10 Best Sentiment Analysis Tools Shortlist
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 20 tools reviewed.
Our one-on-one guidance will help you find the perfect fit.
With so many different sentiment analysis tools available, finding the best fit for your needs is tough. You know you want software to help you monitor how people are feeling about your brand so you can ultimately improve your customer satisfaction, but you need to figure out which tool is the best fit. In this post, I'll help you make this choice easier by sharing my insights on the best sentiment analysis tools available to uncover the true emotions behind customer feedback, product reviews, or social media posts.
Why Trust Our Reviews
We’ve been testing and reviewing sentiment analysis tools since 2021. As CX professionals ourselves, we know how critical and difficult it is to make the right decision when selecting software.
We invest in deep research to help our audience make better software purchasing decisions. We’ve tested more than 2,000 tools for different customer experience use cases and written over 1,000 comprehensive software reviews. Learn how we stay transparent & our software review methodology.
The Best Sentiment Analysis Tools Summary Table
| Tools | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| Brand24 | From $79/month (annually) | Website |
| Podium | From $289/month | Website |
| Diffbot | From $299/month | Website |
| Qualaroo | From $99/month | Website |
| Sociality.io | From $99/month | Website |
| Aylien | Pricing upon request | Website |
| AskNicely | Pricing Upon Request | Website |
| Listen360 | Pricing upon request | Website |
| Lexalytics | Pricing upon request | Website |
| UDESK | From $58 /agent/month | Website |
Compare Software Specs Side by Side
Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.
Compare SoftwareHow to Choose Sentiment Analysis Tools
Choosing the right sentiment analysis tools can improve customer service through feedback analysis, enhance brand reputation with proactive responses to negative feedback, and provide valuable insights for personalized customer communication.
As you're shortlisting, trialing, and selecting sentiment analysis tools consider the following:
- What problem are you trying to solve - Start by identifying the sentiment analysis feature gap you're trying to fill to clarify the features and functionality the sentiment analysis tool needs to provide.
- Who will need to use it To evaluate cost and requirements, consider who'll be using the software and how many licenses you'll need. You'll need to evaluate if it'll just be the customer experience team or the whole organization that will require access. When that's clear, it's worth considering if you're prioritizing ease of use for all, or speed for your sentiment analysis tools power users.
- What other tools it needs to work with Clarify what tools you're replacing, what tools are staying, and the tools you'll need to integrate with, such as accounting, CRM or HR software. You'll need to decide if the tools will need to integrate together, or alternatively, if you can replace multiple tools with one consolidated sentiment analysis tool.
- What outcomes are important - Consider the result that the software needs to deliver to be considered a success. Consider what capability you want to gain, or what you want to improve, and how you will be measuring success. For example, an outcome could be the ability to get greater visibility into performance. You could compare sentiment analysis software features until you’re blue in the face but if you aren’t thinking about the outcomes you want to drive, you could be wasting a lot of valuable time.
- How it would work within your organization - Consider the software selection alongside your workflows and delivery methodology. Evaluate what's working well, and the areas that are causing issues that need to be addressed. Remember every business is different — don’t assume that because a tool is popular that it'll work in your organization.
Best Sentiment Analysis Tools Reviews
Read on to find a quick summary of each of the sentiment analysis tools, including their strengths, weaknesses, and even software pricing.
Brand24 is a sentiment analysis tool that provides businesses with the ability to monitor and evaluate the emotional tone behind brand mentions across the web and social media in real time. This real-time analysis enables companies to respond promptly to feedback, manage their online reputation more effectively, and make informed decisions to improve customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
Why I picked Brand24: Brand24 excels as a sentiment analysis tool by employing advanced algorithms to automatically categorize online mentions of a brand, product, or service as positive, negative, or neutral. This capability allows businesses to quickly gauge public sentiment, understand customer perceptions, and identify trends in attitudes towards their brand. By monitoring a wide range of digital platforms, including social media, blogs, forums, and news sites, Brand24 provides a comprehensive overview of sentiment across the online landscape.
