and a powerful filtering or drill down tool is still needed to explore a dataset and find the gold nuggets.

4. Conclusion

We like to think of the listening247 unstructured data analytics platform also used for social listening, as the Google Maps of big data. It enables a user to navigate in a maze of millions of online posts - or other documents for that matter - safely and accurately from A to B; B being the destination or in our case the actionable insight. The path to finding the actionable insight is oftentimes a data story worth telling.

April 20, 2021
Blog
What is your Social Presence Score (SPS)?
The Social Presence Score combines key metrics into one unified index.
Michalis. A. Michael

Most people prefer order to mess, hardly a surprising conclusion.

A score that enables ranking in multi-player environments provides order and the ultimate gamification. Ideally it should be a composite score. This is a score that combines multiple metrics in one all-encompassing index.

Gamification does not mean turning a serious activity into a game; it is using gaming techniques to provide participant motivation and make the activity more fun overall.

I do like to think of business as a game. Some people take it too seriously, to the extent that it has a pathological effect on them – it affects their health in a negative way. Business is not a life-or-death endeavour. Winning is fun, losing is dreadful (worse for bad losers like myself) but it is not the end of the world.

So, let us break down how the SPS is calculated and its benefits for brands and for individuals; starting with the business perspective.

SPS for Brands

Brands and their parent organisations are always looking for the ideal KPIs that will drive their performance. NPS was once hailed as the single metric a company needed to measure and predict its future performance. NPS stands for Net Promoter Score and it is produced via a single question to customers, usually delivered via a survey: On a scale from 0-10 how likely is it that you would recommend Brand X to your friends and colleagues?

All those who provide a score between 0-6 are considered detractors, whereas the 9s and 10s are considered promoters; the 7s and 8s are polite negatives or passives at best.

The calculation of this composite score is as follows NPS=((promoters-detractors)/all respondents) X 100, with scores ranging from -100 to +100.

A similar idea applies to the Social Presence Score (SPS) for brands; however, its calculation is not as straightforward. Several social intelligence metrics have been considered by our data scientists and our conclusion was to use the following:

  • Buzz = total volume of online posts about a brand by source
  • Net Sentiment ScoreTM = ((positives-negatives)/all posts that mention the brand) X 100. This is a DigitalMR coined and trademarked composite metric itself; it is the NPS mirror metric for social media listening / social intelligence and unsolicited customer opinion. Positive, negative and neutral sentiment is annotated by proprietary machine learning models.
  • Purchase Intent = expressed intent to purchase a brand in an online post, annotated by proprietary semantic machine learning models
  • Recommendation = recommending the purchase or use of a brand in an online post, annotated by semantic machine learning models
  • Engagement ratios for likes, comments and shares of the brand's social media posts
  • Reach of the brand's PR initiatives.

Fig.1: SPS score of shampoo brands

The SPS can have a value between 0 and 1 (see Fig.1 above); it is calculated, for a certain period of time, as one aggregated metric for multiple brand posts; it can be offered as a single score from all source types, or for individual ones such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or Tik Tok (see Fig.2 below).

There is a secret sauce that even if I wanted, I would not be able to adequately describe in a mainstream article, and that is the weighting of the above-mentioned metrics in the SPS. Not only that but also the entire process, starting before the online posts are annotated, to eliminate irrelevant posts due to homonyms i.e.clean the data and remove the noise.

The benefit of having a score like this as a brand is, not surprisingly, the ability to:

  1. benchmark brand & campaign performance against competitors
  2. benchmark own longitudinal brand performance
  3. rank paid brand influencers
  4. identify specific metrics of the SPS that require impovement
  5. predict future brand performance e.g. sales

Fig.2: Shampoo brands ranked based on SPS by source

SPS for Individuals

The motivation to track a social presence score is not that dissimilar for individuals. Influencers and other high profile individuals want to know how their personal brand is doing compared to others and where they rank.

The metrics we use to create the composite Social Presence Score for individuals are similar but not all the same as for brands (see Fig.3 below):

  • Buzz by source (same as for brands but for a person instead)
  • Net Sentiment ScoreTM (same as for brands)
  • Engagement ratios (same as for brands)
  • Reach = the number of followers or members or likes on a social media page or account the individual owns

The benefits for a person to know their SPS are:

  1. Measure reach in order to improve
  2. Measure various engagement ratios (likes, comments, shares) in order to improve
  3. Understand their ranking and the areas and degree of influence for possible brand ambassador deals
  4. Identify negative sentiment and counteract
  5. Identify positive sentiment and leverage

Fig. 3: Influencers ranked based on number of posted brand comments

Data Accuracy

It goes without saying that even if the SPS is perfectly synthesised with its composite metrics, the accuracy of the individual metrics included must be measurable and acceptable. It is always possible to reach over 80% accuracy for sentiment, topic and brand relevance annotations.

