Instant customer feedback…..via text

Most of us know how it feels to receive shoddy service. But rather than confront someone at the time, we often grimly put the experience behind us. We lose faith; the business loses faith.

Nigel Shanahan, with the aid of the University of Birmingham’s Artificial Intelligence Team, has created Rant and Rave to enable customers to feed back their experience to business via a simple text message or phone call, at the point of service. The idea, says Shanahan,“is to get your message across as a customer, as you’re thinking it”.

He set up his £3.1m turnover software company Rapide nine years ago. But it's Rant and Rave that gives the Managing Director a buzz today. It's cost £1m and two years to get the product market-ready. Customer Feedback - "lots of words and comments" - are digested and processed for the client using text analysis technology. "We've worked with Birmingham on what we've trademarked the Sentiment Engine," says Shanahan. "It works out the sentiment behind the comments and categorises them automatically." The client's ratings are then presented on a dashboard. Shanahan plans to deploy the product internationally. He's also starting to tap into the Web for clients to process indirect feedback from blog sites. "Do you know when your customer interacts with your business what they really thought about the interaction?" he asks. You may not like the conclusions, but it's better the devil you know..