CRM - March 2008 - (Page 36)

ENTERPRISE SEARCH A contact center SEARCH very different animal than its enterprise counterpart, contact center search provides its own set of benefits. The general concept of enterprise search has gotten a lot of attention as of late, but one of its most specific applications has been acknowledged by experts as important for some: search within the contact center. Essentially, contact centers are non-stop data-generating factories, with every call that comes in providing vital information about customer sentiments, problems, and trends—provided that all that data can be effectively managed. One of the leading players in contact center search is Autonomy, whose Autonomy etalk unit employs enterprise search capabilities in ways specific to the contact center, such as understanding customer trends and behaviors by analyzing call data. Other vendors in enterprise search (such as Knova and Kana) and contact center infrastructure (such as Avaya) offer contact center–specific search products. CA used Coveo’s enterprise search products specifically to improve the ability of contact center agents to answer customer queries. Astute Solutions recently released a new product called Agent Assist, which allows agents to enter a customer’s question verbatim and get a reply that cites specific information within a document, then guides the agent through questions to ask the customer. “The same things anyone wants to do in search are what you want to do in the contact center,” says Donna Fluss, founder and president of DMG Consulting. The idea of contact center search “is not as new as people think it is. It’s just a matter of how you think about it.” According to Ian Jacobs, a strategic analyst with Frost & Sullivan, the key component of successful contact center search is that when an answer isn’t found immediately, the search engine is able to prompt the agent with further questions to ask the customer in order to get better results. Also, contact center search functions typically have the ability to “learn” from the questions they are asked, creating files of answers to previously asked questions for future reference, including Web links or attachments to pass on to the customer, if needed. “It’s certainly not anything new. Contact centers do this sort of thing all the time,” Jacobs says. “Although, in the past, a lot of the tools they used were homegrown.” New innovations in contact center search include features that help agents pitch products to customers who call in with a problem—the vaunted goal of “turning the contact center into a profit center.” Contact center search solutions can quickly provide agents with ideas for sales based on what the customer is seeking, such as extended warranties to other products that are appropriate to the caller. Another recent innovation in contact center technology is the ability to link a company’s Web site with its contact center. Online smart FAQs powered by search technology can guide customers through many problems, but if they can’t come up with an answer, they can direct the customer to call an agent who has available all the information the caller entered online. The caller doesn’t have to explain the problem all over again, and the agent can jump right in with an appropriate response. These types of services will drive more interest in enterprise search for the contact center, Jacobs believes. “I think you’re going to see a greater push for CRM vendors to get into this,” he says. —RD two versions of enterprise search: combined hardware and software solutions (the Google Search Appliance, intended for larger companies and starting at $30,000; the Google Mini Search Appliance, for SMBs and starting at $3,000); and hosted software (Custom Search Business Edition) that allows Google technology to be added to the search function on a company’s Web site. Other companies have been putting pressure on Google with lower-cost or free products with somewhat less functionality than the upper tiers, including IBM’s OmniFind Yahoo! Edition and Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express, both of which are downloadable for free. “The entrylevel market has been growing very quickly for the last couple of years,” Brown says, since Google’s move into enterprise search in 2003. The arrival of major vendors seems to be a defensive response to Google’s attempts to penetrate the software market, something Microsoft and IBM have an interest in preventing. “I don’t think they care if they make any money on these products,” Brown says. THE FUTURE A lot of large businesses bought into enterprise search over the last decade, when the technology was fairly immature. With midmarket and entry-level options growing more sophisticated, those businesses are now shopping around to see if they can get the same or better technology for less money. “That’s a big problem for companies like Autonomy,” Brown says. “It’s potentially very disruptive.” The January purchase of Fast Search & Transfer by Microsoft for $1.2 billion not only shined a spotlight on the enterprise search market, but is likely to set off a round of consolidation in the high-end search market, Brown believes. Major vendors are more likely to see enterprise search as a viable business proposition and try to acquire the leading high-end search companies, which are typically small and ripe for takeover. Brown sees Endeca as a possible acquisition target, although industry leader Autonomy has enough diversity in its offerings that it should be able to remain on its own for www.destinationCRM.com 36 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | MARCH 2008 http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - March 2008

CRM - March 2008 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Re-shoring Contact Centers NetSuite’s Sweet Ride Takes Another Turn SaaS X.0? destinationCRM Dashboard Retailers Dream Big Detroit: Driven to Distraction Required Reading The Markets Within the Masses In Search of... Selling CRM to Your Sales Force Quixtar’s Quick Fix Travelocity’s New Traveling Companion Chasing Down First-Call Resolution Governing Better Marketing Secret of My Success Re: Tooling Connect Pint of View

CRM - March 2008

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