What Is Natural Language Processing?

Natural language processing (NLP) is an exciting field of artificial intelligence that is increasingly valuable for businesses looking to enrich customer insights. But what exactly is NLP and how does it uncover these insights? In simple terms, NLP refers to computer software with the ability to understand, interpret, and manipulate human language. Instead of communicating in rigidly structured computer code, NLP algorithms can analyze and process free-flowing natural language - whether written or spoken. This human-like understanding of language unlocks capabilities not previously possible with traditional coding.

Cases of NLP in Business

NLP tools are helping companies understand how their customers perceive them across all channels of communication, whether emails, product reviews, social media posts, surveys, and more. Not only can AI tools be used to understand online conversations and how customers are talking about businesses, they can also be used to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, increase efficiency, and enable workers to focus on more fulfilling tasks.

For example, NLP algorithms can determine the sentiment of a customer comment, summarize calls between agents and customers, translate content into dozens of languages, and even generate written content on a given topic. These capabilities open up endless applications for customer service, market research, content creation, and more.

A key benefit

NLP software can digest huge volumes of unstructured textual data that would be incomprehensible to humans. This data might come from product reviews, social media rants, support tickets, survey responses, call transcripts, or anywhere that customers provide open-ended text feedback. Sophisticated NLP analysis can identify rising trends and concerns, dig into the root causes behind customer sentiment, surface feature requests, and much more. This gives companies an authentic peek into the customer perspective for informing product decisions. It’s far more revealing than solely relying on rigid multiple-choice survey data.

The applications across sales, marketing, product, and support are nearly endless. At the end of the day, NLP’s superpower is understanding customers based on their own naturally provided feedback. The technology has finally advanced enough to make this possible. So next time you hear about natural language processing, know that it represents machines starting to conquer human language - and that’s a big deal for better understanding customers!