The impact of not identifying, and addressing negative customer perceptions can be extremely damaging. On social media, individual instances can quickly go viral. Left unattended, an issue can explode and erode the very fabric of your brand.

If you’re not keeping tabs on what people are saying about your business, you’re burying your head in the sand. Luckily, advances in Artificial Intelligence (such as IBM’s Watson) gives machines the ability to not just understand words, but their emotional intent.

Using Artificial Intelligence helps companies understand how they’re perceived. Tone Analyser allows users to detect seven distinct conversational tones. It picks up on emotions like; frustration, impoliteness, sadness, sympathy, politeness, satisfaction and excitement.

Tone Analyser can even identify the tone from common emojis, emoticons and slang. It’s built to understand conversations between customers and brands. This model can help monitor communications, detect anomalies, and highlight opportunities to improve. It tracks how tones change throughout conversations, and flags when action should be taken.

It’s an appealing prospect. You can test how tenders, marketing materials, websites and presentations are perceived by their intended audience. You can also monitor incoming customer communications from social media and call centre interactions.

Test the Tone Analyzer for yourself here. Copy your own LinkedIn profile, a speech or email into it and see how you’re communicating to others. You’ll start to see how Watson empowers your business to better understand your customers at scale.