Sentiment Analysis on Survey Comments

Sentiment analysis classifies each written comment on a survey as positive, neutral or negative, so a few hundred comments stay readable: you can filter the responses feed to the negative ones and start there.

It is a reading of each comment on its own. It does not group comments into themes or topics.

It is off by default

Sentiment analysis is switched on per survey, and every new survey starts with it off. Comments are only sent for classification on surveys where you have switched it on. A comment is the answer to a text question; scores and choices are never classified.

Switching it on

Open the survey and go to its Overview tab. In the side panel, the Sentiment analysis row has an On/Off switch. Only Admins and Owners can change it.

Under the switch, Pertento estimates what it will cost: about how many AI credits a month at the survey's current pace of comments. Before a survey has comments, it says only that each comment uses a small number of credits. The estimate is exactly that, an estimate; the credits actually used are on the billing page.

Comments collected before you switched it on

Switching it on only covers comments written from then on. To classify the earlier ones as well, use Analyse existing responses, which shows roughly how many credits it will use. After you confirm, they are worked through a few hundred at a time over the next few minutes.

What it costs

Sentiment analysis uses the account's AI credits. Plan credits are spent first, then credits from any packs you have bought. See AI Credits and Credit Packs.

When credits run out

Nothing breaks. New comments are still collected and shown in the feed; they simply wait, unclassified, until credits are available again, either when your plan's credits reset or when you buy a pack. On the Results tab, the number awaiting classification grows in the meantime. An account without an active plan cannot use AI features at all.

Reading the results

When it is on, the survey's Results tab shows a sentiment panel with how many comments are positive, neutral and negative, and how many are waiting. Classification runs every few minutes, so a new comment shows as waiting first. The feed's positive, neutral and negative filters show each visitor's response that has a comment in that group. See Reading Survey Results.

A comment the model cannot classify is left without a sentiment rather than given a guess.

What is sent

Only the text of the comment is sent, to an AI language model, Anthropic's Claude. Nothing else about the visitor is sent with it. See What Surveys Collect, and What They Cost the Page.

Switching it off

Turn the switch off on the Overview tab. Comments already classified keep their sentiment; new comments are not classified. Turning it on or off is possible at any time, also on a survey that has already run.