Upload
duongtuyen
View
214
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTResolutionizingTM the Customer Support Experience
ABOUT KNOVA KMKnova is a full-featured knowledge management software
solution for large customer service and support organizations
– especially those who need to handle complex queries across
channels in industries such as high tech, telecommunications,
financial services and the IT help desk.
Knova helps these companies resolve customer issues quickly,
accurately, and cost effectively with unparalleled scalability.
www.kmroi.com
Knova Knowledge Management .................1 - 9
Knova Knowledge Central........................10 - 12
Knova Self Service .....................................13 - 15
Knova Communities ..................................16 - 17
Knova Analytics .........................................18 - 22
TABLE OF CONTENTS
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTPRODUCT OVERVIEW
WHAT SETS KNOVA APART? Most knowledge tools out there are lightweight modules made to handle simple FAQs and backed with basic keyword search that often
returns dubious results. Knova Knowledge Management (KM) from Aptean is a fully realized KM application built for the enterprise and
especially designed to meet the needs of high-tech customer service and support. That means even complex questions can be handled by a
self-service session on your website to drive efficiency while creating an exceptional customer experience.
That’s the elevator pitch. What follows are the detailed differentiators that make Knova the choice for the world’s largest service and support
organizations.
KNOWLEDGEBASE SEARCHWHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS
Searches with concepts, not just keywords.
Knova knows “Blue Screen of Death” is
related to “Stop Error,” and “Running Slow”
is about performance. Knova differentiates
between synonyms and concepts,
allowing fine-grain control of the search
experience. Out-of-the-box, highly tunable,
multilingual, industry specific concept maps
(“ontologies”) shorten time to value.
Most knowledgebase (KB) modules are very
literal-minded: if users don’t type something
exactly the way it’s in the document, they
won’t find it. At best, they support a
manually entered “keyword” field inside
individual articles, which is labor intensive
and hard to maintain.
Knova does away with the “what did
they call it” guessing game, returning
relevant results regardless of specific word
choice. By treating concepts separate from
synonyms, Knova increases precision and
decreases noise. Authors don’t need to
guess keywords to put in each article; Knova
provides a single place to manage concept
maps that apply to all articles and queries.
Guides users through the search process
suggesting possible products, symptoms, or
other terms you define as relevant to your
knowledge to focus results on the most
helpful content. Of course, they can always
narrow results using their own query terms
too.
If users don’t get good results from an initial
search in a KB module, it’s “game over.”
They miss out on getting help that adapts
dynamically to their context and where
they are in the search process and get only
statically configured suggestions about what
to do next.
Knova makes sure that users never run
into dead ends, which makes them more
successful with search and encourages them
to search next time too. This advantage
comes with less, not more, investment of
administration effort because suggestions
are dynamic and not static.
Corrects spelling mistakes with a friendly
“did you mean?” option.
With KB modules, misspelled words fail
silently, misleading the user into thinking
that their content isn’t there.
Knova delivers the right answers even with
misspelled words—which is what users
expect based on their experience with
Internet search engines.
1
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
KNOWLEDGEBASE SEARCH (CONTINUED)WHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS
Supports Advanced Search, including
intelligent processing of Booleans. Users
can explicitly and precisely control search
behavior if they so choose.
A one-size-fits-all search box gives users
no way to focus results on specific sources,
types or combinations of search terms.
Users familiar with the Advanced Search
page in Internet search engines will feel at
home in Knova, but KB modules won’t meet
their expectations.
Delivers best bets and targeted documents
based on easily-defined business rules that
provide the most salient information directly
to the user—with no need for them to look
through search results.
KB modules don’t have any mechanism for
associating specific content with specific
search terms or concepts.
Some documents (like compatibility guides,
policy documents, troubleshooters, or how-
tos) are the definitive answer to a customer’s
question. With Knova, customers don’t need
to play hide-and-seek to find them.
Provides tools for visually tuning the search
experience so content and customer
experience experts can make sure that the
best content bubbles to the top for a broad
range of search queries.
