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KANA Intros Web Customer Service in Support of Customer Acquisition

TMCnews Featured Article


June 12, 2012

KANA Intros Web Customer Service in Support of Customer Acquisition

By Amanda Ciccatelli, TMCnet Web Editor


To succeed in today’s competitive business environment, where long-term customer loyalty can’t be taken for granted, organizations must be proactive with their Web customer service initiatives, broadening their horizon beyond customer retention and beyond to customer acquisition.


Recently, Service Experience Management (SEM) Provider KANA Software has introduced new breakthrough capabilities in its Web Customer Service Solution, a next-generation enterprise customer service solution designed to support the new strategic imperative in Web customer service: customer acquisition.

The KANA Web Customer Service Solution is part of the KANA family of solutions designed to support today’s top customer service priorities such as supporting responsive interactions; reducing contact center costs; and improving customer retention and acquisition rates. The KANA SEM platform combines Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Business Process Management (BPM), Knowledge Management, Text Analytics and Social Media to support the delivery of good experiences on brand and on budget across customer interaction channels.

Through the combination of Contextual Knowledge, Experience Flows and Social Analytics, KANA services customers via the Web more powerfully and intuitively enabling a rewarding customer experience. Organizations can distinguish their brands by offering excellent service before a sale is made, resulting in meaningful customer journeys that convert website visitors into customers.

“Today, Web customer service isn’t an option; it’s a strategic imperative to meet the needs of customers in a cost-effective manner,” James Norwood, chief marketing officer, KANA Software, Inc, told TMCnet. “Research has shown a vast majority of customers prefer to serve themselves via the Web when they have a customer service question or issue.”

KANA’s Web Customer Service Solution was designed to address the deficits of Web customer service solutions in the market today. KANA is promoting a new higher strategic agenda in the competitive business environment, where long-term customer loyalty simply can’t be taken for granted – leveraging Web customer service to move way beyond customer retention.

These days, companies are leveraging a ‘channel shift’ strategy to divert high-volume, less complex calls to the Web channel. However, Norwood explained that leveraging the Web to reduce the cost of servicing customers can backfire if customers can’t find what they need, they become frustrated and dissatisfied, defecting to competitors and/or escalating issues to more costly channels.

By leveraging KANA’s ability to combine process, data, context and knowledge within experience flows, customers are guided through processes such as purchases, returns, or on boarding, increasing conversions for prospective customers, and reducing escalations for existing ones. Customer experience teams can create ideal customer experience flows through pre-packaged templates and drag and drop tools, as well as modeling escalation of customer queries to the chat, co-browse or email agent through channeling.

“Many calls to the contact center arise only after customers fail to find what they need on the Web first; therefore, effective Web customer service means delivering accurate answers consistently, and always in context to customers when online. That’s the secret to a good experience,” said Norwood.

Traditional online experiences separate the customer's ability to ask for help from their ability to carry out processes because knowledge is many times disconnected from the transactional areas of the website. The KANA Web Customer Experience Solution encompasses the service experience lifecycle, combining knowledge bases with transactional functions, data and context to eliminate disconnects between the information customers need and their online goals. With KANA, customers are given the information they need when they need it, based on the context of their activity, and then are guided through productive experiences from start to finish.

At the end of the day, effective Web customer service is not about forcing customers to dig through website content in search of what they need. Instead, it’s about guiding them to the relevant information and answers they need quickly and efficiently when online.




Edited by Rich Steeves







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