Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a useful parameter for judging overall public perception of your business, but be careful relying too much on this figure for anything beyond that! Sure, NPS can put you at ease that there aren’t currently any PR issues that could threaten the solvency of your company, but there’s lots more it doesn’t tell you.

Why is public perception of your company what it is? If your NPS is positive, you must be doing something right, but what could be done better? No, you’ll never be able to make everyone happy all at once, but more in-depth sentiment analysis can definitely get you a lot closer.

How does a sentiment analysis algorithm do this? In this day in age, a properly advanced sentiment analysis engine goes well beyond giving you a positive or negative result for the whole of your brand, although it can do that as well. With sentiment analysis, you can search for more specific parameters and follow their progress overtime. Maybe your customers are generally satisfied with your product, but what about your company’s customer service, return policy or the cleanliness of a specific brand location?

Let’s take a quick look at 5 practical use cases to see good sentiment analysis in action:

1. Find the unhappy ones

Sentiment analysis doesn’t just rate overall public opinion of your brand, it helps you find customers that feel negatively about your company for whatever reason so that you can address their specific concerns. Keeping up this practice for a prolonged period of time will help you form a more intimate connection with your customers and boost positive public perception of your brand.

2. See improvement

You know that your business is falling short of its obligations in one area or another — let’s use customer service as an example. Too many customers are unsatisfied with their experience and you’ve started taking steps to address the issue. But how do you know it’s working? Sentiment analysis algorithms can track changes in sentiment overtime and help keep you informed of whether your efforts are working or not. Instead of being guided by educated guesses, you can now make informed decisions.

3. Target particular customer segments

Beyond finding out how the public views specific issues that your brand needs to excel at, sentiment analysis also allows you to target particular customer segments and consider how your policies and products are perceived by one group vs. another. Is your new video relatable to women? Does the design of your store location make lower-income individuals feel unwelcome? These important questions may arise out of your study of sentiment analysis results.

4. See ongoing sentiment for changes

As businesses adapt and grow, you need to be able to see how various audiences are taking the changes you make. New products or small tweaks in UI can often be a huge turnoff for certain customers. It seems like Facebook faces this challenge with every new update. But sentiment analysis will give you a good idea of how long people will feel disoriented with changes and whether or not they’ll like them in the long run.

5. Identify your key promoters and detractors

Customers may be commenting on many aspects of your business, but which areas are affecting your NPS score? A little bit of data science will help you answer this question. By correlating aspects with promoters and detractors it is possible to show which influence the raw NPS score more.

In short, sentiment analysis is a great tool for any business to have. Perhaps the biggest roadblock to using it has been its exorbitant cost in financial and computing resources. But Senno uses blockchain technology to back their sentiment analysis engine and make it accessible to small business entities and even individuals who want to inform their every-day decisions by consulting public opinion. If you’ve been waiting, your opportunity is here to include sentiment analysis in your operations and reap all the benefits.