KANA Launches Industry

Next Generation of KANA Enterprise Answers the Real Need for "Joined Up" Customer Service With Potent Capabilities Across Agent, Web, Social, and Mobile Experiences

KANA Software, Inc., a global leader in customer service solutions delivered on-premises or in the cloud and used by more than 900 organizations worldwide, today introduced the industry's first end-to-end omni-channel customer service suite -- the next generation of KANA Enterprise -- in direct response to the new "everyone serves" customer experience imperative.

Customer expectations have risen dramatically, demanding an end to silo-based organizations and inconsistent or difficult to access service. KANA Enterprise delivers the first unified and omni-channel customer service platform to fully meet the demands of the modern customer. The omni-channel approach joins up cross, agile and intentional channeling so businesses can ensure a customer's brand experience is positive, consistent and cost-effective across all touch points.

"In an industry that has traditionally approached customer service channels separately, KANA has taken a more holistic approach," said James Norwood, chief marketing officer for KANA Software. "Until the introduction of KANA Enterprise, customer service had suffered from a lack of integration and misunderstanding across service channels, often leading to overwhelmed agents, lost productivity, and degraded experiences for customers. KANA Enterprise is a unified platform supporting both agent-based and customer self-service scenarios with a potent mix of technology and capabilities that enable seamless customer service across the contact center, web, mobile, and social spheres."

KANA Enterprise builds upon KANA's rich heritage and exclusive focus on customer service, realizes the promise of acquisitions KANA has made, and successfully demonstrates strategic product convergence delivering a breadth of capabilities that includes dynamic case management; web self-service; proactive and mobile chat; co-browsing; social listening, proactive analytics and community engagement; email, campaign and white mail management; and advanced knowledge management.

Omni-Channel Approach Becomes Paramount

"Customers want efficient, effortless service from the touch point and communication channel of their choice," explained Kate Leggett, principal analyst for Forrester Research in a recent blog post and report. "They want to receive accurate, relevant, and complete answers to their questions upon first contact with a company. Forrester data backs this up: Sixty-three percent of customers agree that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide good service."

Leggett further noted that customer satisfaction correlates to customer loyalty and has economic benefits. "Forrester calculates that a 10-percentage-point improvement in a company's customer experience score can translate into more than $1 billion in revenue. Conversely, poor customer experiences are costly: Our data shows that 75% of consumers move to another channel when online service fails, which can incur a cost of many millions of dollars."(1)

Deep Contextual Awareness

Beyond omni-channel engagement, KANA Enterprise provides unique capabilities to manage knowledge, data, processes and tasks in context with every interaction -- as they unfold. With KANA Enterprise, organizations can now engage with customers accurately, consistently, and completely across all touch points; continually monitor customer service activities; and re-model (or optimize) those processes as needed to ensure next best action/offer decisions are leveraged to deliver the right service experiences.

Cost-Effective Customer Centricity

KANA Enterprise reduces agent effort by delivering intent-driven processes that are context aware for each customer's journey and every interaction channel. KANA Enterprise also reduces customer effort by easily joining escalation from mobile and web self-service interactions with assisted service scenarios containing full context and history -- removing frustrating repetition and ultimately reducing the total cost to serve.

KANA Enterprise -- Taking Assisted Service to New Levels

KANA Enterprise Agent Experience features a business process-based and goal-oriented dynamic case management backbone, with a modern user interface that adapts in real time to the context of the interaction at hand -- helping agents better resolve issues at the first call.

KANA Enterprise -- Delivering a Digital First Approach to Service

KANA Enterprise Web Experience offers interactive channel choices such as video, virtual assistant, and knowledge delivered proactively and in context -- reducing unnecessary burden so agents can focus on higher value customers and more complex service scenarios.

KANA Enterprise -- Beyond Social Listening with Collaboration and Response

KANA Enterprise Social Experience embeds social media directly into the agent desktop with full listen and respond capabilities, social community support including crowd-sourced knowledge curation, and agent collaboration via activity streams -- harnessing social insights to improve interactions.

KANA Enterprise -- Leading the Way with Mobile Service that Works

KANA Enterprise Mobile Experience ensures customers and employees have the same access to the service channels they depend on such as chat, email, social, and search -- but now 24/7 via their smart devices while on the go.

"KANA Enterprise is the biggest product launch in our history because it unifies the best of all KANA solutions on a single platform creating the industry's first true end-to-end customer service suite," said Norwood. "Some industry commentators suggest end-to-end customer service is still five years out from mainstream adoption, but we firmly believe and have substantiated with customers that the need is here today. Together with these forward-thinking businesses we're redefining customer service."

Salmat, Australia's largest and most experienced provider of outsourced contact center solutions for many of Australia and New Zealand's most trusted brands, is among early adopters deploying KANA Enterprise as a key component of its integrated multi-channel contact center services offering.

"We needed a solution that could seamlessly integrate customer information, workflow processes and communication channels through a single, unified agent desktop that enables our agents to service our clients' customers as efficiently as possible -- that solution was KANA Enterprise," said David Besson, chief executive officer, Salmat Customer Engagement Solutions.

Additional early adopters include a global money transfer agent deploying KANA Enterprise as its next-generation contact center for multilingual customer interactions via phone, web, and social channels; a European commercial airline unifying traditional and digital customer support channels with integrated social media insights; and a global satellite navigation systems provider accelerating issue resolution with context-driven knowledge sharing.

KANA Enterprise is available today, offering choice and flexibility in licensing and deployment scenarios including cloud, on-premises, and hybrid models.

About KANA Software

KANA understands the value of great Customer Service experiences. We know every channel through which a customer communicates with -- and about -- your brand. We provide on-premises and cloud solutions for large enterprises and mid-market organizations, and 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 scores (NPS) at more than 900 enterprises -- including many of the Fortune 500 and more than 250 government agencies. At KANA, we help create differentiated and personalized customer experiences that count.

KANA is based in Silicon Valley, California and has offices worldwide. For more information, visit www.kana.com, phone +1 800-737-8738, and follow KANA on Twitter @KANAsoftware.

KANA is a registered trademark of KANA Software, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

(1) Forrester Research, Inc. blog, "Four Steps for Optimizing Customer Service Operations," February 28, 2013 and Forrester Research, Inc. report, "Understand Communication Channels Needs To Craft Your Customer Service Strategy, March 11, 2013.

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