Conclusion

So, what do you think?

Would you like to know your SPS in relation to others?

I know I would; I miss having one since klout score ceased to exist.

Social presence score (SPS) comes to the rescue; it is the new single KPI for brands and individuals based on all online mentions - not just a sample – that can be used to measure the overall success of their marketing efforts.

July 9, 2021
Blog
The Complete Story of listening247's NSS™ Score and Its Strategic Imperative
Let’s take a closer look at the NSS™ Score, where it comes from, how it works, and why it matters in our increasingly digital world.
Michalis. A. Michael

As businesses seek to understand their standing in the digital conversation, listening247's Net Sentiment Score (NSS™) emerges as a pivotal metric. This proprietary formula quantifies online sentiment towards brands, transforming raw social media data and unsolicited customer opinion into actionable insights.

Let’s deep dive into the NSS™ Score and explore its origins, how it operates, and its significance in today's digital-first world.

1. Origin and Association listening247

The Net Sentiment Score™ was developed by listening247 to fill a crucial gap in social media analytics. In a landscape saturated with diverse opinions, it provides a standardised way to assess and compare brand sentiment. This metric is the result of advanced machine learning models that meticulously annotate sentiments as positive, negative, or neutral, ensuring a nuanced understanding of the digital conversation landscape.

Fig.1: Graphic of listening247's advanced AI annotating sentiments as positive, negative and neutral.

2. How the NSS™ Score Works

Simplicity lies at the heart of the NSS™'s effectiveness. By focusing on the balance between positive and negative mentions and considering the volume of discussions, the NSS™ offers a comprehensive snapshot of a brand's online health. This approach allows for the aggregation of vast amounts of data into a digestible, numerical format, empowering businesses with the clarity needed to navigate the complexities of online reputation management.

This seemingly simple calculation belies the complexity and sophistication of the technology behind it. listening247's algorithms analyse vast amounts of online content, from tweets and blog posts to forum discussions and reviews, employing natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to accurately capture and categorise sentiments.

The process involves more than just keyword recognition; it delves into the nuances of language, picking up on context, irony, and even regional dialects to ensure the sentiments are accurately interpreted. The result is a score that ranges from -100 (entirely negative) to +100 (entirely positive), offering a clear, quantifiable measure of online sentiment.

Fig.2: Graphic of different online content displaying positive. negative and neutral sentiment

3. The Value of NSS™ Score

The implications of the Net Sentiment Score™ for businesses are profound. It serves as a vital indicator for assessing the impact of social media conversations on brand perception. Here's why NSS™ is indispensable:

  1. Strategic Decision-Making: The NSS™ provides a clear metric that aids in strategic decision-making, from marketing campaigns to product launches, ensuring actions are aligned with the public sentiment.
  2. Benchmarking Performance: It allows brands to benchmark their performance against competitors, offering insights into their relative standing within the industry.
  3. Understanding Trends: By tracking changes in the NSS™ over time, companies can identify trends, adapt strategies, and respond proactively to shifts in public opinion.
  4. Customer Insights: The score highlights areas for improvement and opportunities to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty by understanding the nuances behind the sentiments expressed online.
  5. Measuring Impact: Lastly, the NSS™ is crucial for evaluating the effectiveness of social media strategies and marketing initiatives, providing a clear measure of their impact on brand perception.

Fig. 3: Graphic of the value that the NSS™ serves for assessing the impact that social media has on your brand.

The Net Sentiment Score™ by listening247 represents a significant advancement in the analysis of social media sentiment. Its creation marks a strategic move towards a more informed, data-driven approach to understanding digital conversations. As businesses continue to operate in increasingly digital environments, the NSS™ offers a vital metrics for navigating the complex dynamics of online brand perception. Through its precise, insightful analysis, businesses are better equipped to foster positive engagements, adapt to consumer needs, and ultimately, drive success in the digital age.

To explore the depth of insights that the Net Sentiment Score™ can bring to your brand, we invite you to reach out and request access to your brand health dashboard. The brand health tracking dashboard offers a comprehensive view of your brand's digital presence and sentiment, enabling you to make informed decisions that drive your brand forward.

Whether you're looking to enhance your social media strategy, improve customer engagement, or simply gain a better understanding of your brand's position in the digital landscape, our team is here to guide you through the insights our dashboard can provide. Contact us today to unlock the full potential of your brand's digital narrative.

