A Reston-based company is in the business of providing customer service to those in the customer service business.
Clarabridge creates software that provides text analytics to companies varying from retailers such as Lowe’s to hospitality firms such as Gaylord. The software takes all the data compiled from customer service surveys, Web sites and other sources, and digests it into reports that clients can understand and learn from, CEO Sid Banerjee said.
Most of the data that Clarabridge analyzes come from open-ended customer surveys (meaning the participants answer with words, not just a choice of “A” or “B”), as well as blogs, Internet chats and e-mails to companies.
“If I’m a company, I’m going to get hundreds of thousands of responses every month,” Banerjee said. “No one person at Marriott, for example, has time to read every single customer response.”
The service is one that’s in demand; though Banerjee said the private company does not disclose revenue numbers, he said Clarabridge’s revenues grew by about 500 percent over 2006.
One of the more popular uses for the software has been tech companies trying to get feedback on the release of a new software program, Banerjee said. The company also is seeing an increasing amount of business from telecommunication firms, he said.
According to a December analysis of text-mining services by Nucleus Research, 51 percent of companies using services similar to Clarabridge’s saw dissatisfied customers become satisfied ones in two months, after firms incorporated customer feedback of problems.
“When properly implemented as part of an overall customer satisfaction strategy, Nucleus found that text mining has the ability to cut customer churn in half,” the report said.
