Rapide Communication Ltd has launched a new product that enables companies to capture their customers' thoughts and opinions at the point of service delivery. Rant & Rave allows customers to provide instant feedback via SMS on their mobile phones, or via voice, email or on the web. Rant & Rave has already been successfully deployed in a number of businesses, including National Express, the BOC Group, and Hallmark, and recently won the British Chambers of Commerce's Award for Innovation Through Technology, sponsored by Dell.
Rant & Rave is underpinned by a unique Sentiment Engine that uses sophisticated text analysis technology, developed in association with the Universityof Birmingham. All customer comments are auto-scored and categorised, and presented in the form of a Real-Time Dashboard, which clearly shows the organisation how its brand, product and services are being received. Rant & Rave also incorporates an 'Aggregator' facility, which searches the web intelligently for less time-specific customer viewpoints, such as those found on blogs, forums and review sites. These too can be processed by the Sentiment Engine and presented in Dashboard form.
"Hiring a market research firm to conduct customer surveys is a hugely costly business," said Nigel Shanahan, Managing Director at Rapide Communication. "But more than that, people just don't have the time or inclination to fill out lengthy questionnaires. The truth is, if companies really want meaningful insight into what their customers think, they have to capture feedback at the point of experience, quickly and efficiently, when the emotional connection is still there.
"It is impossible to overstate the importance to brands of showing their customers they are willing to listen," continued Shanahan. "But if customers can also see positive change, then that breeds long-lasting loyalty, which is what all businesses are searching for."
Brian Elliott, Customer Service Development Manager at National Express Group, said: "Rant & Rave has enabled us to bring customer relations into the 21st century. It's an extremely useful tool for analysing customer comments and enables us to measure improvement. The service has been easy to implement and cost effective for our organisation."
Mark Jenkinson, Head of Customer Service for UK& Irelandat BOC, said: "On our journey to become a High Performance Organisation, BOC aims to use the most effective tools available in the market today to enable us to reach our goals. Rapide's Rant and Rave is one of those tools. It offers us the ability to capture instant feedback from our customers which in turn allows us to further understand their needs. It has proved invaluable in learning what our customers genuinely value about the service we provide and also enables us to give constructive feedback to our colleagues."
About Rapide
Rapide, based in Coventry, is a specialist provider of tools to facilitate effective two-way communication between companies, employees and customers. Whilst Rant and Rave helps customers communicate their views to suppliers of products and services, Rapide's messaging tools enable companies to send communications such as Voice Messages, SMS Messages, MMS and Video messages or provide Mobile Internet services to groups of customers and staff. Rapide was founded in 2000, and has more than 400 customers, including 25 of the FTSE 100
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