When things go wrong, it's not just users who need
support. Responsible for the greater part of a company's
electronic infrastructure, understaffed IT departments
often find themselves attending to a burdensome load
of "fix me first" service requests while ensuring the
well being of the enterprise neural network. Clearly,
a solution that can help automate the resolution of
service requests with minimal manual intervention
benefits both the user and the help desk.
Previo Inc.'s eSupport Essentials is an innovative
application for rapid restoration of desktop or
notebook PCs to a fully operational condition. Previo's
patented technology takes periodic "snapshots" of the
user's PC (operating system, applications,
configuration, user data and preferences) and stores a
highly compressed image of the PC in a secure online
server. When a user experiences a problem, either the
user or help desk personnel can quickly restore the PC
to any saved working state while preserving current
data files. The application lessens the impact of PC
failures on both users and IT staff by avoiding costly
first calls, reducing problem escalations and
minimizing deskside visits by a technician.
The technology behind eSupport Essentials is a
sophisticated compression technology that captures and
compares information that is new or changed since the
last snapshot was taken. The snapshot agent integrates
with the client operating system so that the user is
unaware of the snapshot and can work without
interruption; even open files can continue operating.
The solution provides for automated, full system
snapshots and manual snapshots, whereby users or help
desk personnel can manually initiate a snapshot to
protect certain files or the whole computer between
automated snapshots. In the event of failure, eSupport
Essentials takes a snapshot before
restoration/recovery so that the failure can be
analyzed at a later time. The application provides
three recovery options. The first, file and folder
rollback, allows for restoration of individual files
or folders. Users use Windows Explorer to
drag-and-drop individual files or folders from the
central repository to their PCs. Help desk personnel
can assist users through the application's Remote
Assistant tool. Full system rollback restores an
entire computer to any saved working state to resolve
system or application problems. Last, full system
recovery restores a complete system when a computer is
lost, damaged or unbootable.
eSupport Essentials provides system administrators
with a variety of management features, including an
installation wizard, administrator and help desk
consoles, remote client installation, automatic client
update, system recovery wizard, status logging,
several security levels and reporting capability. The
Remote Assistant tool permits help desk personnel to
remotely control PCs via the help desk console feature
and can be used to configure applications, change
settings or perform other tasks that would otherwise
require a visit to the user's computer. Remote
Assistant also includes a chat feature for
communications between users and the help desk. Previo
offers the solution on a subscription basis as well as
a managed service.
Order confirmation and credit verification can be
laborious, repetitive processes. A lot of customer and
agent time (i.e., productivity) is wasted, reiterating
information provided moments earlier. Witness Systems,
Inc. released its new "voice signature" recording
application, designed to enable businesses to document
and retain customer transactions by capturing the
customer's verbal authorization, generally for sales
verification purposes. Voice signature serves as an
extension of Witness Systems' eQuality suite of
multimedia customer interaction recording and analysis
products. It is designed to help companies increase
revenue by simplifying the sales process and reduce
costs by leveraging verbal rather than written
authorizations for certain types of transactions, such
as consumer debits authorized over the telephone. For
companies across vertical industries faced with the
challenge of documenting the requests of their customers
as they sell products and services via the telephone,
this functionality will record their customers' purchase
desires and retain those interactions for future
reference or dispute resolution. During the verification
process, customers are prompted to verify the specific
transaction they have requested, and customer
service/sales representatives are required to obtain the
customers' verbal consent to the transaction -- a
process designed to protect both the consumer and the
company itself.
To capture customer voice signatures, companies can
use the eQuality solution to establish "business rules"
that trigger recording of those very specific sound
bites. Contact center agents also can manually initiate
recording by simply clicking a button on their desktops.
The voice signature software saves each interaction and
identifies it using unique attributes defined by the
enterprise, such as date and time of call, customer
account number and type of transaction. Interactions
captured in this manner are then stored as discrete
voice recordings for easy future retrieval. The voice
signature application retains all voice recordings on a
readily accessible storage medium for a user-defined
time period, making the transactions available for
review and validation by supervisory and management
staff on an as-needed basis.
