What Is Customer Sentiment?

Customer sentiment offers companies a way to understand the opinions of their customers. It provides crucial feedback on how they feel and why they feel that way. In asking, “What is customer sentiment?” you’ll learn all about these valuable metrics.

Customer sentiment enables you to improve customer experiences, turn feedback into action, and reduce churn.

Customer Sentiment Definition

Customer sentiment describes a KPI (key performance indicator) that gauges how customers feel about your brand. It reflects their overall emotions as positive, negative, or neutral.

How customer sentiment reflects emotions, opinions, and attitudes

Customer sentiment has three dimensions:

• Emotions: What feelings does the person have about the product or service? It may include disappointment, frustration, joy, or delight.
• Opinions: In this area, customers are telling you what they think based on an evaluation. It includes praise and criticism.
• Attitudes: This element reveals behavioral intent. The attitude they form may lead to loyalty or churn.

Customer sentiment vs. customer satisfaction

These concepts are similar but different. Emotions based on experiences drive sentiment, and they cover the entire relationship.

Satisfaction is more about whether a product or service met the expectations of the user at a specific time.

Customer sentiment vs. customer feedback

Customer sentiment pertains to the underlying emotions from customer feedback. The responses from customers via surveys offer details on their experiences.

So, the feedback is the “what,” and sentiment is the “how.”

Why Customer Sentiment Matters

Most customer service metrics are quantitative. Customer sentiment is qualitative. With this knowledge, you can have deeper insights into why customers feel as they do and if they are satisfied or dissatisfied with your brand.

Detect problems before they become churn

Customer sentiment analysis can be a leading indicator of churn. If a customer provides feedback about how they feel and it’s not positive, you are at risk of losing them.

However, once you spot this trend, you can take proactive measures to keep the relationship. This could be an email or a phone call to check in with them.

Understand what customers really feel about your brand

What people feel about your business impacts their behavior. Analyzing sentiment gets to the root problems of what needs work about customer experience. Most consumers believe there’s a gap, as 80% agree that improvements are necessary.

You can transform sentiment into action once you know your customers’ true feelings.

Improve support, product, marketing, and operations

The details from surveys on sentiment often tie to support, the product, marketing, and operations. Within these areas, you will have tangible feedback on the gaps, inefficiencies, and frustrations customers feel.

You can then make plans for improvement that are likely to benefit all customers.

Identify advocates and at-risk customers

Sentiment scoring allows you to find your biggest advocates and those at risk of leaving. Reach out to advocates to learn more about what they love and if they are willing to give you a testimonial, which can be very useful in converting new customers.

For those who are leaning toward churning, you can move that segment to a campaign to address concerns.

Where Customer Sentiment Comes From

So, where does all the data for customer sentiment metrics come from? There are several channels.

Reviews and ratings

The reviews and ratings provide initial data for customer sentiment. These are qualitative, so you need more context.

Surveys and NPS responses

Customer surveys deliver the best sentiment information, as these are more long-form. You get more than a yes or no or a rating. Digging into the meat of the survey reveals lots about your customers.

NPS (Net Promoter Score) tells you if a customer is likely to recommend you to a friend or colleague. It’s a scale of 0 to 10, and how they score you makes them either promoters, passives, or detractors.

An NPS can also include a follow-up question to ask why they awarded you this number. That information can be useful in your overall analysis.

RELATED ARTICLE — CSAT vs. NPS: Differences, Use Cases, Survey Best Practices, & How to Improve Both

Support tickets and chat transcripts

When customers contact you for support or service, you’re logging these interactions. Within these conversations are nuggets of wisdom that express sentiment.

It’s crucial to have a way to collect this information and analyze it effectively.

Phone calls and call summaries

As with tickets and chats, phone calls also uncover sentiment. The words of the customer define how they feel and why. It adds more context to your growing data model.

Social media and community comments

There is sentiment within comments as well. Some social media management tools actually monitor this and analyze it.

Not all of these will be legitimate feedback, as they aren’t providing it through a channel you own. However, there is likely to be information that supports the trends you’re seeing or offers more insight.

Email and messaging conversations

Another channel is email and messaging. This can be a treasure trove of sentiment, as customers detail their experiences and feelings toward your company.

How to Measure Customer Sentiment

Measuring customer sentiment isn’t as easy as qualitative metrics, but you can do it consistently with these tips.

Manual review of customer feedback

Reviewing feedback manually is time- and labor-intensive. Depending on the volume you receive, this may not be possible.

Using purpose-built tools helps operationalize this.

Sentiment analysis tools

Sentiment analysis platforms streamline feedback review. Typically, features include:

• Feedback surveys
• Brand reputation and review management
• AI analytics

They are customizable for your industry or business type. Having a turnkey solution reduces manual work and delivers insights faster.

Text analytics and natural language processing

Most sentiment analysis platforms leverage NLP (natural language processing) as well. It applies machine learning to text, automating reviews.

From the words used by your customers, NLP can aggregate this, pulling data from multiple sources, to give you practical prompts for action.

Categorizing sentiment as positive, neutral, or negative

How do you classify sentiment as positive, neutral, or negative? NLP can assign scores based on specific keywords customers may use.

Contextual clues go beyond word choice nuances (e.g., “not good” is negative, not positive).

Tracking sentiment by topic, location, channel, and journey stage

To dig further into responses and categorize them, you can monitor sentiment based on these pillars. This is especially helpful when you have a large and varied customer base.

