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What is metadata?
Metadata is essentially more data that provides additional context and information about your data. When we talk about metadata in the context of customer feedback, metadata is the data attached to your customer feedback, for example, the customer's demographic information or a score given alongside a comment.
This article refers to analysing customer feedback, but it could be *any* unstructured text/qualitative data. Your project, your data!
How is metadata used in Wordnerds?
In Wordnerds, you can include metadata when you input/upload your data to create 'Upload Themes'. Upload Themes can also act as filters during your data analysis and visualisation. This is a powerful way to enhance your analysis and enrich your insights.
Why is including metadata beneficial?
Including metadata allows you to combine what you already know about your customers and their experience with their feedback.
Combining this can help you understand...
- What is driving the metrics you care about (satisfaction scores, etc)
- What is driving the outcomes you care about (loyalty, churn, etc)
- Variations based on demographic or segmentation information (vulnerabilities, persona, etc)
- Variations based on organisational or transactional information (area of the business responsible, product or service purchased, etc)
Wait, there's more!
Bringing customer metadata and feedback together can also help you make your insights actionable by...
- Knowing where to target actions and interventions
- Developing prediction models
- Producing insights specific to particular audiences/the operational leads in your business that are responsible for acting on insights
- Finding patterns and trends you didn't even know to look for
What type of metadata should I include?
Choosing what metadata to include with your data input/upload can be tricky. It's easy to think 'the more the merrier' when it comes to including metadata, but this can mean that the beneficial stuff gets lost with information you don't need or use. Below are the types of metadata that are worth including:
- The metrics you care about (NPS, CSAT, CES, TSM, etc)
- The outcomes you care about (retention/churn status, complaint stage, tenancy success/failure, etc)
- Customer segmentation and demographic information (vulnerability, age range, location, customer/account value, persona, etc)
- Organisational and transactional information (area of the business responsible, purchase made, etc)
It's worth reading our articles on deciding what metadata to include, designing an effective Theme Bank and using 'Filters' in Wordnerds.
How is metadata attached to customer feedback?
Great question! Before you can include metadata with your data input/upload, it first needs to be attached to your customer feedback, duh!
Metadata is typically attached to your data in one of three ways:
At source
This is the simplest, but can also be the most limited. What we're talking about here is the metadata that is already attached to your customer feedback at source, e.g. your survey or social listening tool. This will usually be a score and transactional information, and could also include some demographic or organisational information.
Depending on the tool and how it's set up, you might be able to tweak the metadata that is attached at the source. It's a good idea to check this setup, and if the needed metadata isn't there, speak with your provider.
It's also worth bearing in mind that the way metadata is formatted, or naming conventions, can vary across data sources. For example, the name for a department or product could be referred to differently in your review tool and your survey tool. This can usually be resolved when formatting your data for input/upload, but it's worth being aware of.
In your Data Warehouse
This is the gold standard. If your data is managed in a centralised Data Warehouse, this empowers you to bring together all of the data you hold about your customer (which is probably a lot!) in a standardised way, without relying on what information is attached at source, and without worrying about varying naming conventions.
But this all hinges on your organisation having a Data Warehouse that includes customer feedback data. If you're not there yet, no stress—apart from using metadata that's already attached at the source, like we mentioned earlier, you can also add your metadata manually. Keep reading for more info...
Manually
Manually attaching metadata will take a little work but if the metadata you want to attach is valuable, it's worth doing, and there are ways to make the process efficient.
Manually attaching metadata to your customer feedback would typically work by using a unique identifier, such as customer ID reference, that is used both at source (in your survey tool, for example) and where your metadata is stored (the customer's CRM record, for example).
Using this unique identifier you can make the link between the feedback and metadata in their two separate locations, and depending on the method (which can be as basic or as sophisticated as you want it to be.. did anyone say VLOOKUP?), you can bring these two sets of data together into a single location, ready for data input/upload.
Are there limitations on the metadata I can include?
- No PII: personally indentifable information should never be included, such as name, address, contact information so please do not add this as metadata (or in the verbatim itself).
- Only one unique identifier: as part of your upload, each item of verbatim will need to have an ‘author', which is a reference number or unique identifier to link the content back to specific customers if you need to (on your own systems, not Wordnerds). You can only include one unique identifier with your upload, so don't include extra ones as metadata as this will create too many new Upload Themes.
- Keep it useful: it sounds obvious, but if you add in too much metadata, you'll find the good stuff gets lost as every item of metadata creates a new Upload Theme - so it's worth curating your metadata before input/upload, and consider where you'll get the most value.
FAQs
How is metadata added to Wordnerds?
Adding metadata to Wordnerds is pretty simple once it's attached to your customer feedback. Your customer feedback is added to Wordnerds either by API, or by CSV Upload, so you either include the metadata as part of your API connection, or you include it as a column on your CSV upload.
We have guides and documentation for both of these options which will cover the process for including metadata with your input/upload in detail.
How can I turn my metadata into an Upload Theme in the Wordnerds platform?
Easy! Any metadata included with your data input/upload will automatically create an Upload Theme, which can then also be used as a filter.
Can I pass metadata through to my Wordnerds Power BI Dashboard (or Wordnerds Amazon Redshift Data Warehouse), without creating Upload Themes in the Wordnerds platform?
Yes... if your data comes in via API. Our engineering team will walk you through this when you connect to our input API.
✍️ Article written by: Nat, Customer Success
Still in need of some help? Give us an email on support@wordnerds.ai or reach out to your CSM directly.