E-Commerce Products And Services Roundup
Product Category Key
A = Web callback/callthrough products
B = Web-based payment and security products
C = Clickstream analysis software
D = Chat/instant messaging products
E = Collaborative browsing/screen sharing technologies |
Although the hysteria concerning e-commerce may be a footnote to
history at this point, e-commerce is still alive and well, though it
generates fewer headlines than it did a few years ago. Consumers and
businesses continue to purchase a variety of products online, and the
companies that offer the products and services continue to refine their
e-commerce business models to help make the process as streamlined as
possible. Though there are many companies that offer products and services
that enable e-commerce, the editors of Customer Inter@ction Solutions'
asked a small cross-section of them to share their latest and greatest
technologies with readers.
Acapel
Walter Bockl
[email protected]
408-441-8811
www.acapel.com
Products: KISARA Contact, KISARA for CRM, KISARA for Siebel
Categories: A, E
Using Acapel's KISARA for CRM, the contact center can accept inbound Web
calls in addition to standard PSTN-based phone calls via a custom or
packaged CRM application. KISARA Contact enables simultaneous real-time
screen interaction and voice communication over the Internet between a
contact center and a customer's Web browser. The KISARA Office VoIP
System provides a tool for communication over IP networks, through LAN
integrated telephone circuits and PBXs and over PSTN.
Accrue Software
Paul Mudlaff
[email protected]
510-580-4500, ext. 4515
www.accrue.com
Product: Accrue G2
Category: C
Accrue G2 is a technologically advanced, highly scalable analysis
platform. Built using Accrue's own best-of-breed analysis technology for
data collection, analysis and reporting, G2 differentiates itself by
providing superior performance, accuracy and flexibility to even the world's
largest online business initiatives. It provides businesses with the
analytics they need to acquire customers, build customer value, retention
and loyalty, increase revenues and optimize the impact of the Web.
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Sales
[email protected]
800-553-6387
www.cisco.com
Products: Cisco Collaboration Server (CCS), Cisco Media Blender
(CMB)
Categories: A, E
The Cisco Collaboration Server enables customers to interact with agents
over the Web while conducting a voice (telephone or VOIP) or text chat
conversation. Agents and customers can share Web pages, complete online
forms in a collaborative fashion and share Windows desktop applications
using their Web browsers. Cisco Media Blender integrates a Web site with a
contact center's telephony infrastructure to provide automated, blended
delivery of inbound inquiries. The product enables users to directly
connect customers and prospects from the Web to the representatives in the
contact center, adding Web collaboration capabilities to customer
interactions.
eGain Communications
Jack Chawla
[email protected]
408-212-3671
www.egain.com
Product: eGain Live Web (includes eGain Interact, eGain Live
and eGain Meeting)
Category: E
eGain Live Web enables companies to deliver live assistance to online
customers and prospects. The solution ensures that online customers are
connected seamlessly to the right agent every time, even if the customer
is using a specialized browser or connecting from behind a firewall. Some
of the specific features include browser sharing, forms collaboration,
screen capture and Web callback technologies.
eHelp Corporation
Jennifer Pearce
[email protected]
800-459-2356
www.ehelp.com
Product: RoboAssist
Category: A
RoboAssist offers affordable self-service software that can be deployed in
less than a day. With RoboAssist, customers can use a natural language
search to find correct answers to their questions quickly and easily.
RoboAssist improves support quality and decreases costs by minimizing live
calls, e-mail and chat sessions.
E.piphany
Jamie Fiorda
[email protected]
650-356-3800/877-764-4163
www.epiphany.com
Product: E.piphany E.6
Category: C, D
E.piphany E.6 provides a complete suite of software products to help
companies achieve success in the customer economy. Each product is 100
percent Internet-architected on an integrated platform to ensure ease of
use, deployment and maintenance. Using an intuitive Web interface,
business users can navigate step by step through each of E.piphany's
products. E.piphany's integrated architecture uses common metadata
throughout the system, which minimizes user confusion and administrative
overhead.
Fireclick, Inc.
Alison Williams
[email protected]
650-917-6728
www.fireclick.com
Product: Netflame2
Category: C
Netflame combines content acceleration, Web analytics and Web performance
monitoring into a single application service called Web Experience
Management that requires no hardware, software or ongoing maintenance.
Netflame improves the Web experience by accelerating the delivery of Web
pages by two to ten times faster through unique predictive caching
technology. Netflame's Realtime Insite reporting tools provide real-time
and historical reports on traffic patterns, site performance statistics
and customer demographic statistics, and provides an outsourced and
streamlined log-file aggregation service.
