QVC's Peter Gurney (courtesy of terrapinn.com)

Peter Gurney, QVC’s Director, Voice of the Customer (VoC), spoke to a group of customer experience specialists at a seminar in New York City yesterday, and explained how the retailer is using state-of-the-art, proprietary “text analytics” software to listen to — and eavesdrop on — what people are saying about them.

Gurney began by explaining that QVC construes the Voice of the Customer as anything customers say to them or about them — and, as we know, the QVC customer base tends to be a noisy lot!  Text analytics captures feedback from internal sources (such as email, call center notes and surveys) plus external sources (including blogs and social media), then classifies or processes it to deliver aggregated, actionable insights about customers’ feelings, wants or needs.

The gathering-up or “scraping” of textual data can be narrow (say, top customers or active participants in QVC’s 48 web-based community forums) or wide (everyone on the web).  And processing the data is complicated — involving the weighting or scoring of variables and the creation of an industry- or company-specific lexicon.  In QVC’s case, for example, its text analytics software must know that “Today’s Special Value” is a neutral, technical term, not an expression of delight from customers (however much QVC merchants might wish it to be both at all times).  An effective text analytics VoC effort enables companies to know what people are saying about them — not just to them — with a roughly 80% degree of accuracy.  If a little Orwellian, that’s powerful stuff from a marketing standpoint. Continue reading »