SafeHarbor Technology Corporation has introduced its new
data warehousing product, Data Deck, to help companies
better understand their customers' needs through support
interactions. Bo Wandell, president of the Web-based
customer support provider, said, "In a multichannel
support environment, the ability to accumulate customer
data throughout all support interactions and integrate
it with internal data is a powerful way to measure the
performance of a product or service."
Data Deck is the data-warehousing feature of the
company's Web-based customer and technical support
solution, Semaphore Services. Data Deck captures the
actual data from customer support interactions and
provides analytic tools for improving product planning
and customer service management. Data Deck tracks
service performance, provides customizable reports and
drills down to minute-by-minute customer support
activity with a click of the mouse. "Sorting data isn't
the sexiest part of doing business," remarked Wandell, "but
in those details provided by Data Deck are the keys to
improving products, services and the bottom line."
Data Deck allows companies to access customer data
through their Web browser at any time. Data Deck reports
can also be easily downloaded for real-time access to
current, historical or trend customer data, at any
desired level of detail. Data Deck features include
delivery of analytical data for smarter decision making,
informed product planning and better customer service.
Customer data can be sorted in a variety of ways and
combinations for tracking customer activity. The data is
captured across all support channels, including Web
self-help, e-mail, chat and the telephone. It allows for
customized reporting, viewable in a Web browser, and
downloadable in formats including Word, Excel, RTF, CSV
and Crystal Report.
SafeHarbor reports it can build, launch and support a
company's self-help site in eight weeks, including the
data warehousing service. SafeHarbor uses graphics,
screen shots and step-by-step instructions to help guide
users to answers for complicated and technical
questions. SafeHarbor's staff also provides live,
one-to-one support through e-mail, chat and the
telephone.
Turning
Web Sites Into WorkSites www.imanage.com/650-356-1166
Since the Web is often billed as the global virtual
community, there is good reason to equip your Web site
with the tools necessary to transform it into an
interactive, interconnected meeting and work place,
particularly in the virtual business-to-business
community. iManage, Inc. is attempting to facilitate
that transformation with its iManage WorkSite product
suite. WorkSites are described as central spaces where
employees, customers, partners and suppliers are
empowered to conduct their daily business-critical work,
share and exchange knowledge and information; in short,
optimize all components of an e-business' value chain.
The iManage WorkSite suite incorporates technologies,
such as content management, portal functionality,
collaboration and business process mapping, developed on
a scalable business platform, the WorkSite Server. Based
on open standards (e.g., Java, J2EE LDAP, XML/XSL and
HTTP/SSL) it supports a variety of platforms, including
Microsoft NT/2000, Solaris and Linux. This permits
organizations and developers to customize and create new
WorkSite applications or use the solution's applications
"out of the box" to suit their needs. The suite is
comprised of the iManage WorkSite Server and four
application components: WorkDocs, WorkTeam, WorkPortal
and WorkRoute.
WorkDocs is a Web-based client providing versatile
and secure document management functionality over the
Internet, Intranets and Extranets. It offers extensive
search and retrieval ability, document check-in and
check-out, revision management, history, audit trails,
offline capabilities and security to prevent
unauthorized access. WorkTeam, designed as a
collaborative workspace for dispersed teams, manages
complex activities such as mergers, acquisitions,
manufacturing and IT outsourcing across geographic
boundaries. Features include project document
management, flexible collaborative tools,
synchronization with Outlook and PDA calendar events and
tasks, and advanced search capabilities. WorkPortal is a
platform offering a single access point to enterprise
application data, documents and Web-based content. Using
a standard browser interface, customization features
enable users to personalize pertinent sources of
information for display in their preferred format.
WorkRoute is a business process application providing
tools for routing information through processing and
approval cycles within dispersed or remote teams. It
manages entire business processes by handling the
interrelationships between participants, procedures,
tasks, information, events, content and management. The
WorkRoute designer tool's drag-and-drop operation allows
for the mapping out of complex processes using
predefined rules or customized, complex rules for
faxing, e-mail, document printing and history creation.
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