IBM
Alise McNeill
[email protected]
919-254-6262
www-3.ibm.com/software
Products: IBM WebSphere Commerce, WebSphere Commerce Analyzer
Categories: B, C
IBM WebSphere Commerce, IBM's open, standards-based e-commerce solution,
was designed to allow companies of all sizes to compete on a level playing
field. Flexible, scalable and secure, IBM e-commerce solutions give users
a solid platform to get their sites up and running quickly and
cost-effectively, use virtual teaming and project management through new
collaboration functionality, establish and sustain customer relationships,
conduct secure e-business on a global scale, reduce sourcing and
transaction costs and streamline purchasing processes. WebSphere Commerce
Analyzer provides sales, marketing and business organizations with
information on customers and purchases. WCA/Adv is completely integrated
with WebSphere Commerce Suite and comes pre-configured to answer key
questions on sales/orders, campaigns, shoppers, Web store traffic,
external referrals, product advice and navigation.
Influence One
Jeff Gottesman
[email protected]
877-273-1128
www.influenceone.com
Product: VoiceClick
Category: A
VoiceClick allows online customers and call center agents to talk and
collaborate in real-time. Users simply click on a VoiceClick button on a
Web site, in an e-mail or in an online ad to speak live with a call center
agent. Implementation is as simple as one line of HTML code, and the cost
is just pennies more than a toll-free number.
IP Unity
Liz Scarborough
[email protected]
408-957-0800
www.ip-unity.com
Product: IP Unity Web Conferencing
Category: E
IP Unity Web Conferencing maximizes the impact of voice conferences by
adding Web-enabled features such as slide sharing and data collaboration.
The intuitive GUI enables individuals (typically 2 to 1,000) to
participate with a Web browser and phone (wireless or wireline) over both
IP and TDM networks. Powered by IP Unity's Harmony6000 Media Server,
this access-independent solution is large (16,000 ports) and can provide
complete ROI for carriers in as little as five months.
NewChannel Inc.
Sales
[email protected]
650-261-9500
www.newchannel.com
Product: NewChannel
Categories: C, D
NewChannel allows sales representatives to proactively interact with
qualified visitors on corporate Web sites, when they are most likely to
need assistance. In real-time, NewChannel analyzes visitor behavior,
selects those who are behaving most like serious prospects, alerts the
sales team to the prospect's presence and lets them engage the visitor
in a live consultation, allowing them to set the buying criteria and
advance the sale right then.
Pegasystems, Inc.
David Wells
[email protected]
617-374-9600 (US)/ +44(0)1189/591150 (UK)
www.pegasystems.com
Product: PegaCRM Integrated Investigations
Category: B
PegaCRM Integrated Investigations, a rules-driven, multichannel solution,
combines the customer service capabilities of the PegaCRM Payments
Investigations and Securities Investigations solutions, and provides
powerful CRM capabilities. The result is a comprehensive solution that
shifts the focus of your investigations activity from transactions and
accounts to a customer-facing relationship view with the emphasis where it
should be ' on the client.
RightNow Technologies, Inc.
Michele Manry
[email protected]
406-522-4200
www.rightnow.com
Product: RightNow Web eService Center
Categories: D, E
RightNow Live chat and collaboration provide immediate access to
personalized service ' right when customers need it. With text chat,
screen push and co-browse functionality, agents can select the best path
to help customers complete a transaction, fill out a form or find the
product they need. RightNow's live chat and collaboration put the human
touch back into online service, ensuring customers remain satisfied.
WiseUncle Inc.
Darrin Rowsell
[email protected]
416-482-9773
www.wiseuncle.com
Product: WiseUncle Advisor
Product Category: A
WiseUncle Advisor is artificial intelligence software that helps customers
make complex purchase decisions. Based on 30 years of decision research by
Cornell University professor J. Edward Russo, Advisor uses a question and
answer conversation to determine the customers' needs and preferences
for products, then makes intelligent recommendations. Deployed as an
e-commerce guided selling tool or an aid to call center agents, Advisor
compresses sales cycles, reduces sales costs and provides unique data for
customer relationship management (CRM).
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The Seven Key Performance Indicators
For Web-Based Customer Support
By Diego Ventura, noHold, Inc.
