Sell Softly on the ‘Net

A way to take the pulse of consumers’ needs and wants: Ten years ago, most companies would’ve loved a virtually cost-free service that would automatically monitor and store data on consumer sentiment regarding products and services. And they probably would’ve done cartwheels for a system that also could feed those sentiments into a manipulable database that could analyze information based on a combination of variables. Such systems are here: ask-the-expert domains tied to everyday company databases.