The last few weeks have been fairly hectic, with the KANA User Summits taking me from London, Twickenham to Miami, Florida and back again to Belfast– all within a few days…  Despite the jet lag, I always enjoy the User Summits as I get the chance to hang out with our customers which, given some of them are real characters, is a lot of fun. Our customers enjoy it too as they get to mingle with their peers not only within the same industry but also across other industries, sharing experiences and benefiting from insights not typically available to them.  I know because I asked quite a few of them what they thought of their summit experience…

Which brings me onto a topic that Ross Shafer covered during both of his keynote speeches in London and Miami. Also referenced in Mark Angel’s recent blog, Ross says that good surveys should be simple rather than ridiculously hard, complex and time consuming (we’ve all seen them) and which actually damage the customer experience. Be honest, who enjoys filling our multi-page questionnaires that limit your ability to express how to really feel (who expresses their anger or happiness in scores of between 1 and 10)…  Yet if this is so obvious, why do it?

Well, this is historically a technology constraint as the analysis of surveys was typically done by computer programs that required the survey to be provided in a machine-like structured format. But technology has advanced so that in today’s modern and social world, surveys don’t need to be in a machine-like structured format and instead allow your customers to express their feelings in their own words.

KANA’s SEM Experience Analytics is an example of such a technology, which is capable of uncovering the topics, meaning and sentiment of unstructured information from a range of sources including surveys, social media forums and email. If we take surveys for example, SEM Experience Analytics enables you to ensure that the surveys you produce promote a good customer experience. This enables you to really understand what your customers think – both good and bad.

P.S. If you want to see what a KANA Summit Experience feels like, check out pictures from the 2011 Summits on our Facebook page (London, Miami). I’ve removed any of the photos that would embarrass anyone in particular (but for the right amount of money…)

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