Brand24 Standout Features & Integrations
Features include social listening, social media monitoring, a mentions feed, discussion volumes chart, marketing analytics, influencer scoring, sentiment analysis, customizable notifications & alerts, data exporting, and data filtering.
Integrations include Slack and SEMrush.
Podium is a multi-product platform that wants to help businesses win by communicating better with their customers.
Why I picked Podium: With Podium, you’ll be able to conveniently manage and respond to every message across multiple channels, all from one platform. Set up conversations to be automated, like review invites, feedback requests, and reminders, so that you don’t miss out on generating buzz.
The best part of the Podium experience is the way they handle reviews. This tool makes it easy to gauge sentiment across different review platforms, hone in on what users are liking or disliking, as well as automating review requests for recent interactions.
Podium Standout Features & Integrations
Features include text marketing campaigns, a web chat widget, custom message templates, one-click automations, round-robin and topic-based routing, payment processing, and one-on-one onboarding.
Integrations are available with 180+ apps, including DealerSocket, CCC, Lightspeed, Advent Resources, Airtable, Calendly, Clio, HawkSoft, and Hubspot.
Overall, Podium is a good way of interacting with your customers if you are interested in handling most of your interactions through text. Great for small businesses that don't have a CX team.
Diffbot is a robot that sees the web like a human because of its natural language processing and data structuring functionality.
Why I picked Diffbot: The robot is designed to help users get any or all sentiment analysis data from the web without the hassle and expense of web scraping or doing manual research. This AI web extraction tool will extract data from millions of URLs in a single job and translate them into actionable insights. One thing that stands out about Diffbot is how flexible and customizable it is.
Users with some technological know-how will be able to get a great level of detail out of the information gleaned.
Diffbot Standout Features & Integrations
Features include automatic website content extraction, content categorization, natural language processing, and knowledge graphs.
Integrations include Salesforce, Tableau, Excel, and Google Sheets.
Overall, Diffbot is a tool that can save you time searching the web for information. Having internal developers will certainly help you get the most out of this program, particularly as the data output can be convoluted and may need some in-depth work to get the most out of the information.
Qualaroo is a customer and user feedback software that enables companies to gain insights from their prospects and customers.
Why I picked Qualaroo: Users can copy the setup code directly from the Qualaroo dashboard and paste it into Google Tag Manager, then easily plug in the questions they want to be answered.
Qualaroo is a great niche tool if you need to ask questions directly on your website. The question/text boxes are easy to install and set up. You can survey visitors on your website or app with “Qualaroo Nudges” to capture user insights as they navigate your website or service
Qualaroo Standout Features & Integrations
Features include survey templates, AI for sentiment analysis, keyword identification, emotion information, real-time results from NPS, and notifications via Slack.
Integrations include Optimizely, Google Analytics, Slack, Salesforce, Hubspot, Live chats, Intercom, MailChimp, Tableau, and hundreds more through a Zapier account.
Qualaroo is a good way to capture customer feedback to improve customer experience & grow conversions.
Best for teams looking for a comprehensive solution to manage their social media channels
Sociality.io is a social media monitoring and management tool for publishing content, engaging with audiences, and then listening and reporting on resulting customer buzz.
Why I picked Sociality.io: The tool measures sentiment analysis across all your social media platforms. It listens for mentions on comments and posts. Then, it gathers all that information and classifies it into negative, neutral, and positive pools. Finally, it displays percentages and other numerical information to help you make decisions.
Monitor the web and social media data for any keywords you select, which can be modified at any time, to track your latest brand news.
Sociality.io Standout Features & Integrations
Features include content scheduling, content automation, a drag-and-drop interface, team logs, approval workflows, multilevel access permissions, and a mobile app.
Integrations are available through the tool's flexible API with available modules for social media conversations, analytics, competitor analysis, publishing, and listening.
Sociality.io is a complete tool for social media management workflows, whether that is listening, publishing, or engaging with your customers.
Aylien is an AI-powered news intelligence platform that helps you monitor media mentions, score risks associated with companies or individuals, and look for an edge in investment strategy.
Why I picked Aylien: You can easily aggregate, analyze, and take action on news content at scale. As you can probably gauge from the above screenshot, the data gathered by Aylien can be exported and organized in highly readable formats that don’t take a software or marketing expert to understand.
