And the survey REALLY said …

The Attensity Group has introduced a hosted service for analyzing open-ended questions in surveys.

The Attensity Group says Survey Advantage enables departments within large organizations and government agencies to measure, chart and understand customer sentiment and top issues expressed in customer feedback surveys. It is also the first and only system that enables survey and market research vendors to more quickly process the answers to open-ended questions, known as "verbatims" in surveys.

The new service quickly analyzes unstructured survey responses to help companies better understand customer sentiment, satisfaction, loyalty and potential product or service issues. Designed for business users, Survey Advantage works via a self-contained application, without the need for third-party systems or long implementation cycles.

Attensity Survey Advantage is available to North American companies at an introductory price of $5,000 per month, if initiated before Dec. 31, 2009. It includes an annual license for Attensity's text analysis engine, Attensity VoC. Powered by its patented Exhaustive Extraction technology, Attensity VoC Survey Advantage automatically identifies facts, opinions, requests, trends and trouble spots from unstructured text and transforms the data into structured, actionable intelligence.

As part of this offer, Attensity is also introducing its Voice of the Customer Exchange. Launching on Sept. 1, VoC Exchange is an invitation-only social network for companies designed to facilitate the sharing of their best practices in implementing VoC Advantage throughout their organizations.