February 28, 2024
In the Press
listening247 CEO spoke to Analytics Insights on how AI-based unstructured data analysis can make marketing strategies more nuanced
listening247 CEO Michalis Michael shows how AI unlocks marketing insights from unstructured data.

listening247 In the Press

listening247 CEO spoke to Analytics Insights on how marketing strategies can benefit from AI-based unstructured data analysis

Michael Michalis, CEO of listening247, delves into how AI-powered unstructured data analysis can transform marketing strategies with greater nuance. In today’s data-driven landscape, the ability to gather, interpret, and act on data is crucial for business success. However, the sheer volume and variety of data—from meticulously organised databases to spontaneous social media posts—can be overwhelming. This data can be broadly categorized into structured and unstructured data, each with its own implications for decision-making and strategy.

Structured Data


The term structured data refers to data that resides in a fixed field within a file or record. Structured data is typically stored in a relational database (RDBMS). It can consist of numbers and text, and sourcing can happen automatically or manually, as long as it's within an RDBMS structure. It depends on the creation of a data model, defining what types of data to include and how to store and process it.

Unstructured Data


Unstructured data (UD) encompasses all data that lacks a predefined format or data model, making it distinct from structured data. Unlike structured data, which is neatly organized in tables and fields, UD includes diverse formats such as text, rich media, social media activity, and surveillance imagery. Its volume significantly surpasses that of structured data, making it a vast, often untapped resource for insights.

While structured data offers valuable numerical insights, it falls short in capturing the depth and nuance found in UD. This type of data, growing at an exponential rate, includes everything from social media posts to multimedia content. As IDG predicts that 93% of digital data will be unstructured by 2022, businesses that learn to harness this data will gain a competitive edge. Despite its potential, UD remains underutilized, often referred to as "dark" information due to its raw and unprocessed nature.

Recent advancements in AI and machine learning have revolutionized how unstructured data can be leveraged for marketing. By applying these technologies, companies can transform vast amounts of UD into actionable insights, such as sentiment analysis from customer reviews and feedback. This shift allows marketers to move beyond traditional demographic segmentation and gain a more sophisticated understanding of their market, revealing hidden opportunities and enhancing strategy through sophisticated "dark analytics."

Conclusion

In conclusion, as Michael Michalis highlights, the true value of data lies not just in its collection but in its interpretation and application. While structured data offers clarity, unstructured data holds the depth and nuance necessary for comprehensive marketing insights. Advances in AI and machine learning are making it possible to unlock this previously elusive "dark" data, providing businesses with richer, more actionable insights. Embracing these technologies can transform how companies understand and engage with their customers, revealing valuable opportunities hidden within the vast expanse of unstructured data.

Original Source: Analytic Insight

July 21, 2021
In the Press
CX Management Business Celebrates Success Following Rebranding
listening247 secures major contracts using AI to improve global customer experience post-pandemic.

listening247 In the Press

CX Management Business Celebrates Success Following Rebranding

London, County, United Kingdom, October 12, 2021: A leading tech firm that specialises in CX management, social intelligence and text analytics celebrates success in winning long-term contracts with top tier organisations in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and LATAM, having recently rebranded to ‘listening247’.

Headquartered in London, listening247 was established in 2010 to help brands carry out digital market research for insights into consumer sentiment through social intelligence and online communities. In 2012 it pivoted to develop its proprietary technology in the same space and focussed for the following seven years on purposeful R&D to solve some of the biggest problems in leveraging unstructured data: the annotation in multiple languages.

Having expanded and invested in its AI capabilities to include CX measurement and management, customer journey optimisation and alternative data available on Bloomberg terminal, the firm now delivers ‘AI driven insights’ to multinationals, agencies and corporate organisations across various industry sectors ranging from FMCG and retail through to finance and telecoms. listening247’s clients are primarily data driven organisations that want to leverage customer interactions they possess from calls, private chat messages, emails surveys and social media.

Its recent success in winning multi-year contracts comes as more organisations focus on enhancing the online customer experience in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as noted by listening247 founder, and CEO, Michalis Michael:

“Over the last 18 months or so, businesses across the globe have had to adjust how they operate and interact with their customers as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although many countries are now pushing towards normality, times have changed and so have consumer expectations. More organisations have realised this and are utilising CX measurement and management to understand the clear gap between what their customers now want and expect Vs the product quality or level of service they are receiving. Advances in artificial intelligence enable us to ‘plug this gap’ by delivering and analysing personalised consumer insights on every single interaction to then optimise the customer journey and increase both brand loyalty resulting to business growth. With technology continuing to advance at an exponential rate, the CX management/measurement and alternative data space is proving to be incredibly interesting, and both the team and I are excited to see what the next six to twelve months will bring.”

