Although natural language processing is not a new science, the technology is advancing rapidly thanks to increased interest in human-machine communication, as well as the availability of big data, powerful computers, and improved algorithms.
As a human, you can speak and write in English, Spanish, or Chinese. But the native language of a computer – known as code or machine language – is largely incomprehensible to most people.
At the lowest levels of your device, communication takes place not with words but through millions of zeroes and ones that produce logical actions.
Reducing customer complaints with NLP
Royal Bank of Scotland uses text analytics, NLP technique, to extract important trends from customer feedback in many forms.
The company analyzes data from emails, surveys, and conversations with customer service centers to identify the root cause of customer dissatisfaction and implement improvements.
Why is natural language processing important?
Large volumes of textual data
Natural language processing helps computers communicate with humans in their language and scales other language-related tasks. For example, NLP makes it possible for computers to read text, listen to spoken voice, interpret it, measure sentiment, and determine which parts are important.
Structuring a highly unstructured data source
Human language is incredibly complex and diverse. We express ourselves in infinite ways, verbally and in writing. Not only are there hundreds of languages and dialects, but in each language there is a unique set of grammar and syntax rules, terms, and colloquial words. When we write, we often make spelling mistakes or abbreviate words, or we omit punctuation marks.