Company Description

Nuance, a Decision Analyst company, delivers superior verbatim coding services, including multilingual coding and text analytics, to marketing research firms and corporate clients. We provide fast, friendly service and quality coding solutions. Nuance employs many experienced, in-house native-language coders. Additional data-processing services include data entry, crosstabs and mail-survey processing.

Multilingual

Coding verbatim comments in-language saves money and time over translating text into English prior to coding. Utilizing our services for coding in-language means you won't have to pay for translations or spend your valuable time trying to locate trustworthy coding services in unfamiliar countries. Nuance employs experienced, well-trained, in-house, native-language coders for the following languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish.

The verbatim coding process

In marketing research, verbatim coding is the assignment of numeric codes to various words, phrases, ideas, sounds or pictures so that information and meaning can be extracted and analyzed quantitatively. Open-ended responses in surveys, CRM systems, social media, IVR systems, customer records and customer-feedback systems all represent opportunities to apply verbatim coding to analyze and quantify what people are thinking and saying. The valuable information received as a result of coding can then be used by companies to help make the best business decisions possible.

When coding digital files, a clear focus on the key issues is imperative. What is the question to be answered? Is the objective to understand an action, facial expression or emotion from video or audio files, code a list of items or objects in an image or perhaps compare before-and-after photos? Whatever the type of file, having a discussion on how the data will be used and what is hoped to be accomplished is paramount.

After receiving data in the form of text, recorded audio or images, coders begin building a list called a "codebook" or "codeframe" by reading, listening to or viewing each answer and assigning it a numeric code. Our system enables coders to move quickly through the responses. All responses are carefully coded by a trained person. The results fully reflect the true meaning of the open-ended or unstructured data. Quality-assurance monitoring is built into the coding process to ensure codes are applied consistently and precisely.

Types of coding

Nuance codes all types of unstructured data or responses including the following:

• Text from online surveys or customer-feedback systems
• Phone surveys (computer-assisted telephone interviewing)
• Handwritten answers to paper surveys
• Social-media text
• Text from CRM systems
• Voice recordings from IVR
• Images

Quality commitments

Nuance adheres to rigorous and consistent quality standards. Our coders are not only intellectually curious and very smart, they also pay great attention to detail. They receive ongoing training and most have more than 11 years of experience as coders. Each project is carefully checked at multiple points by quality control specialists.

Digital media coding

The advances in technology make it easier for people to, now more than ever, share images and photos as well as video and audio files. However, whether they are collected through surveys, ethnography studies or social media, the interpretation of these digital files is dependent on the talent and knowledge of the coders.

There are no automated analytical tools to accurately interpret and summarize these types of digital files. They must be individually reviewed, studied and interpreted. Image, video and audio files can be coded in much the same way as verbatim comments. Nuance coders listen to the audio, watch the video or view the images to create the codeframe and analyze the results in light of project objectives.

Nuance can be your partner in coding verbatim comments as well as images, videos, photos and audio. Nuance has the staff, software, systems and tools needed to do these types of coding accurately and efficiently.

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Certification

CIRQ (the Certification Institute for Research Quality), an International Standards Organization (ISO) audit and certification body that is a subsidiary of the Insights Association, has awarded certification to Decision Analyst for compliance with the ISO/IEC 27001:2022, a widely recognized and internationally accepted information security standard. The certification of Decision Analyst's Information Security Management System covers the company’s physical and digital information assets. This includes the management of Decision Analyst-owned subsidiaries Symmetric and Nuance, surveys, websites, internal infrastructure (data, facilities, computers, servers), external web applications, and the processes necessary to deliver marketing research services to its clients.