Supported by a high calibre advisory board, including Peter Nathanial, ex-Group Chief Risk Officer for the Royal Bank of Scotland, listening247 is forecast to continue its accelerated growth trajectory over the next few years. To maintain competitive advantage, the leading AI driven insights firm will be launching its pre-series A funding round in early 2022.

Original Source: NEWS WIRES

November 8, 2021
In the Press
Distinguishing Insight, Actionable Information and Intelligent Data
Insight is the highest form of understanding, going beyond data and information to drive strategic, proactive business decisions.
Michalis A. Michael

listening247 In the Press

Distinguishing Insight, Actionable Information and Intelligent Data

In a data-driven world, the 'DIKW pyramid'—with its levels of data, information, knowledge, and wisdom—has long been a cornerstone of business intelligence. However, in the realm of social intelligence, this model is evolving, replacing 'wisdom' with 'insight,' a term often misused and misunderstood in the industry.

In a data-saturated world, the ‘DIKW pyramid’—which ranks data, information, knowledge, and wisdom—has become a crucial framework for business leaders seeking to add value at each level. However, in the realm of social intelligence, this model is evolving to place 'insight' at the pinnacle instead of wisdom. The term 'insight' is often misused, sometimes being equated with mere information or knowledge, which can dilute its true meaning and significance.

Fig 1. DIKW pyramid

To clarify, insight should be viewed as the apex of our revised pyramid, transcending both intelligent data and actionable information. While intelligent data and actionable information are essential, insight represents a deeper understanding that combines various data sources with intuition to deliver strategic value. Recognizing this distinction helps businesses leverage their data more effectively, ensuring that they are not just reacting to information but proactively using insights to drive long-term success.

Intelligent data and how it’s used


Insight is often derived from data, but it is crucial to differentiate between raw data, intelligent data, and true insight. While adding intelligence to raw data—through annotation and quantification—enhances its value, this does not automatically translate to insight. Intelligent data, though useful, merely provides a more refined view of the raw information.

In the realm of big data, which encompasses vast datasets measured in gigabytes and exabytes, the process of adding intelligence through machine learning can yield actionable information. This includes annotating data with sentiment, emotions, and topics. However, while this can offer valuable information, it still falls short of the deeper, strategic understanding that constitutes genuine insight.

What does actionable information look like?


As we progress up the knowledge pyramid, it's clear that actionable information and true insight are often confused. While actionable information involves identifying and addressing specific issues—such as a customer pain point uncovered through various data sources like tweets or reviews—this type of information is typically used for immediate problem-solving and short-term improvements.

True insight, however, goes beyond merely reacting to identified issues. It involves a deeper understanding that informs long-term strategy and drives proactive decision-making. For instance, while solving a customer pain point is valuable, insight requires synthesizing data to predict future trends and shape strategic direction, offering a more profound and strategic advantage.

What is insight?


At the pinnacle of the knowledge pyramid, business insight is defined as a 'gold nugget' that emerges from synthesizing information across multiple sources and applying a measure of intuition. Unlike simple data points or actionable information, which can be derived from single sources or immediate problem-solving efforts, insight is strategic and requires a long-term approach to implement effectively. It involves a deeper level of understanding that leads to proactive decision-making and can drive substantial positive outcomes for a business.

This distinction highlights why insight is positioned above intelligent data and actionable information in the pyramid. While intelligent data and actionable information are crucial for addressing specific issues and reacting to opportunities, insight goes further by enabling predictive strategies and long-term success. Recognizing this hierarchy underscores the importance of not only collecting and analyzing data but also transforming it into meaningful insights, which remains a rare and highly valuable skill in today’s business landscape.

Conclusion


Insight, while emerging from data and actionable information, represents a higher echelon of strategic value. It transcends mere data analysis to offer predictive and proactive benefits, making it a rare and valuable asset at the peak of our pyramid. Understanding this distinction helps businesses leverage data effectively and grasp the true power of insightful analysis.

Original Source: Information Age

December 10, 2021
In the Press
Optimised analysis of user data can help in decision making
AI-driven data analysis boosts smarter, faster business decisions, says listening247 CEO.
Slavica Dummer

listening247 In the Press

Optimised analysis of user data can help in decision making

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers significant advantages across various industries, from healthcare and finance to retail and logistics. A key benefit of AI lies in its ability to enhance decision-making by analyzing user data through methods such as text and image analytics and emotion analysis. Michalis Michael, CEO of listening247, delves into how organizations can leverage AI to optimize user data analysis, thereby improving business decision-making and driving better outcomes.

