The problem is the plethora of inadequate and archaic comment systems online – sites that drown intelligent discussion within a mass of disorganized, meaningless noise, leaving companies faced with the challenge of sorting through reams of irrelevance to identify genuine useful nuggets of feedback. Combine this overarching issue with the lack of easy-to-access insights and data from these comments platforms – the sort of data that might fast-track companies’ understanding of consumer sentiment or passion points – and it’s easy to see why many organizations view online discussions as more problematic than helpful. Companies simply cannot keep up with the amount of online discourse pertaining to them, nevermind assessing each comment to determine its value to the organization.

However, what may seem overwhelming at first can, in fact, be totally manageable – if we analyze, organize and archive comments and provide the right tools for the public and companies, intelligent comment filters and analytics dashboards, to drive more valuable discussion and insights.

At Qutee this has been our focus area for the past few years. We’ve worked hard to build a comment and discussion solution for the masses, and we’ve taken steps to make sure that the data and insight behind the comments are made available to all.

We aim to enable brands to engage with their digital communities in an organized and meaningful way, for example, giving them the ability to search comments on our platform by keyword or drill into discussions via theme. Critically, at the same time, we ensure that all comments are considered equally and let the community itself rate the quality of the discussion, giving brands a clear view of what their audience deems most useful. No longer is it just the most colourful (often unconstructively critical) comments from the noisiest commentators that get noticed by the brand, but all consumers who have something to say can be heard.