Experience Flows(TM), Contextual Knowledge and Social Analytics Create Meaningful Customer Journeys That Convert Visitors Into Customers
KANA(R) Software, Inc., a global leader in customer service solutions used by more than 850 enterprises including half of the Global 100 and more than 250 government agencies, today introduced new breakthrough capabilities in its next-generation enterprise customer service solution, designed to support the new strategic imperative in Web Customer Service: customer acquisition.
To succeed in today's ultra-competitive business environment, where long-term customer loyalty simply can't be taken for granted, organizations must be more proactive with their Web Customer Service (WCS) initiatives, broadening their horizon beyond customer retention to customer acquisition. WCS is the term frequently used to characterize the interactions between a customer and a company via online channels -- to obtain information or resolve an issue before, during, or after a purchase.
Through the combination of Contextual Knowledge, Experience Flows(TM) and Social Analytics, KANA makes the prospect of servicing customers via the web exponentially more powerful and intuitive, enabling a richer more rewarding customer experience. This enables organizations to distinguish their brands by offering outstanding service in the days and months even before a sale is made, resulting in relevant and meaningful customer journeys that help convert website visitors into paying customers.
"Web customer service transcends traditional contact center-centric scenarios by empowering customers to execute self-service interactions online -- where they're spending more and more of their time," said James Norwood, chief marketing officer of KANA. "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."
Adding Contextual Knowledge for Good Customer Experiences
Traditional online experiences separate the customer's ability to ask for help (such as queries) from their ability to carry out processes or tasks (such as placing orders), because knowledge is all too often disconnected from the transactional areas of the website. KANA Web Customer Service encompasses the entire service experience lifecycle, coupling 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 just the information they need when they need it, based on the context of their activity and persona, and so are guided through productive, satisfying experiences from start to finish -- ultimately reducing the need to defer to the contact center.
Experience Flows: Orchestrating Ideal Customer Experiences By leveraging KANA's unique ability to combine process, data, context and knowledge within Experience Flows(TM), customers are seamlessly guided through common 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 extensive pre-packaged templates and powerful drag and drop tools, as well as modeling seamless escalation of customer queries to the appropriate chat, co-browse or email agent through agile channeling.
Text and Social Analytics: Listening, Understanding and Engaging
It's essential that Web Customer Service initiatives are integrated with social media channels, which are gaining in popularity as a customer service vehicle. Via a natural language processing (NLP) based text analytics solution within KANA Web Customer Service, organizations can listen to customer feedback and sentiment by analyzing both social media and direct channels. By listening to structured and unstructured customer-generated content, organizations can supporting continuous improvement efforts for service, sales and marketing efforts.
At the end of the day, effective web customer service is not about forcing customers to dig through website structures and content in search of what they need, but guiding them to the relevant information and answers they need quickly and efficiently when online. Many WCS and social listening systems offer simple keyword searching, which is ineffective when information needs are specific or complex. By contrast, KANA Web Customer Service identifies the context gleaned from the user's persona -- their profile and behavior -- to support a highly tailored and intuitive interaction, when and where customers need it. Contextual knowledge on key pages such as shopping carts, forms and applications, reduces abandonment rates and increase conversions.
KANA Web Customer Service is part of the KANA family of solutions designed to support today's top customer service priorities: supporting rich, responsive interactions; reducing contact center costs; and improving customer retention and acquisition rates. The award-winning KANA Service Experience Management (SEM) platform combines comprehensive 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.
About KANA Software
KANA makes every customer experience a good experience. A global leader in customer service solutions delivered on-premise or in the cloud, KANA Service Experience Management (SEM) lets organizations take complete control over customer service interactions, so they can take care of customers, while managing costs and reinforcing brand. By unifying and maintaining context for customer journeys across agent, web, social and mobile experiences, KANA solutions have reduced handling time, increased resolution rates and improved net promoter score (NPS) at more than 850 enterprises, including half of the Global 100 and more than 250 government agencies. KANA is based in Silicon Valley, California and has offices worldwide.
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