Two lists near the bottom of Insights do something the numbers above cannot: they tell you what people are actually talking about.
Two lists, two questions
- Common topics
- What customers write about. Volume.
- Common frustrations
- Where conversations turned negative. Pain.
A theme can be busy without being painful, and painful without being busy. Reading both is how you tell the difference between "lots of people ask this" and "this makes people angry".
Neither needs setting up. Both are grouped and ranked automatically from your conversations.
Common topics
A ranked list of themes with a count and a bar, busiest first. Each row opens the threads behind it.
This is the most direct evidence you will get of what your documentation and your product should fix. A theme at the top of this list for three months running is a question your customers should never have needed to ask.
Common frustrations
The same idea, applied to conversations that went badly. A theme is flagged when a customer's tone turns negative or they complain explicitly.
The rule is deliberately fixed and stated on the page rather than hidden. You can rely on it meaning the same thing this month as last, which is what makes the trend readable.
Above the list is the total. It shows how many themes were flagged and how many threads that covers. Each row opens its threads.
Why a theme appears in both
Often the same theme is in both lists, and that combination is the most actionable thing on the page.
- High volume, no frustration
- Lots of people ask; the answer satisfies them. A documentation opportunity.
- Low volume, high frustration
- Few people hit it, but those who do are upset. Often a bug, or a policy that reads as unfair.
- High volume and high frustration
- Fix this before anything else. It is both common and painful, and it will be quietly costing you customers.
The New tag
A theme that has not appeared before is marked New.
On a workspace that has just started, everything is new and the tag means little. Once you have a few months of history it becomes an early warning: a new theme climbing the list is usually a change you made, or something that has just broken.
What to do with a topic
- 1Click the row to open its threads.
- 2Read three or four of the actual conversations, not the summaries.
- 3Ask whether the question should have needed asking at all.
- 4If the answer is stable, add it to your knowledge sources or write a guided answer so Chloe handles it next time.
- 5If the question exists because something is confusing, that is a product note, not a support one. Pass it on.
What to do with a frustration
- 1Open the threads and read how the conversation turned.
- 2Separate the two causes: sometimes the answer upset them, sometimes the wait did.
- 3If it was the answer, and the answer was right, a Do or don't about how it is delivered may help.
- 4If it was the wait, check whether those threads were overdue. That is a workload problem, not a wording one.
- 5If the same theme is frustrating people every month, stop treating it as a support issue. Somebody outside support needs to hear about it.