Aylien Standout Features & Integrations
Features include web news extraction, categorization, sentiment analysis, and translations. You can also access data visualizations, a mention tracker, and grouping by contextual similarity.
Integrations for this tool basically mean connecting with news sources. You can use their REST API with JSON output to build your own integrations.
Overall, Aylien is a good platform to monitor external sources and perform sentiment analysis on the extracted information.
AskNicely is a frontline success platform that supports your staff to provide outstanding customer experiences.
Why I picked AskNicely: It helps users gain rich insights by asking at the right moments along their customer journey. You can connect with your customers via email, SMS/text, or web surveys and/or dig deeper into sentiment analysis with customized, conversational follow-up questions.
AskNicely Standout Features & Integrations
Features include real-time NPS, instant customer feedback and badges, automated workflows, a coaching bot, employee scorecards, and a daily employee sentiment tracker.
Integrations include Salesforce, Hubspot, Microsoft Dynamics, Intercom, Zendesk, JobAdder, Shopify, MailChimp, Slack, ClientSuccess, Klipfolio, Infocare, Geckoboard, Cliniko, Freshdesk, Panoply, PropertySuite, Palace, Help Scout, Mixpanel, Groove, NetSuite, and more. Additionally, AskNicely can integrate with hundreds of more apps through Zapier their API integration.
Overall, AskNicely is a great platform to keep tabs on how your team is feeling and how customers are reacting to the service they receive.
Listen360 is a customer engagement software that helps you listen to customers across different online channels.
Why I picked Listen360: It tracks positive and negative customer experiences and responses online across social media and the web and sends direct communication to business managers so that corrective actions can be taken.
Some highlights include the way they handle surveys and net promoter score (NPS); the tool does a very good job of honing in on detractors and “at-risk” clients so that you can make positive improvements quickly and easily.
Listen360 Standout Features & Integrations
Features include text analytics of customer responses, real-time dashboards, NPS analysis, text analytics, a task pad, real-time detractor alerts, and corrective action monitoring.
Integrations are not on their roadmap at the moment.
Overall, Listen360 can help you maximize the number of responses you get from your customers, thanks to its 2-question approach.
Lexalytics is a text analytics and natural language processing software that helps transform complex text into data and insights.
Why I picked Lexalytics: The Lexalytics Intelligence sentiment analyzer helps to transform complex text documents into data, insights, and value. Use social media listening to improve customer experience and NPS, measure opinions and conversations, and identify crises before they go viral.
Two things that stand out as strong features for Lexalytics are their ability to plug into Excel in order to store, sort, and manage data, as well as their comprehensive information visuals, like word clouds and graphs.
Lexalytics Standout Features & Integrations
Features include sentiment analysis, entity extraction, categorization, intention detection, configuration tools for fine tuning, and custom-trained machine learning that adapts to your needs.
Integrations include Angoss, Mashape, Gnip, Import.io, VOZIQ, Diffbot, Leanstack, Bigdatavendors, Webhose.io, GoodData, and hundreds of more options through Zapier.
Lexalytics is a great tool if you need advanced text analytics powered by a trainable AI to extract information on the sentiment around your brand that can lead to shaping better customer experiences.
UDESK is a customer service platform designed to support businesses in managing interactions with their customers across multiple channels. The tool's unique selling proposition is its omnichannel capabilities, which allow for a unified and consistent customer service experience, positioning it as a top choice for companies prioritizing integrated customer support solutions.
Why I picked UDESK: I chose UDESK for its sentiment analysis capabilities because it offers an omnichannel contact center solution that integrates various communication platforms, including chat, email, social media platforms, and phone communications. What makes UDESK different is its suite of AI-driven tools, including chatbots and voice bots, which provide intelligent responses to customer inquiries and generate actionable insights.
Additionally, the live chat and video chat capabilities allow for real-time and face-to-face interactions, respectively, aiming to provide quick issue resolution and a personal touch. Finally, UDESK's AI-driven and voice chatbots automate customer interactions, while the ticketing system helps organize and track customer inquiries.