Can data build a competitive advantage for businesses today?


Absolutely. In fact, we can use data – hard numbers like profitability, for example – to demonstrate that data driven businesses are often much more successful than those who do not use data for decision making. Working on the basis of ‘gut feelings’ may have a place in business management, but it’s no replacement for the insights that data provide.

How fast can the insights from user data be incorporated into a company’s product or service?


If the right processes are in place: instantly. Of course, not all insights are created equal, so some of the more complex kinds of insight will require a human expert to identify them.

With that caveat aside, there are now sophisticated automation and sharing technologies which can handle data collection, cleaning, annotation, visualisation, analysis, and insight discovery. With the help of online dashboards and alerts, these processes enable data to be easily shared with an organisation’s management and implemented swiftly.

Do 21st century businesses need a data and analytics strategy?


They certainly do. As I mentioned earlier, data is an increasingly essential tool for success in business, and the use of that data requires a certain amount of strategising. Businesses will need to decide, for example, what data to collect and how often. Data is all around us, so we need to be discerning about what to look for.

Not only do businesses need a strategy for what kind of data to collect (there is a huge variety of unstructured and alternative data to choose from, after all), but they will also need to decide which software tools and platforms are the most efficient and cost effective to collect the data, how they intend to add intelligence to the data, and – lest we forget – what kind of delivery mechanisms to employ.

What do you mean by alternative sources of data?

In the trading and investment sector, ‘alternative’ data means any kind of data that falls outside the traditional fundamentals of a listed company. Examples of this standard kind of data include revenue, profit and price/earnings ratios.

Alternative data, by contrast, is any other kind of information. Social sentiment gleaned from Tweets, app usage, and even satellite images are forms of alternative data – and they contain the potential for insight and foresight in the right hands.

Which companies are using alternative data, and how are they doing so?

While many companies can benefit from harnessing alternative data, those operating in the financial services sector – quantitative funds, discretionary funds, private equity funds, and similar entities – tend to gravitate towards the world of alternative data to discover “new alpha”.

More broadly, alternative data is useful to corporates that want to predict sales or purchase intent. In those kinds of scenarios, companies can use KPIs from social intelligence. These can range from net sentiment scores to purchase intent posted on social media: alternative data sources that fall far beyond the interests of ‘traditional’ fundamentals, but which clearly have a huge bearing on companies interested in predicting the future stock price movements or actions of their prospective customers.

How fast does the relevance of user data depreciate?

The longevity of relevance can vary enormously – it all depends on the sector involved and on the type of data we’re talking about. Suppose, for example, a company is interested in opinions expressed online about a big, long-standing topic like Brexit. In that case, I’d expect to see extremely slow depreciation as the issues rumble on. By contrast, gathering data on an advertising campaign sees very fast depreciation: in that scenario, the data is only as good as the most recent ad.

Sometimes, of course, the situation isn’t this clear-cut. Looking into social sentiment in order to predict stock price fluctuations, for example, can retain relevance for days or weeks depending on the ‘hype’ surrounding the stock. Data relevance certainly can depreciate very quickly indeed – that’s why, as far as tracking customer data is concerned, it’s advisable to implement tracking on a daily or weekly basis.

What innovations in data analysis should we expect in the next decade and how will it improve our daily lives?

The analysis of unstructured data, including text, audio, images, and video, will soon become ubiquitous – engagement with this kind of data is swiftly changing from novelty to necessity. As such, our voices as customers – as users of products and services – will always be heard and responded to.

There are two positive implications for this. Firstly, we will be able to directly impact product development in direct, concrete ways that will improve human lives. Secondly, we’ll be able to monetise our own behavioural data and opinions. These changes in data analysis indicate a rise in the value of the data we put out into the world: it’s a precious resource and will likely be treated as such.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the strategic use of AI and data analytics is reshaping the landscape of business decision-making and customer experience management. The ability to harness comprehensive data insights—from traditional metrics to alternative data sources like social sentiment—empowers businesses to gain a competitive edge and respond swiftly to market demands. As technology evolves, the integration of advanced data analysis will become even more crucial, enabling real-time adjustments and enhancing product development. Companies that embrace these innovations will not only optimize their operations but also enhance customer satisfaction, making data a vital asset for future growth and success.

Original Source: Information Age

September 2, 2024
In the Press
What is the impact big data has on the insurance industry?
listening247 CEO Michalis A. Michael highlights how Big Data and AI are reshaping insurance with improved insights and customer experience.
Slavica Dummer

listening247 In the Press

What is the impact big data has on the insurance industry?

