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Ready to learn about your customers? You're not alone, as many businesses are committed to performing traditional market research to gain insights into customer behaviors.

However, traditional market research is becoming increasingly obsolete for a number of reasons. 

First, research such as customer surveys and polls often requires tens or hundreds of man-hours to conduct. 

A business must put together a list of open- and closed-ended questions before it sending out an online survey or poll. Then, this company will need to distribute the evaluation to its target audience, collect responses and evaluate the customer feedback. 

Meanwhile, this company also will need to ensure it employs first-rate data experts who can review the information and ensure that a business can leverage this data to its advantage. 

It also is important for a business to consider the costs commonly associated with traditional market research. 

These expenses can add up quickly, making it exceedingly difficult for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to optimize the data at their disposal. Furthermore, the customer data collected from traditional market research may or may not provide substantial value – it all depends on whether a business is equipped to evaluate this information, gain actionable insights and use the customer data to make customer experience (CX) improvements. 

Fortunately, businesses of all sizes may be able to reduce their need for traditional market research, thanks in part to text analytics. 

Companies can leverage text analytics to better understand their customers, and ultimately, find ways to better support them. As such, text analytics promises to deliver both short- and long-term value for companies of all sizes.

Going forward, text analytics may deliver immense value for businesses for the following reasons:

1. Text analytics converts customer data into meaningful insights. 

In the past, traditional market research may have served as the only way for a business to learn about its customers. But now, text analytics empower businesses with meaningful insights based on customer feedback. 

Text analytics ensures a company can learn from real-time customer feedback available from social networks, websites and other online sources. In addition, text analytics allows a company to discover whether customers are expressing positive, negative or neutral feedback about its products and services and respond to these customers accordingly. 

2. Text analytics streamlines the process of collecting and evaluating customer data. 

Previously, it might have taken hours, day, weeks or even months for a business to collect customer feedback via traditional market research. Thanks to text analytics, however, a business can collect and evaluate customer data faster than ever before. 

Text analytics streamlines the process of tracking customer data from myriad sources. It enables a business to monitor multiple data sources simultaneously, and as a result, make more informed decisions based on comprehensive customer information at its disposal. 

3. Text analytics can help a business save both time and money. 

Time and money are of the essence for all businesses. And with text analytics, a company may be able to reduce the time and money it commits to traditional market research. 

Text analytics provides businesses with in-depth customer insights it can use at any time. Meanwhile, these insights are available instantly, enabling a business to reduce its need for costly, time-intensive traditional market research.

Text analytics and Solution as a Service (SolaaS): Here's what you need to know

The combination of text analytics and SolaaS offers businesses exceptional value, a trend that likely will continue into the foreseeable future. 

With text analytics and SolaaS, a business can enjoy support from experienced data scientists who will work with a company to help this business maximize the value of its customer data. 

Data scientists are skilled professionals who understand the importance of customer data for today's businesses. These data experts will examine a business' data needs and ensure this company is fully supported at all times. 

And with data scientists readily available to help you company, you can reap the benefits of text analytics and SolaaS instantly. 

Summary 

Text analytics offers value for businesses of all sizes, particularly when it is compared to traditional market research. Although conventional online surveys and polls may have been used to evaluate customer behaviors in the past, text analytics provides businesses with a first-rate technology they can use to better understand their customers going forward. As such, text analytics may prove to deliver substantial value for companies for years to come.