UDESK Standout Features & Integrations
Standout features include its real-time dashboards and reports that give agents and supervisors a unified view of CX health. What I particularly like about their reporting is that you have the option to choose from pre-defined reports to tailor new ones based on your needs. It also has the option to schedule leadership reports so you can have access to insights on time to hold more data-driven conversations.
Integrations include Facebook, X, Whatsapp, TikTok, Instagram, Amazon, Shopify, Walmart, and cloud call services.
Other Sentiment Analysis Software
Here are a few more that didn’t make the top sentiment analysis software list. If you need additional suggestions, check these out.
- NICE Interaction Analytics
Best for teams who want an all encompassing cloud CX platform
- Survicate
Best for multi-channel feedback surveys
- Keatext
Keatext leverages customer feedback from multiple sources and consolidates insights to uncover new trends from customer reviews, surveys, and service tickets.
- Infongen
InfoNgen is a text analytics and sentiment analysis solution that automatically finds actionable insights hidden in mountains of data, like web and social media sources.
- CloudFactory
Focus attention to sentiment, semantic, syntax, and context analysis, and statement processing, prepping unstructured datasets for smarter NLP algorithms.
- IBM Watson Assistant
Operationalize AI in your business to better predict and shape future outcomes, automate complex processes, and optimize your employees’ time.
- Vaspian
Use phone call speech analytics to record and analyze every customer call with built-in sentiment tools to tell you if a customer experience was positive or negative.
- DiscoverText
A text, metadata, and social network analysis support solution with dozens of multilingual, text mining, data science, human annotation, and machine-learning features.
- Gavagai
AI-driven analysis for all online customer feedback data designed to find out what you should fix and what you should keep doing and can work in 46 languages.
- Brandwatch
Track your brand health in real-time by monitoring changes in sentiment, understanding customer opinions, and tracking meaningful fluctuations.
Related CX Software Reviews
If you still haven't found what you're looking for here, check out these related customer experience management software that have been tested and evaluated.
- Customer Service Software
- Help Desk Software
- Call Center Software
- Customer Messaging Platform
- Digital Experience Platform
- Customer Experience Management Software
Selection Criteria for Sentiment Analysis Tools
Selecting the right sentiment analysis tools is a nuanced process, tailored to address specific functionality and use cases that are crucial for understanding and enhancing customer experiences. As someone who has extensively researched these tools, I've developed a set of criteria to guide you through the selection process. This ensures that the chosen solution matches your immediate needs and supports your long-term goals in monitoring and improving customer sentiment.
Core Sentiment Analysis Tools Functionality: 25% of total weighting score
Common features for sentiment analysis tools typically include web crawling capabilities, natural language processing, emotion detection, trend analysis, multilingual support, integration capabilities, real-time analysis, social media analysis, keyword analysis, and customizable reporting.
To be considered for inclusion on my list of the best sentiment analysis tools, the solution had to support the ability to fulfill common use cases.
- Monitoring brand sentiment across multiple channels
- Analyzing customer feedback for actionable insights
- Identifying and responding to negative feedback promptly
- Tailoring communication based on customer sentiment trends
- Gathering competitive intelligence through sentiment analysis
Additional Standout Features: 25% of total weighting score
- Innovations in emotion detection for nuanced understanding of customer feedback
- Advanced NLP capabilities for accurate interpretation of sarcasm or irony
- Unique integration features with other business intelligence tools
- Proprietary technology for real-time sentiment tracking and analysis
- Exceptional capabilities in handling and analyzing large volumes of data across languages and platforms
Usability: 10% of total weighting score
- Intuitive interface that balances advanced features with ease of use
- Streamlined navigation paths that facilitate quick access to key functionalities
- Customizable dashboards that allow users to prioritize information relevant to their needs
Onboarding: 10% of total weighting score
- Comprehensive training resources including videos, templates, and product tours
- Interactive onboarding processes that guide new users through setup and use
- Support channels like chatbots and webinars that ensure a smooth transition
Customer Support: 10% of total weighting score
- Responsive and knowledgeable customer service teams
- Multiple channels for support, including live chat, email, and phone
- Community forums or user groups for peer assistance and advice
Value For Money: 10% of total weighting score
- Competitive pricing that reflects the features and benefits offered
- Transparent pricing models without hidden costs
- Flexible plans that scale with business needs
Customer Reviews: 10% of total weighting score
- High ratings for ease of use and customer satisfaction
- Positive feedback on the tool's impact on business outcomes
- Testimonials highlighting specific benefits such as improved customer service or enhanced brand reputation
In selecting sentiment analysis tools, it's paramount to prioritize platforms that not only offer advanced analytical capabilities but also deliver a user-centric experience. Through meticulous evaluation of these criteria, businesses can identify a solution that not only meets but exceeds their goals for understanding customer sentiment and enhancing brand perception, ensuring a strategic fit that propels them forward.
