The Tendo View

Sure, your company has a presence on Facebook and Twitter and is probably using the social media platforms primarily for pushing public relations and marketing messages. While you’re doing all the talking, who’s listening to what your customers are saying? And not just to what they’re saying, but to how they’re saying it.

Searching based on tags and keywords is no longer enough. They tell only half the story. It’s the feelings behind what your customers are saying online that tell the real story. According to a recent New York Times article, the new search frontier is sentiment analysis.

Scout Labs, which is backed by the venture capital firm started by the CNet founder Halsey Minor, recently introduced a subscription service that allows customers to monitor blogs, news articles, online forums and social networking sites for trends in opinions about products, services or topics in the news.

In early May, the ticket marketplace StubHub used Scout Labs’ monitoring tool to identify a sudden surge of negative blog sentiment after rain delayed a Yankees-Red Sox game.

Stadium officials mistakenly told hundreds of fans that the game had been canceled, and StubHub denied fans’ requests for refunds, on the grounds that the game had actually been played. But after spotting trouble brewing online, the company offered discounts and credits to the affected fans. It is now re-evaluating its bad weather policy.

“This is a canary in a coal mine for us,” said John Whelan, StubHub’s director of customer service.”

Interpreting human sentiment may be a fledgling, inexact science today. However, there’s a rich vein of market intelligence just waiting to be mined from your customers’ opinions. And the wealth of information found in those sentiments can make your product launch or break your bottom line.

So, if you’re not looking at the feelings behind your customers’ words, perhaps you should.