The exponential growth of Big Data is set to transform the insurance industry dramatically. According to Statista, global data consumption, which was 79 zettabytes in 2021, is projected to exceed 180 zettabytes by 2025. This surge in data will predominantly consist of unstructured data from various sources, including customer interactions and IoT devices. As insurance companies strive to enhance customer experience management (CXM) through comprehensive data analytics, they must adapt to manage and leverage this influx of information effectively. The integration of advanced technologies, such as edge computing and AI, will be crucial in handling the massive data volumes and improving forecasting accuracy, ultimately reshaping the industry's landscape. Our CEO, Michalis. A. Michael gives us a better understanding from his interview.

By what percentage is Big Data expected to grow in the next few years – and what will that mean in terms of data gravity for the insurance industry?


Globally, data consumption is expected to surge from 79 zettabytes in 2021 to over 180 zettabytes by 2025, with storage capacity growing at a 19.2% annual rate. Much of this data will be unstructured, stemming from customer interactions and IoT devices. This expansion offers a significant opportunity to enhance customer experience management (CXM) by incorporating comprehensive analytics across various communication channels and languages. Advanced AI can process and interpret this data, providing actionable insights regardless of language barriers.

What are the main elements driving the increase in Big Data in the insurance industry – and why?


IoT data – for example from wearable devices which measure biometrics or smart car devices that measure driving behaviour – will become standard for the insurance industry since they promote forecasting accuracy and competitiveness which is articulated in a given customer’s insurance premium.

Will an increase in Big Data negatively or positively affect the insurance industry?

The impact will be largely positive due to improved forecasting models. The data available currently and in the future is an actuary’s dream.

How can companies effectively aggregate their data to maximum effect? Which technologies are proving most effective in terms of handling the data surge? Is edge computing the answer, for example?

Rapid changes in data processing are anticipated in the coming years to handle the growing volume of data. According to Gartner, while only 10% of enterprise-generated data is processed outside traditional data centers or cloud environments today, this figure is expected to rise to 75% by 2025. This shift highlights that current cloud solutions will struggle with the vast amounts of data generated by IoT devices and other sources at the network edge.

Data centers alone will not be able to meet the demands for faster response times and higher transfer rates, leading to significant challenges for many applications. The solution lies in decentralization through edge computing, which brings data processing closer to the source. This approach will be crucial in managing the massive data consumption and ensuring efficient data handling and analysis.

With the implementation of smart cities, are these increased amounts of data collection something we should be cautious about in terms of privacy for individuals and security, given the rising number of cyber-attacks and breaches?

Data privacy increasingly focuses on obtaining individual consent for personal data usage, and organizations are becoming more aware of information security. This heightened awareness extends to longer sales cycles for CXM programs due to stringent security protocols. Adhering to global standards like ISO27001 and ISO27002 and undergoing independent penetration tests helps identify and address vulnerabilities, thereby mitigating risks of data breaches.

How do you see the future of Big Data developing in the insurtech space?

The most significant shift is driven by AI's growing capability to accurately annotate and analyze unstructured data, which comprises over 95% of all data ever recorded. Unlike structured data, unstructured data includes text, audio, images, and video. This development has profoundly impacted customer experience management (CXM), enabling companies to access and understand every customer interaction, regardless of language, and effectively design and implement tailored customer service workflows and scripts.

Conclusion

As Big Data continues to proliferate, the insurance industry stands to benefit significantly from improved forecasting models and enhanced CXM capabilities. The rise of IoT data and unstructured information presents both challenges and opportunities, driving the need for innovative data processing technologies like edge computing. While the increasing volume of data raises concerns about privacy and security, adherence to global standards and rigorous security protocols can mitigate these risks. The future of Big Data in insurtech is poised for transformative change, with AI-driven analytics enabling insurers to gain deeper insights into customer interactions and refine their services accordingly.

Original Source: Global Banking & Finance Review

September 2, 2024
In the Press
In what ways Artificial Intelligence (AI) helps us produce accurate, actionable and timely intelligence to unstructured data
On Kalkine Media, listening247’s CEO shows how AI turns unstructured data into insights that boost customer experience.
Slavica Dummer

listening247 In the Press

In what ways Artificial Intelligence (AI) helps us produce accurate, actionable and timely intelligence to unstructured data

Michalis Michael, CEO of listening247, recently appeared on Kalkine Media Australia’s Expert Talks for a live interview focused on the role of AI in analyzing unstructured data. During the interview, Michalis delves into the significance of leveraging machine learning and AI to interpret vast and diverse data sets, including texts, audio, video, and images. He emphasizes the transformative power of these technologies in extracting valuable insights from unstructured data.