Trends in Sentiment Analysis Tools for 2024
Exploring the latest trends in sentiment analysis tools reveals significant advancements aimed at enhancing brand perception and understanding customer sentiment. These trends underscore the evolving needs of customer experience professionals, reflecting the shifting landscape of customer feedback analysis and brand monitoring.
- Advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP): There's a notable shift towards more sophisticated NLP capabilities. These advancements improve the accuracy of sentiment detection, especially in deciphering the nuances of human language, such as sarcasm, irony, and context. Enhanced NLP algorithms are crucial for businesses to gain deeper insights into customer emotions and opinions.
- Rise of Multilingual Sentiment Analysis: With the global marketplace becoming increasingly accessible, tools that offer multilingual sentiment analysis are rapidly evolving. This functionality is essential for brands operating internationally, allowing them to understand and engage with customers across different linguistic backgrounds effectively.
- Integration with Other Business Tools: The most sought-after sentiment analysis tools now boast extensive integration capabilities. Seamless connectivity with CRM systems, marketing platforms, and other business intelligence tools enables organizations to leverage sentiment analysis insights across various aspects of their operations, enhancing decision-making and strategy development.
- Emphasis on User-Centric Design and Usability: Tools that prioritize user experience, through intuitive interfaces and streamlined workflows, are becoming more prevalent. This trend addresses the need for tools that can be easily adopted by teams, reducing the learning curve and enabling quicker realization of value from the technology.
- Customizable Reporting and Analytics: The ability to customize reports and analytics dashboards to suit specific business needs is in high demand. This feature supports tailored insights that align with strategic objectives, facilitating more informed decision-making.
- Emotion Detection Beyond Positive/Negative Sentiment: Some tools are introducing capabilities to identify a wider range of emotions, such as joy, trust, anticipation, and surprise. This novel functionality offers businesses a more nuanced understanding of customer sentiment, beyond the traditional positive/negative dichotomy.
What are Sentiment Analysis Tools?
Sentiment analysis tools are software applications that use natural language processing, machine learning, and computational linguistics techniques to automatically identify, extract, and analyze the sentiment expressed in a piece of text. CX teams frequently use them to analyze customer feedback, online reviews, comments, or social media posts, and track changes to sentiment over time.
These tools help businesses and organizations gain insights into the opinions, emotions, and attitudes of their customers, stakeholders, or target audience to ultimately preserve a positive brand reputation. This type of consumer data is also useful for market research, and product analysis, and can help counteract negative sentiment influence and improve brand reputation through targeted marketing strategies.
Features of Sentiment Analysis Tools
Sentiment analysis tools help to analyze vast amounts of data from online reviews, comments, social media posts, and more. This gives you valuable insights into public perception and customer emotions or opinions regarding your brand. Here, I'll discuss the most important features to look for in sentiment analysis tools to ensure you deliver the necessary insights for brand monitoring and customer feedback analysis.
- Web Crawling Capabilities - Ability to scrape webpages and social media for sentiment analysis. This is vital for gathering a broad dataset from various online sources, ensuring your sentiment analysis covers a wide spectrum of public opinion.
- Keyword Analysis - Utilizes text analytic software to understand sentiment. This feature helps in dissecting the language used across various conversations, including slang and niche terms, to accurately gauge sentiment.
