What is 'metadata' and how is it used in Wordnerds?

What is metadata?
How is metadata used in Wordnerds?
Why is adding metadata to Wordnerds beneficial?
What metadata should I include?
How is metadata attached to customer feedback?

At source (your survey tool, etc)
In your Data Warehouse
Manually

7. Creating Upload Themes from your metadata

8. Passing metadata through to your data output without creating Upload Themes

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.

You may have some control and ability to customise what metadata is attached at source, depending on the tool you are using and how it has been set-up, so it's worth reviewing this and, if you don't have the metadata you need attached, speak to your provider about this.

It 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 is worth being aware of.

In your Data Warehouse

This is the gold-standard. If your data is managed in a centralisaed 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.

However, this relies on your organisation having a Data Warehouse that includes customer feedback data. If you're not there yet, don't worry - as well as being use metadata attached at source, as above 👆, you can also manually attach your metadata, read on👇...

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.

How is metadata added to Wordnerds?

Another great question, you're on a roll! Adding metadata to Wordnerds is pretty simple once it is 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 included 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 create to our input API.

Any questions?

We’re always happy to chat. Reach out using the help bubble at the bottom of your screen, email support@wordnerds.ai, or contact your Customer Success Manager directly.

✍️ Article written by: Nat, Customer Success