April 2002

E-Commerce Products And Services Roundup

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
bockl@acapel.com
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
paul.mudlaff@accrue.com
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
sales@cisco.com
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
jchawla@egain.com
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
jpearce@ehelp.com
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
jfiorda@epiphany.com
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
alisonw@fireclick.com
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
alisem@us.ibm.com
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
jeff.gottesman@influenceone.com
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
liz.scarborough@ip-unity.com
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
sales@newchannel.com
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
welld@pegasystems.com
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
info@rightnow.com
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
darrin@wiseuncle.com
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).

[ Return To The April 2002 Table Of Contents ]

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).

[ Return To The April 2002 Table Of Contents ]