In his discussion, Michalis highlights how businesses can benefit from this advanced data analysis by enhancing their customer experience (CX). He explains how sentiment and topic annotation can provide companies with a clear understanding of their position in the customer journey and their relationship with their brand. This insight allows businesses to tailor their strategies and improve customer interactions.

For a deeper dive into Michalis Michael's insights on harnessing AI for unstructured data analysis, watch the full interview here: How to use AI to produce accurate, actionable, timely intelligence to unstructured data?

Original Source: Kalkline Media

September 2, 2024
In the Press
Unstructured data related business. Is this the next big thing for investors?
London Loves Tech calls unstructured data a top investment trend, with AI unlocking its vast potential.
Slavica Dummer

listening247 In the Press

Unstructured data related business. Is this the next big thing for investors?

Unstructured data (UD) is rapidly gaining prominence, with its importance set to soar throughout this decade. Recent reports highlight a surge in investment, with 45% of businesses prioritizing UD analytics software and 62.5% of IT leaders increasing their UD storage budgets by the end of 2021. Given that over 90% of global data is unstructured and IBM estimates a daily generation of 2.5 quintillion bytes, it’s clear that UD holds immense, untapped potential. However, the vast scale and complexity of UD necessitate specialized expertise to unlock its valuable insights and drive business growth.

What is UD?


Unstructured data (UD) includes diverse formats such as text, audio, images, and video, and stands in contrast to structured data (SD), which is organized into tables and easily searchable. While SD's organized nature allows for straightforward access and interpretation, UD's complexity arises from its lack of structure and its expression in various natural languages, making it challenging to process with traditional methods.

The sheer volume of UD generated daily—equivalent to ten million Blu-ray disks stacked as high as four Eiffel Towers—demonstrates its vast potential. However, unlocking this potential requires advanced AI technology and specialized expertise, highlighting the crucial role of companies that can effectively manage and analyze UD. This growing field, largely driven by start-ups and early-stage firms, offers significant business value and opportunities for innovation.

Harnessing the power of UD (and its interpreters)


Businesses invest in unstructured data (UD) due to its unparalleled value in providing deep, actionable insights. In marketing intelligence, for example, AI can analyze vast amounts of customer interactions to reveal nuanced details about customer sentiment and experiences with a brand, service, or product—insights that are far more precise and actionable than traditional methods.

Additionally, UD plays a crucial role in trading and investment by analyzing news articles and headlines to identify factors influencing stock prices. However, the effectiveness of UD is contingent upon the accuracy of the analysis tools and human expertise involved. Poorly managed UD analysis can lead to costly errors, emphasizing the need for sophisticated technology and skilled professionals to extract meaningful insights and avoid misinformation.

Conclusion

The growing investment in unstructured data (UD) by IT leaders is no secret; it reflects the undeniable power of data in fields like marketing and alternative analytics. For investors aiming to harness this power, opportunities abound in supporting companies that excel at converting raw data into valuable insights. The true value of UD lies with the technology and AI experts who master its complexities, making this a promising area for investment.

Original Source: London Loves Tech

September 2, 2024
In the Press
listening247 CEO featured in Research World article
Research World featured Michalis Michael, CEO of listening247, in a two-part article exploring the future of social intelligence, highlighting key trends, innovation

listening247 In the Press

listening247 CEO featured in Research World article

Research World recently highlighted the perspectives of Michalis Michael, CEO of listening247, in an in-depth article exploring the evolving landscape of social intelligence. His insights delve into the future of social listening and analytics, shedding light on emerging trends and innovations in the industry. This comprehensive piece is divided into two parts: "Remote Research: The Future of Asking Questions, Part 1" and "Remote Research: The Future of Asking Questions, Part 2," offering a thorough examination of these critical topics.

Research World, a leading market research association, is dedicated to advancing the field of market, opinion, and social research. By focusing on innovation and best practices, it provides valuable updates on the latest tools, technologies, and methodologies in data analytics. This publication helps professionals stay informed about the cutting-edge developments shaping the industry.