KB modules just deliver an undifferentiated
results list ordered semi-randomly based on
how keywords in the search terms and the
document happen to match up.
Knova’s search engine is smart, but
visual search tuning allows nontechnical
knowledgebase or website owners to make
it even smarter—not just for one or two
popular queries, but for entire classes and
topics of popular queries. Visual search
tuning is never required, but it’s a nice
value-added option for high-ROI search
cases.
“In today’s competitive environment, customer service is a major differentiator that drives revenue and loyalty. As such, it requires attention and investment. Knova is uniquely positioned to serve enterprise companies with premium cross-channel knowledge management tools for self-service and assisted support.“
John RagsdaleVice President of Technology Research, Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA)
2
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
UNIVERSAL SEARCHWHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS
Integrates knowledgebase content
with content anywhere outside the
knowledgebase to provide universal search
and browse: one place to go for answers
and issue resolution. With smart indexing
that leverages automated tagging based
on existing metadata, the repository, and
the content itself, Knova delivers a smart,
guided search experience that spans all
relevant knowledge sources.
KB modules are limited to only searching
content authored in that module. There is
no facility for integrating useful content
from manuals, user communities, collateral,
or other sources of relevant information.
True, other tools can index all your content
for search, but only a true knowledge base
system can normalize search across all your
content with a consistent set of metadata
categories, user rating and usage analytics.
Customers expect “one-stop shopping.”
They hate having to go to multiple systems
and do multiple searches to get what they
need. And internal users require efficient
access to all the information they need
at their fingertips, regardless of where or
how that knowledge was created. Knova
provides access to the single source of truth
for users – making all content search the
same and look like it comes from the same
source – regardless of the source or form
that relevant knowledge takes.
“Slices” large PDF documents (like manuals)
to retrieve only the relevant sections of
content. This makes it possible for users to
easily find only the nuggets they need in
traditional, unwieldy print publications.
KB modules don’t index external sources like
manuals. The only way to retrieve a manual
(or any other large document) is as an
attachment, and KB module search ignores
the content in attachments. Even if the user
finds the attachment, they have no way to
navigate through a document that may be
literally hundreds of pages long.
Legacy content like installation guides,
product documentation, design documents,
and other PDF documents can have
extremely useful information in them—but
it often seems like trying to find a needle in
a haystack. With Knova, formal documents
are not only findable by search, but the
relevant “sections” are returned in virtually
no time at all complete with auto-generated
synopsis, greatly increasing their usability.
3
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
PERSONALIZED SELF-SERVICEWHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS
Provides microsites tailored to specific
customer segments or groups delivering
personalized “push” content, user
experiences, and branding. Microsites are
easily configured by non-technical users and
new ones can be added in minutes as the
need arises.
Microsites also provide virtual home pages
for products.
KB modules provide a single generic portal.
Each user has the same experience, visual
design, and content as all other users,
whether or not it’s appropriate for them.
Most enterprises don’t serve a generic
customer—there are different product
interests, industries, business needs,
entitlements, and roles, all of which need
to be considered when delivering service.
Humans do this naturally, but without
sophisticated Microsite technology like
Knova’s, self-service fails to connect with
customers on their own terms.
Delivers Resolution Flows to guide
employees and agents through a
troubleshooting process. Resolution Flows
can result in precise document retrieval or
any other desired interaction, for example,
a highly efficient case opening process or
internal escalation.
KB modules generally don’t even have
rudimentary “decision trees,” a very
simplified version of Resolution Flows. Either
users like their search results, or they have to
start over from scratch.
Some situations come up again and again,
and cause significant inconvenience or
dissatisfaction among customers. Resolution
Flows can provide white-glove treatment
for these cases, stepping users through
a natural interview to guide them to the
best, most satisfying resolution whatever it
happens to be.
Embeds anywhere on your customer-facing
website as well as provides a full-featured,
out-of-the-box service and support portal
experience.
KB modules provide a static, difficult-
to-configure, one-size-fits-all end user
interface. Their search capabilities are not
designed to be integrated into other web
portals or systems.