- Social Media Analysis - Analyzes sentiment on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Given the vast amount of customer feedback present on social media, this feature is essential for real-time sentiment analysis and understanding public perception on the platforms your customers use most.
- Reporting and Analytics - Offers robust and customizable reporting tools. The ability to tailor reports and analytics allows for the distillation of complex data into actionable insights, making it easier to strategize based on sentiment trends.
- Emotion Detection - Identifies specific emotions in texts. This goes beyond simple positive or negative categorization to understand the nuances of human emotion, enriching the analysis with deeper insights into customer feelings.
- Real-time Analysis - Provides sentiment analysis in real-time. This is crucial for timely responses to emerging trends, allowing brands to react promptly to changes in public sentiment.
- Multi-language Support - Can analyze sentiment in multiple languages. This feature expands the reach of sentiment analysis, making it possible to understand feedback from a global audience.
- Accuracy and Machine Learning - Employs advanced algorithms for high accuracy. The use of machine learning ensures that the tool becomes more accurate over time, learning from the nuances of human language.
- Integration Capabilities - Easily integrates with other tools and platforms. This is important for streamlining workflow, allowing sentiment analysis data to enhance other marketing and customer service tools.
- Sentiment Trend Analysis - Tracks changes in sentiment over time. With this feature, your team can observe shifts in public sentiment, enabling them to identify patterns and potentially forecast future trends or reactions to new initiatives or products.
Whether you're aiming to deepen customer engagement, tailor marketing strategies, or enhance brand reputation, sentiment analysis tools stand as a cornerstone for achieving these objectives. They propel your organization towards its strategic goals with greater ease and effectiveness, enabling a nuanced understanding of customer emotions and opinions that inform actionable insights.
Benefits of Sentiment Analysis Tools
Using sentiment analysis tools can elevate organizations' understanding of customer emotions and opinions to an unprecedented level, offering a sophisticated blend of efficiency and insight in managing customer relations. This advanced approach allows businesses to focus more on strategic planning and customer engagement while minimizing misunderstandings and enhancing overall responsiveness.
Here are five primary advantages of utilizing sentiment analysis tools for your team:
- Real-time Customer Sentiment Tracking - Instantaneous feedback analysis. Utilizing these tools enables businesses to monitor customer sentiment in real-time, allowing for swift responses to feedback, which can significantly enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Enhanced Brand Monitoring - Comprehensive oversight of brand perception. Sentiment analysis tools provide a 360-degree view of how a brand is perceived across various platforms, enabling companies to proactively manage their reputation and mitigate potential crises before they escalate.
- Data-driven Decision Making - Insightful analytics for strategy development. By analyzing customer sentiment, businesses can make informed decisions, tailoring products, services, and marketing strategies to meet the evolving needs and preferences of their target audience.
- Improved Customer Service - Personalized interaction based on customer mood. These tools allow customer service teams to understand the emotional context of inquiries and feedback, enabling more empathetic and personalized responses that can significantly improve customer experience.
- Market Trend Analysis - Detection of shifts in public opinion and trends. Sentiment analysis can identify emerging trends and shifts in consumer behavior, offering businesses a competitive edge by adapting quickly to market changes.
Whether you're looking to deepen customer engagement, refine your marketing strategy, or proactively manage your brand reputation, sentiment analysis tools are a cornerstone for achieving these objectives. They propel your organization towards its strategic goals with greater ease and effectiveness, transforming customer feedback into a valuable asset for business growth and innovation.
Cost & Pricing for Sentiment Analysis Tools
Sentiment analysis tools offer a range of plans and pricing options tailored to meet various business needs and budgets. As a software expert, I've researched different offerings in this space to provide insights into what you can expect when exploring pricing and plans for sentiment analysis tools.
