Complaining customers are invaluable to a company or organization. They expose what can be improved. And if complaints are resolved quickly and satisfactorily, you make the complainants happy and they can even become ambassadors for your company. Yet many companies still do too little with this potential resource. Not out of ill will, but because of a lack of time and capacity. Digital specialist Snakeware was therefore the first in the Netherlands to develop a review scanner that quickly reads and classifies customer responses. The first customers are happy with it. Giel Mollema, product manager camping Staatsbosbeheer says: “We now immediately receive a notification of every complaint with context that we can anticipate immediately.”
The real value of customer reviews is not in the numerical rating or in the ticked emojis, but in written text. This allows a customer who takes the trouble to share his or her opinion to make clear what is going on. But then there must be time and staff available within the company to process all responses. The average reading speed of humans is around 240 words per minute. During peak times, companies run the risk that complaints remain unnoticed for too long or are not noticed at all, which can lead to brand damage.
Positive impact on customer contact
Snakeware developed a review scanner that can read, rate and pass on large amounts of customer comments in a split second to customer service. Drawing up a response remains a human task: showing emotion, understanding the situation and offering a solution. But the preparatory work has already been done by the technology: via artificial intelligence (AI), the review scanner ‘learns’, based on data entered in advance, to recognize certain negative topics. In this way, brand and image damage can be prevented.
Staatsbosbeheer is one of the first organizations to work with Snakeware’s review scanner. Giel Mollema, product manager camping at Staatsbosbeheer: “One of our activities is renting out holiday homes and offering camping pitches. Previously, the employees of our customer contact center always evaluated the responses received via the Content Management System to see where we could improve our service. At that time it was often still unclear which holiday home or which camping site was involved. That took an enormous amount of time. Now we immediately receive a notification of every complaint, which we can immediately anticipate and solve any problem, so to speak, before the customer has left the campsite or holiday home. That has an enormously positive impact on the experiences with Buitenleven Vakanties and Staatsbosbeheer Kampeerterreinen.”
