Topics
Last updated Aug 28th, 2024
Overview
The topics report helps you discover and monitor what your Contacts are talking about and how they are feeling. Common Room applies AI-powered natural language processing to Contact conversations across a variety of signals to detect meaningful concepts and detect sentiment associated with each specific topic.
Reports
The topics page shows the following reports:
| Report | Definition |
|---|---|
Topic trends | See the top 5 topics in your community. |
Topic sentiment | See how sentiment for the top 100 topics trends over time, showing positive, neutral, or negative sentiment. |
Topic explorer | Explore the different topics Contacts are talking about and the associated sentiment for each topic. Metrics include mention count, % growth, signals in which the topic was mentioned, # of negative mentions, # of positive mentions, and activity in the selected time frame. |
Similar to other reports in Common Room, you can apply filters to narrow down the scope of data in the report (e.g. filtering to a specific signal allows you to see the most commonly mentioned topics for the selected signal).
Filtering by topic in the topics overview page
On the topics page, all of the topics in your selected dataset are displayed by default. To focus on a subset of the topics (e.g. a specific line of products or features) to display on the page, you can select specific topics within the topics filter.
To view the exact time the report data was last updated, hover over the small question mark immediately to the left of the date range filter in the top right corner of the page.
Applicable Signals for Topics
Topics are calculated for the below Signals, which feature conversations between Contacts. Within each signal, topics are only surfaced for conversational activities. For example, topics are surfaced for Slack posts, which include conversational content, whereas topics are not surfaced for Slack reactions, which do not include conversational content.
- Discord
- Discourse
- GitHub
- inSided
- Intercom
- Khoros
- Slack
- Stack Overflow
- YouTube
Topics vs. categories
Common Room's topics and categories both used machine learning-powered natural language processing to surface insights from conversations taking place in your community.
- Topics are automatically generated and tagged to activities based on if a term is mentioned as the subject of a particular activity. The list of topics for every Common Room instance is unique based on what Contacts are talking about in their conversations. Topics capture in detail all the possible subjects your Contacts might be talking about.
- Categories are based on a predefined set of common intents that Contacts express in their conversations. The list of categories is consistent across every Common Room instance. Categories capture the higher-level intent of what Contacts are trying to accomplish.
Topics and categories can be used together to help you take the right actions to improve your Contacts' experiences. Here are some examples of questions that can be answered by using topics and categories together:
- Identify Product FAQs. Across my different product areas, which are the ones that my customers have the most questions about?
- Suggested workflow in Common Room: On the topics page, filter to Category = Product question and (optionally) select a subset of topics in the Topics filter based on the different names of your product areas. By identifying commonly asked product questions in your community, you can more effectively update product documentation and/or other enablement content.
- Track product bugs/issues. For 1+ specific product areas, what bugs are customers reporting?
- Suggested workflow in Common Room: On the activity page, filter to Category = Bug/issue and select the topics that pertain to the product areas for which you'd like to discover bugs and issues. By staying on top of bugs/issues for specific product areas, you can drive more informed decisions about product enhancements and bug fixes.
- Discover key product benefits & evangelists. What do customers appreciate most about this specific product area? Who are the customers expressing appreciation about the product area?
- Suggested workflow in Common Room: On the activity page, filter to Category = Product appreciation and select the topics that pertain to the product areas that you'd like to learn more about. You can reference the individual conversations to get more context on what users love about each product area, and you can reference the list of Contacts involved in the conversation to identify evangelists for a particular product area. By discovering what your customers love most about a particular product area, you can drive more effective messaging around the product's value proposition. Identifying evangelists for a particular product area allows you to more actively engage these users to inform future product improvements.
Activity vs. topic sentiment
Common Room detects two types of sentiment to help you quickly gain context on conversations and activities taking place in your community:
- Activity sentiment is detected based on the sentiment associated with an activity overall. Activity sentiment gives you a high-level view of the sentiment a Contact expressed during conversations with other Contacts in your community.
- Topic sentiment is detected based on the sentiment associated with a specific topic within an activity. In a single activity, it's possible for different topics to have different sentiments. Topic sentiment allows you to understand the nuances within what Contacts are saying so you're able to more accurately get a pulse on what matters to your community.
- For example, if a Contact says "I love how easy it is to set notifications for myself in your product, but I get so frustrated with your billing process sometimes," then the topic "notifications" would have positive sentiment, whereas the topic "billing process" would have negative sentiment.
We recommend using activity and topic sentiment together to gain an accurate picture of how your community is feeling overall and how your community feels about specific areas of their experiences with your brand.
Topic actions: edit, merge, and hide
You can make the following edits to the topics in the system to better address your business and reporting needs:
- Rename topic: For any topic, you have the option of renaming the topic to a different topic name as long as the name is not already in use
- Merge topics: When there are 2+ topics with similar meanings, you can select the two topics within topic explorer and take action to merge them
- Hide topic: If a topic is less insightful and you no longer want to see it within Common Room, you can take action to hide the topic. You can view all hidden topics in the App settings > Hidden page within the Topics tab
Topics language support
Topics are currently supported for English only.
Historical topics data
By default, topics have been calculated for all data in Common Room starting from around April 2022. For customers on the Team or Enterprise plans, topics can be calculated for data earlier than April 2022 upon request.
