Customer Sentiment: A new imperative?

The growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Internet of Things (IOT) world is steadily moving into the sales, marketing and customer service applications. Sentiment and emotion analytics market is set to explode, from $123 million currently to $3.8 billion by 2025 according to a report from the research firm Tractica. (Customer Relationship Management, May 2018).

​The report states that the top three use cases for sentiment and emotion analysis will be customer experience, product and market research, and customer service. An example offered of affecting the customer experience would changing the in-store LDC displays in response to the emotions detected on the faces of shoppers walking the aisles. 

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I would expect in the B2B space that we would see these applications expand first in the area of assisted customer service. Business clients are often the segment in a hurry and most interested in self-service options; knowledge articles, portal access and chat. I know I would appreciate a monitoring of my emotional frustration that would quickly route me to a higher level of interaction for solving the problem.
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With the significant growth in computing power, to review more information points, customer sentiment analysis may be able to overcome the challenges of learning emotions hidden within speech, txt, gestures, and body postures across geographies and cultures.