• Topic is aspect-based sentiment analysis. It breaks down feedback into themes.
• Location relates to regional trends or localized issues to solve.
• Channel segments from where the feedback is. This is critical because people can respond differently on social media versus a support call.
• Journey stage refers to the customer’s lifecycle. There will be variations in sentiment from onboarding to adoption to retention.

RELATED ARTICLE — How to Measure Customer Experience: Metrics, Methods, & Tools

Customer Sentiment Metrics to Watch

Use these metrics to develop scoring and actions related to sentiment.

Sentiment score

Sentiment scoring can be qualitative or quantitative. For a qualitative perspective, you may assign sentiment as positive, negative, or neutral.

For quantitative, you can give a numerical rating on a scale. Technology to manage, refine, and analyze makes this much easier to track.

Review rating trends

The more reviews you have, the more they can inform sentiment analysis. This is raw data that analysis tools can review. From this comes identifying trends, good or bad. You can then highlight the positives and address the negatives.

Share of positive, neutral, and negative comments

In looking at your body of comments, you can group them into these categories. You’ll then be able to see which category is leading. If negatives outnumber positives, you have visibility into why you’re losing customers.

Complaint volume by theme

When assessing complaints, it’s helpful to group them by theme. Whichever area has the most should be your priority. It tells you what could have the most impact on customer experience.

Response time and resolution quality

When customers need support, how fast and effective is the resolution? If the response is quick and definitive, you’ve been able to address it successfully. What worked here can be shared throughout the customer experience team.

However, if resolution is slow or uncertain, it’s another indicator of an area to evaluate and improve.

Churn, retention, and repeat purchase correlation

Other dynamics within customer sentiment are churn, retention, and repeat purchases.

Churn rate measures the percentage of customers who stop using your service or product. High churn scores typically tie to negative sentiment. There are often leading trends that advise you of possible churn. After all, almost one in three customers stopped buying from a brand because of poor experiences.

Retention rate is the percentage of customers you keep over a specific time period. When high, sentiment is usually positive.

Positive sentiments also correlate with repeat purchases. When customers feel great about your business, they are more likely to purchase again.

How to Improve Customer Sentiment

Here are some ways to boost customer sentiment.

Respond quickly to negative feedback

Response time to negative feedback matters. Acknowledge it and respond with solutions or ask more questions to define what happened better.

Using a platform to do this makes it easier to do at scale. You can then build a customer experience management strategy.

Close the loop with customers

Don’t just collect customer feedback. Do something with it. Let customers know you are taking their responses seriously by implementing changes.

Train teams on recurring sentiment themes

You can create specialized training content to review the common themes of sentiment. For each topic, determine the best way to respond to it.

Fix root causes instead of only replying to complaints

Responding to complaints is only the first step. You need to identify the root cause and discuss with stakeholders how to solve the underlying problem.

Use positive sentiment to identify advocates

Advocates can be brand ambassadors by providing testimonials or case studies. This content will be much more impactful than what you say.

Customer Sentiment Examples

Here are some examples of customer sentiment.

Positive customer sentiment example

Positive responses could include:

• “Thank you for walking me through this step.”
• “I love the service I receive because it’ s always on time and professional.”
• “I had an amazing experience with customer support.”

Neutral customer sentiment example

Neutral sentiment is somewhere in between or a mix of good and bad. Here are examples:

• “The agent was very professional, but I had to wait a long time.”
• “The product works fine.”

Negative customer sentiment example

These are complaint examples:

• “I’m really frustrated after being transferred to multiple agents.”
• “This product doesn’t work as advertised.”

How to act on each type

Each sentiment type has best practices for responding.

• Positive: Express your gratitude, acknowledge their loyalty, and encourage them to share their experiences.
• Neutral: Provide clear and transparent information about the topic. You can also ask more questions to ensure you have all the facts.
• Negative: Acknowledge the feelings behind the complaint. Apologize for the negative experience and advise on the resolution you can offer.

FAQs About Customer Sentiment

What is customer sentiment?

Customer sentiment measures how customers feel about a brand, revealing their emotions, opinions, and attitudes. It’s a KPI that impacts buying behavior, loyalty, and churn.

How do you measure customer sentiment?

Measuring customer sentiment occurs by sending surveys to customers about their experiences. You can use customer sentiment analytics tools to manage the process and generate insights.

What is a customer sentiment score?

A customer sentiment score is a number that quantifies the emotions behind the feedback from customers. Typically, organizations use platforms that analyze the sentiment behind the words and provide a score between -100 and 100.

Why is customer sentiment analysis important?

Customer sentiment is important because it helps you turn feedback that’s raw (surveys, social media, support tickets) into actionable steps to improve experiences. When leveraged, you can boost loyalty and decrease churn.

How can businesses improve customer sentiment?

Businesses can improve customer sentiment by analyzing the qualitative data received via feedback and finding gaps. With this information, you can improve processes, be more responsive with support, and address recurring pain points.

Customer Sentiment Turns Feedback Into Actionable Experience Insight

Customer sentiment is a valuable metric. Measuring it provides a path toward better relationships with customers. You’ll know what they like and their chief complaints. While you can’t please everyone, sentiment provides clear signals on what’s working and what needs a reboot.

Begin measuring and improving customer sentiment today to grow and sustain your business. By investing in this area, you can boost loyalty while reducing churn based directly on customer feelings.