Everyone has seen the question-and-answer portion of companies' Web
sites that is often referred to as a FAQ (frequently asked questions). These
FAQs are usually static pages that try to anticipate and answer as many
customer questions as possible. Often, though, a potential customer cannot
find what he or she needs or wants in the FAQ section, which necessitates a
search for more specific information. The customer often becomes frustrated
with the search and abandons the query and the Web site altogether. To limit
this customer loss, Interactive Intelligence's e-FAQ 2.2 offers an
approach that is much more interactive and, therefore, more agreeable to
visitors to a Web site or those trying to find information by questioning
via e-mail.
Through the e-FAQ knowledge engine, organizations are offered linguistic
analysis to clarify incoming questions, quick answers to customers'
questions, thousands of automated responses a day, Q&A authoring tools,
interactive Web-based self-service with escalation to a live agent, and FAQ
and e-mail management. A visitor needs only enter text into a form on the
Web or send an e-mail to receive a quick and informative response. TMC Labs
looked at this functionality inherent in e-FAQ 2.2 to see how well it all
performed.
Configuration Utility
When we first received the e-FAQ server, we were just a bit worried.
This was because we heard a lot of rattling coming from within the server,
so before we plugged in the power cord, we opened up the lid, shook out four
screws that were loose and reattached them in the appropriate spots.
Obviously, the server was a victim of rough handling, so we were wary of
errors appearing as a result. The Windows 2000 server did boot up. However,
the e-FAQ Configuration Utility, which showed the status of the e-FAQ Server
and allowed for its configurations, stated that there was an error. Now, a
little more concerned, we rebooted the computer, but again experienced the
same disagreeable results. Then, although the e-FAQ processor service had
already been started automatically, we stopped and started it again on a
whim. Magically, the e-FAQ server began to work. Our worries about a
banged-up server were needless, and we were able to proceed with our
testing. Thus, one of our first tests was to reboot the server to see if the
error came back. Unfortunately, it did, so we had to stop and then restart
the service again. For some reason, the e-FAQ Processor service would not
automatically start correctly upon boot up, though it did start. We think
this problem was a result of the SQL server not starting up before the e-FAQ
processor. In any case, this was an easy fix ' we set the e-FAQ service to
manual and started it up again when we needed to reboot the server, which we
rarely had to do.
Knowledge Manager
We accessed the Web-based e-FAQ Knowledge Manager user interface as
either a supervisor with rights to all the functionality or as a user with
rights to only a specific group, in this case the 'Marketing' group. No
matter which user was logged on, the main icons were present ' those of
Authoring, Workflow, Testing, Reporting and Options. The main difference
between the users lay within the categories of each main title, located on
the left side of the Web-based interface (if none of the Windows Explorer
bar views, such as Search or Favorites, are selected). Besides having access
to all of the e-FAQ groups as opposed to specified ones, the supervisor user
also has access to all the management options, whereas other users do not.
These management options consist of managing users and user groups, log-in
tracking reports to view the log-in history of users and management reports
that show permissions for users, groups and queues.
The main functionality of the e-FAQ Knowledge Manager is the authoring
tool, where FAQs are added, modified or queried. The interface allows users
to perform any of these functions easily with suggestions and feedback
available for each entry. These entries can be edited with XML tags included
or as plain text. In this way, each FAQ is continuously updated to the
knowledge engine even after the original FAQ is completed. During the
creation process, the status of all entries during a given time is shown
under the Workflow title so any user looking will know where the FAQ is in
development.
Web Sample And E-mail Demo
The information created in e-FAQ Knowledge Manager is passed on to Web
site visitors inquiring about the material answered by a particular entry.
When a question is asked, the e-FAQ engine responds automatically once an
appropriate match is found. This is done using linguistic analysis of the
question ' matching the question with the appropriate answer based on the
words in the question, their synonyms and the proximity of the words.
Obviously, we had to test this analysis to make sure that visitors to our
demo Web site would receive accurate and expressive answers.
We clicked on the Web Sample page and asked questions relating to the
FAQs in our database. Many of our questions were not precise, some were not
clear on what was being asked and others were laced with grammatical and
spelling errors. While it is true that some of these questions confused the
e-FAQ engine, most of the results were the answers we were looking for, if
not as the first entry given, then as one of the following questions and
answers suggested.
Similar testing was done using e-mail through Microsoft Outlook as the
means of asking the questions and then letting the e-FAQ engine parse and
auto respond with the best matching answer. Here, at times, we asked more
than one question relating to the material on the database to see if all of
the questions were answered accurately. Responses were very quick and the
answers were accurate, but not necessarily for all the questions asked. This
is likely due, in part, to the limited e-FAQ database of entries we had.
However, we did ask more than one question on a single e-mail that we knew
was in the database, and e-FAQ responded accurately, answering the latter
question, and on the same e-mail response, followed with an answer to the
first question. Overall, we were satisfied with the performance of the e-FAQ
engine, having little doubt about its success in a real-world situation.
Reporting
After entering some visitor questions via either e-mail or the Web, we
logged on as a supervisor for the e-FAQ Knowledge Manager and looked more
closely at the reporting functionality. The reports consisted of usage
history, entry search, entry ranking, no results list, activation, user
tracking and query search reporting. Within moments, we could see the
questions that were asked and where they had come from (Web or e-mail), the
responses given, which FAQ was searched if the question had come from the
Web (it searched all of them if coming from e-mail) and many other
informative analyses. We were very impressed with the reporting
functionality, but especially with the 'no results' list reports because
they gave us the ability to build FAQs quickly. If the question was relevant
to a specific FAQ, but was not in the database, all that needed to be done
was to press the 'Spawn New Entry' button, and the question appeared in
XML format on the 'Add Entry' screen, ready to be answered so an entry
would be available for a future visitor on the Web or an e-mail asking a
similar question.
Conclusion
For any organization with many daily e-mail or Web-based inquiries,
whether for customer or technical support, sales or marketing, e-FAQ 2.2
exemplifies a cost-effective and sophisticated approach to a better
knowledge management solution. As compared to static FAQs, e-FAQ 2.2 is far
superior because of the product's very nature ' it is interactive, well
disciplined and has an accurate knowledge engine, which also reduces the
response time and increases productivity.
Interactive Intelligence's e-FAQ also outclasses most of the other
comparable software solutions because of its engine, but even more so
because of the knowledge manager. The e-FAQ Knowledge Manager offers a
complete package of reporting, management and other functionality not often
seen in other solutions. With the excellent usability of the Knowledge
Manager's interface, the terrific e-FAQ engine and superb documentation,
we find that e-FAQ 2.2 is indeed first-rate.
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May 2002 Table Of Contents ]
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