Most sentiment analysis tool providers offer tiered plans, typically ranging from free to enterprise levels. These plans often differ in features, data processing limits, and support options. Free plans are usually more suitable for individuals or small teams with limited requirements, while enterprise plans offer advanced features and scalability for larger organizations or those needing more detailed insights.
| Plan Type | Average Price | Common Features |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Basic sentiment analysis, limited data processing, community support |
| Basic | $29 - $99 | Enhanced sentiment analysis capabilities, higher data processing limits, email support |
| Professional | $100 - $499 | Advanced analytics, API access, integration options, priority support |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom data processing limits, dedicated support, custom integrations, strategic consulting services |
Whether you're just starting to explore the impact sentiment analysis can have on understanding customer feedback, or you're ready to implement a robust solution for comprehensive brand monitoring, selecting the right plan requires careful consideration of your specific needs and budget. Tailoring your choice to match your business objectives ensures that sentiment analysis tools not only fit seamlessly into your operations but also drive your organization toward strategic success with greater precision and effectiveness.
Sentiment Analysis FAQ
Get started with sentimental analysis with answers to commonly asked questions:
What is sentiment analysis?
Sentiment analysis, sometimes called opinion mining, attempts to determine a fuller context of expression: the emotional tone, attitudes, and opinions of users or customers. Common use cases for sentiment analysis include ecommerce, politics, and customer service.
For more tips on how you can use sentiment analysis to support customer service, pop over to our guide on sentiment analysis and opinion mining.
What is sentiment?
In sentiment analysis, the sentiment is the emotional message within an expression—the emotions, opinions, and attitudes embedded in a person’s actions, writing, or speech.
How does sentiment analysis work?
Sentiment analysis, at its core, involves the use of algorithms and natural language processing (NLP) techniques to identify, extract, and quantify the emotional tone behind words. It’s like teaching a computer to understand not just what words mean but how they feel. This process can range from simple polarity checks (positive, negative, neutral) to more complex emotional states and intentions. It’s fascinating because it involves a blend of linguistics, psychology, and computer science to effectively interpret human sentiment from text data. Here’s a deep dive into how sentiment analysis works.
What is sentiment analysis used for?
Sentiment analysis is incredibly versatile, used in a wide array of fields from marketing to customer service, to gauge public opinion, monitor brand reputation, and understand customer experiences. In customer service, it offers insights into customer satisfaction and areas needing improvement. In marketing, it can help tailor campaigns by understanding audience reactions. Essentially, it’s a powerful tool for any business looking to tap into the emotional pulse of their audience and make data-driven decisions to enhance the customer experience.
What are the types of sentiment analysis tools?
Sentiment analysis tools are a type of software used in CX. Common types sentiment analyzers include:
- Social media sentiment analysis tools, usually part of a social media monitoring software
- Text analysis software
- Voice sentiment analysis, such as tone analyzers
- Customer intelligence platforms
Are there any free sentiment analysis tools?
Free sentiment analysis tools may have limited features compared to their paid counterparts but they do exist. For example, MonkeyLearn, IBM Watson, MeaningCloud all have freemium versions of their plans.
What are the key challenges in sentiment analysis?
One of the main hurdles in sentiment analysis is the subtlety and complexity of human emotion. Sarcasm, irony, and context-specific meanings can throw a wrench in the works, making it tricky for algorithms to accurately interpret sentiment. Plus, languages evolve, and new slang or expressions emerge, making continual learning and adaptation a necessity for any sentiment analysis tool. It’s a constant game of catch-up, requiring sophisticated models that can understand not just language, but the nuances of human communication.
Quickly Compare & Evaluate The 18 Best Sentiment Analysis Software
With the growing capabilities of machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP), dozens of sentiment analysis companies are popping up.
From more specialized Twitter sentiment analysis tools to full-blown sentiment analysis programs that are built on top of existing intelligence platforms, companies are racing to answer the ultimate question:
Who are my customers, and what are they really thinking?
If you’re asking the same question, these customer sentiment analysis tools provide answers. Businesses can perform sentiment analysis to better understand customer sentiment or brand sentiment—how people are likely feeling when interacting with their brand.
I’ve highlighted some of the top players in the sentiment mining game, and I’ve also answered some common questions about sentiment analysis to get you started.
What's Next?
If you are new to this topic, we have written about what is sentiment analysis so you can read a basic definition and common use cases.
If you want to delve deeper into the subject, you may want to know if machine learning is the engine behind sentiment analysis.
Also Worth Checking Out: