TL;DR Creating well-defined topics is an essential step so that you can get the information you need from comments to inform better decisions.

Contained within each comment provided by customers are essential topics impacting your business.  Do you know what they are?

Direct to consumer or two-sided market companies find it hard to organize the high volumes of customer comments. The TOPICS that your customers bring up are the ones that are most important to them and a valuable source of insights for you. Understanding what your customers’ are talking about at scale gives you a business advantage that only the best have put into operations.

Defining the topics that are important to your business is a process but not a difficult one. To get started, it helps to list the steps in the customer journey. Doing this will give you a big list of Topics. Now we need to define those topics with the words and phrases used when talking about the subject.

Below is an example of a topic and how it is defined.

Topic: Exchanges and Returns

Topic Definition: exchange exchanged exchanges exchanging refund refundable refunded refunding refunds returnable “non-refundable” “return policy” “return policies” “return it” “return them” “returns it” “returns them” “returning it” “returning them” “returned it” “returned them” 

A collection of topics with their definitions, we call a dictionary. Managing and updating dictionaries is important in on-going analysis. PROTIP: Dictionaries are essential in the study but knowing where to route findings is critical to turning insights to actions. A best practice is also defining what department and WHO in that department will be the liaison. Leading companies have established insight channels to provide actionable insights to the relevant department.

Contained within each comment provided by customers are essential topics impacting your business. Let’s find out what they are?