Original Source: Research World (part 1) & Research World (part 2)

September 3, 2024
Webinars
Social Listening: Why, How and When does it work?
Watch the webinar replay now and learn how most brands are wanting to take increase opportunistic strategies in how they actively shape their brand's presence.
Michalis A. Michael

Webinar

The Social Listening Revolution: How African Banks Can Leverage Social Intelligence for Success

Watch Webinar On Demand  

Fuel Your Brand's Potential with Insightful Data

Today, most brands are wanting to take increase opportunistic strategies in how they actively shape their brand's presence, especially when it comes to having a strong online brand presence.  To truly understand and resonate with your audience, this session dived deep into helping brands understand their consumers behave online from recognizing their interactions, understand their needs, and delivering experiences that exceed expectations. With the help and organisation by our agency partner in Asia, this webinar was held On Tuesday June 6th at 9am UK time.

Why You Should Watch:

As brands want amplify their brand's presence and influence in the market across various social media platforms, social media listening has become of great importance in boosting your brand visibility and engagement, whilst dominating conversations and attract more customers online. This webinar offers a unique opportunity to find out why social listening is gaining importance so quickly in research, how good quality social listening is carried out and when social listening works for you and your clients.

Our Esteemed Presenters:

Michalis A. Michael, CEO of listening247: Michalis is an expert in digital monitoring and social intelligence with extensive experience in transforming data into actionable business insights. Under his leadership, DMR has developed cutting-edge solutions like the Brand Health Tracking, which helps brands monitor their performance and reputation across various channels.

Phil Hearn, CEO of MRDC Software: Phil expert in the use of MRDCL, the no.1 data tabulation and analysis software and interviewed Michalis, offering a unique opportunity to find out how Social Listening is changing the way many companies are spending their research budgets.

Webinar Highlights:

1. Detect and Manage Brand Crises: Learn how to quickly identify potential issues and strategically address them to avoid unwanted high costs in correcting brand marketing mistakes.


2. Accurately Understand the Market: How using social media listening allows brands to tailor strategies that authentically resonate with their audience, enhancing brand relevance.


3. Build Online Share of Voice: Discussing how social listening and analytics offers you a comprehensive approach to boost your brand's presence and influence online.

Ideal for:

1. Senior business executives where informed decision-making is key.

2. Organisations who wish to establish a strong online brand presence and influence.

3. Any brand managers and marketers who wish to leverage the power of data to make informed decisions and stay ahead of the competition.

Don't let timing hold you back from transforming your brand into greatness! Watch the webinar now.

Watch Webinar Replay Here  

P.S. Have questions about the webinar? Contact us at: info@listening247.com. We're happy to help!

June 6, 2017
Webinars
Insights on Demand with Online Communities
Watch the webinar replay and learn how brands are increasingly seeking innovative ways to engage with their audiences.
Slavica Dummer

Webinar

Watch Webinar On-Demand  

Unleashing the Strength of Online Private Communities

Brands are increasingly seeking innovative ways to engage with their audiences. communities247 stands at the forefront of this movement, offering a dynamic and fully customisable DIY Online Communities platform designed for consumer engagement, brand advocacy, insights, and co-creation. With the help and orrganisation by our agency partner in Asia, MRDC Software, This webinar was held On Wednesday August 23rd at 9am UK time.

Why You Should Watch:

As brands strive for novel methods to connect with their audiences, communities247 emerges as a pioneering force, providing a vibrant and entirely adaptable DIY Online Communities platform crafted for fostering consumer engagement, brand advocacy, insights generation, and collaborative creation. This webinar offers a unique opportunity to find out how to make the most of Private Online Communities to reach consumer insights on demand.


Our Esteemed Presenters:

Michalis A. Michael, CEO of listening247: Michalis is an expert in digital monitoring and social intelligence with extensive experience in transforming data into actionable business insights. Under his leadership, listening247 has developed cutting-edge solutions like the Brand Health Tracking, which helps brands monitor their performance and reputation across various channels.


Webinar Highlights:

1. Cost-Effective and Scalable Solution: The benefits of using online communities vs. traditional research methods.


2. Easy Cross-Departmental Reach: How using online communities can lead to the advantage of various departments within an organisation.


3. Integrated Customer Insights: Discussing how online communities can be used in conjunction with Social Listening, enabling a virtuous circle of customer insights.

Ideal for:

1. Any researchers, brand managers, customer experience officers, and any professional involved in consumer engagement and product development.

2. Organisations that prioritise direct consumer feedback in their strategic planning and seek to build a loyal customer base through continuous interaction.

3. Organisations that wish to leverage on the ability to engage with users worldwide and in any language to break down the barriers to customer insight.

Don't let timing hold you back from transforming your brand into greatness! Watch the webinar now.

Watch Webinar Replay Here  

P.S. Have questions about the webinar? Contact us at: info@listening247.com. We're happy to help!

September 15, 2017

Get seen. Get heard. Get insights.

What can we help you with today?

  • Should be Empty: