How to grow with a brand-new AI-based service while strengthening its image as an innovative agency.

Eleonora Paul, Business Analyst @ IWD Market research

IWD Market Research is a midsized agency, helping Retail clients with market research in more than 26 countries across Europe and the USA. Eleonora Paul, Business Analyst at IWD market research, and her team created a new service called Speech-to-Text at POS (point of sale) for retailers. It involves gathering customer statements at the POS with an enhanced smartphone, transcribing audio with speech-to-text algorithms and coding resulting text statements with Caplena to generate comprehensive and actionable insights. What started as a proof-of-concept is now an established service being delivered to retailers of all sizes.

Challenge

Designing the process of the new service was straightforward. But finding suitable software partners that can deliver on each step of the process was hard. The main challenge was to find services that could conveniently be integrated into our novel offering and match the quality expectations of our customers.

Solution

For the Coding part of the process, IWD market research chose Caplena.

Caplena: Eleonora, what was most important for you when looking for a solution for the Coding part of your new service?

Eleonora (IWD Market Research): We were looking for a platform that runs state-of-the-art machine learning software and still allows us to keep control over the coding behavior at all times. Most other tools act as a black box in this regard. Also, it was critical to us that the tool can be integrated into our workflow using a modern and easy-to-use API.

Caplena: Which other software did you consider before choosing Caplena?

Eleonora (IWD Market Research): We tried different coding providers, such as Ascribe or Codeit.

Results

Since the first proof-of-concept, more than two dozen clients are making use of this new service regularly. Moreover, IWD was able to fortify their position as an innovative agency in their niche.

Caplena: What are the main benefits of using Caplena as AI coding provider?

Eleonora (IWD Market Research): Due to the possibility to train the AI within our retail niche by coding a few responses, we’re able to achieve a very high coding quality. Most importantly, we’re able to guarantee to our clients a consistent coding, independent of environmental influences or human weaknesses.

With this new service, IWD’s clients benefit not only from more comprehensive insights but also from more authentic storytelling, as analysts are able to tap into the original statements at any time and embed the raw statements into the story. And even better: Customers who were taking part in the research loved the new approach and showed a very high willingness to participate more than 85%.

Caplena: What would you recommend to other agencies who are trying to build services that rely on 3rd party solutions?

Eleonora (IWD Market Research): Get familiar with new tools – the world is moving fast. Better to try and learn while you’re not under pressure, than to wait until you have to make a change.