By Ed Shepherdson, Managing Director, Customer Information Solutions, Coveo

Prediction #1:  Organizations will look beyond the standalone knowledgebase for knowledge access.
Today’s leading organizations are taking customer service and support to new levels with a unique approach to knowledge management and information access: They’re simply leaving the data where it is, and providing ubiquitous access to it across the entire customer support infrastructure – in effect, infusing the entire infrastructure with actionable knowledge.

For years, organizations have relied on a standalone knowledgebase as “the” system of record for customer information. While the knowledge base isn’t going away, more and more organizations are realizing that the KB just can’t keep up with the explosive growth of information throughout various systems inside and outside the enterprise. What’s more, this data is both structured and unstructured, so the ability to maintain updated content and accuracy requires complex integrations with external systems- and integrating CRM systems, customer communities, bug databases, and more, can cost millions of dollars, interrupt business and drain resources.

Rather, these companies are pulling information from their entire knowledge ecosystem into a unified index, which creates a real-time, highly scalable, “virtual” knowledgebase comprised of information from throughout the enterprise, as well as  external social channels like customer communities, wikis and more. This advanced access layer becomes the basis of multiple services which can be provided to customer service, sales, executives, IT, and more. From here, role specific dashboards of relevant customer information and product knowledge can be easily configured for contact center agents, managers, executives, even customers themselves.

Prediction #2:  Personalized dashboards will emerge as the single access point for contact center agents, replacing the 12 to 20 systems they normally access to do their jobs.
Customers will become used to agents knowing who they are, what their issues are, and how to resolve them quickly and efficiently, as best in class customer service organizations adopt Enterprise Search 2.0-powered dashboards and mashups for their contact center agents.

Customer support agents need a new level of access to the real-time data that surrounds them in their organization’s knowledge ecosystem. Navigating between multiple screens and systems in search of information to resolve customer issues is counterproductive when trying to improve first call resolution or reduce call handling times. With a unified index of knowledge and information, agents log onto a single interface, configured to the way they work, which displays information from across the knowledge ecosystem, including CRM systems, knowledgebases, customer communities, chat, support mailboxes, product FAQ’s, and bug databases--even desktop and email content. Agents are then armed with information specifically related to their customer accounts. This instant knowledge access improves agent efficiency, increases first call resolution, reduces case resolution times, and increases job satisfaction. Moreover, it creates happier, more satisfied customers.

CA Technologies, a Coveo customer, reports a significant reduction in case resolution time since its contact center agents gained better access to the knowledge and information to quickly and accurately resolve customer cases.  Another Coveo customer, Netezza, an IBM company, reported that within 30 days of implementation, they reduced the time needed to identify known problems by 67% and reduced the number of duplicate bugs submitted to Development Engineering by 50%. So, not only is its Support team saving time, Development Engineering no longer wastes hours identifying bug submissions as known problems. These efficiency gains have helped Development increase the number of customer bugs fixed by 63%.

Prediction #3: Voice of the Customer Analytics will become completely dynamic.
In 2011, we’ll see Voice of the Customer Analytics become completely dynamic, with information changing as customers indicate their satisfactions levels with service and products across multiple channels, enabling customer service executives to become more proactive in managing customer satisfaction and identifying product trends before they become issues.  Collecting and collating solicited and unsolicited customer sentiment through these channels represents the true pulse of your customers. Enterprise Search 2.0-powered Voice of the Customer Analytics will enable customer support executives, managers and analysts to spot trends and understand root causes.

The bottom line is, infusing knowledge into your existing infrastructure allows customer service and support teams to unlock the full value of knowledge and information – both inside and outside the firewall. And its impact is felt throughout customer service and support teams, the customers themselves, as well as the organization at large. The results are seen in improvement to key customer service metrics, higher rates of customer satisfaction, and increased business performance.
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Ed Shepherdson is the Managing Director of Coveo’s Customer Information Solutions, which include Solutions for Customer Self-Service, for Contact Centers, for Customer 360 Analytics, and for Voice of the Customer Analytics. Shepherdson has 30 years of experience in the tech industry, most recently as VP of Global Customer Support with Cognos, an IBM Company, where he spent 18 years in a variety of senior positions.