Your executive team has set a goal for greater customer satisfaction,
and you must provide key self-support elements. But there are countless
Web-based customer support choices on the market. Most will require a
significant financial investment ' hundreds of thousands of dollars. How
can you evaluate even a fraction of them and have confidence in the final
selection? How can you justify the budget when you don't know if the ROI
will materialize? All the vendors are promising the same high
expectations. How can you separate the truth from the hype?
Evaluating these technologies is never an easy task, but a few key
performance indicators will help you cut through the noise and
systematically assess almost any customer support product.
Understand your objectives. According to a GartnerGroup study, nearly
60 percent of CRM and self-support implementations fail to meet end user
expectations. This means it's critical to clarify your objectives so you'll
know if the support solution is meeting them, and to distinguish between
external and internal objectives. For example, does your company want to
improve customer satisfaction by providing users with concise answers to
their support questions ' answers that define specific actions or next
steps? Has your company set a goal to reduce costs, make the most of
resources, improve site stickiness or improve call center productivity?
Each of these will require something different from the self-service
solutions. List your company's objectives and then prioritize them.
Look beyond the obvious numbers for true ROI. Nearly every company
wants its CIO to help reduce call volume and control costs. Those factors
directly affect the bottom line, and almost any CRM solution can deliver
that. But there's a maxim in accounting that says you can't save your
way to profitability. You have to pay attention to the top line, too. And
you have to boost the qualitative benefits. Therefore, a truly valuable
support solution will help increase the rate of repeat visits, provide
upselling or cross-selling opportunities, enhance customer satisfaction,
increase loyalty, enhance productivity, improve communications and attract
new users. Ask potential vendors how they will impact the top line as well
as the bottom line.
Drive the right metrics. The right solution must be able to tell how
effectively it performs against the vendor's promises, as well as the
impact it is having on your business performance. Investigate the real
measurement capabilities of the proposed solution. For example, does it
answer questions rapidly, deploy quickly, provide usable information and
show a significant drop in call center activity? Does it respond in
seconds, not hours or days? Does it launch in a few weeks, not months?
Does it give real-time metrics on support sessions? Equally important,
does the solution provide immediate, relevant information to help uncover
weak spots in your support processes and show where you can improve
products and services? Avoid vendors that cannot show relevant metrics to
help your company tweak its offerings, documentation and planning. If you
can't help your executive team gain insight, they'll be operating
without a rudder.
Manage your knowledge platform effortlessly. No platform management
tool should require a Ph.D. or special training to operate. In fact, the
best solutions should be intuitive enough for a third-grader to use. That
means it should be easy to author and use (no programming skills
required), Web-based and open to multiple users. The knowledge platform
should have a transparent hosting model, full-service option and 24/7
support. Don't forget multilingual capabilities, especially if you have
customers or facilities outside the country. The solution will be
worthless if it's so complex or so limited that only a few sophisticated
people can use it.
Build to the right architecture. First, the solution must be scalable
or it won't handle your company's changing requirements. On the server
side, look for a multitier architecture for the database and for the
servers, plus a cluster architecture for load balancing, easy plug-in of
additional resources, easy maintenance and no down time. On the client
side, look for a browser and IP connection, no special plug-ins and
minimum bandwidth requirements.
Commit the right resources. Analyze how much valuable time and effort
the proposed solution will require for deployment. Expect to participate
in the deployment, but don't let the vendor simply hand you a CD of code
and a manual. Avoid solutions that require too many of your staff members
to implement. The vendor should do the 'heavy lifting.' Also, choose a
vendor with quick implementation, full service (including hosting, if
necessary) and round-the-clock support. A good vendor will effectively
implement both the software and the knowledge platform.
Look for process and system integration. Do not abdicate responsibility
for integration. View it as a competitive weapon. Any new solution should
integrate easily with your existing processes and systems, including other
CRM solutions. In fact, some industry analysts say it's better to
combine best-of-breed and enterprise solutions rather than buy everything
from just one vendor because no single vendor can do everything well. Then
make sure it integrates with no (or very few) special requirements. Ask
your vendors how their solutions will help the end users obtain support,
how their solutions will dovetail with your existing escalation and call
center processes and how they will integrate with your CRM software.
With these performance indicators in mind, you can successfully
communicate your expectations to proposed vendors and intelligently
evaluate their products. By choosing the right customer support
technology, you can reduce support expenses, while improving your
customers' experience, and ultimately play a key role in boosting the
success of your business.
Diego Ventura is founder and CEO of noHold, Inc. (www.nohold.com).
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