Unless search and other knowledge
capabilities are a seamless part of the
customer experience, it’s hard to convince
customers to self-serve. Knova can integrate
anywhere: into an RMA or case opening
process, in site search, in communities—
wherever knowledge can help. KB modules
require flipping to their own page for any
search, resulting in a clunky user experience.
Scales to millions of external users and
thousands of internal users. Knova has run
service and support for some of the largest
sites on the Internet.
KB modules are architected to support
internal CRM system users—large scale
self-service was not considered in their
architecture. Accordingly, performance
suffers badly in selfservice deployments,
and simply adding servers isn’t an option.
The more self-service is used, the more
benefit the knowledgebase brings. If
self-service can’t scale, neither will the ROI.
4
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
PERSONALIZED SELF-SERVICE (CONTINUED)WHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS
Makes content immediately available for
searching, browsing or proactive delivery.
KB modules index content periodically, so
one hour, or two, or even longer can elapse
before content is returned in searches.
When a breaking issue comes up, it’s
essential to get the word out immediately
to employees and customers alike. With
continuous indexing, Knova means never
having to wait for content.
Enables localized content presentation,
browsing and searching, giving users access
to content in their preferred languages.
Search technology in KB modules is typically
English-only, and there’s no facility for
setting preferred languages or creating
localized microsites for global users.
Self-service users who don’t find content
in their preferred language will give up on
self-service and open a case instead, or will
simply quit and be less satisfied, effective
and loyal.
Renders documents flexibly based on their
context (including which Microsite is being
used). Using easily updated stylesheets,
content entered using simple, structured
templates appears professional and well
designed to customers.
KB modules work with plain text and
generic templates, so their articles look more
like database entries and less like something
a customer should see. Worse still, KB
modules sometimes remove line breaks,
turning sample code or configurations into
gobbledygook.
“You only get one chance to make a first
impression,” and content appearance is
crucial. Yet, it’s not a good use of subject
expert time to have them do formatting.
With Knova, it’s easy to deliver polished
webpages without extra formatting effort.
Supports community rating of all returned
content, both authored within the
knowledgebase or indexed from an outside
repository. Community ratings guide
customers to the most popular content, and
ratings also nudge search results towards
proven winners.
KB modules may allow users to say “yes, this
was helpful” or “no, it wasn’t,” but that’s
as far as they go. KB modules just don’t
have any way of learning socially. Customer
ratings aren’t displayed on search results,
and they certainly don’t influence them. And
since KB modules don’t support documents
authored outside of their own module, users
can’t rate external documents either.
In the area of the social web, customers
expect to be able to provide ratings and
feedback, and to have their own experience
be improved and made more relevant based
on what others think too. Knova provides
this capability out-of-the-box. In addition
to better search results, there’s no need to
purchase and integrate a third-party rating
and feedback solution.
Integrates customer communities or
support forums. Search results can include
community questions and answers, and the
knowledgebase can repurpose valuable and
relevant community conversations.
KB modules have no community or forums
capability, and no way of indexing and
retrieving content that comes from a
community. Knova enables and integrates
community activity into service and support
delivery processes.
In many cases, customers prefer to get
answers from other customers, and they’re
willing to share expertise that might not
even exist inside your organization. Knova
eliminates the need to purchase and
integrate a third-party forums solution.
5
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
KNOWLEDGE CAPTURE AND IMPROVEMENTWHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS
Provides universal template management
making it easy to tailor templates for issue
resolutions, how-tos, and Q&As. Simple,
targeted templates make it easier to capture
content and improve content structure as
well.
Most KB modules provide a generic
template (like “issue” and “solution”) that
can’t be modified or extended. Accordingly,
users end up effectively making their own
templates on the fly, increasing effort and
reducing consistency.
Good templates streamline knowledge
capture, help with the troubleshooting
process, and result in more findable, usable,
content. With Knova, it’s simple for non-
technical administrators to create and
maintain the right set of templates.
Enables WYSIWYG content entry, which
supports emphasis, code fragments, images,
and other valuable communication tools as
needed. No HTML coding is required.
KB modules generally support ASCII text,
and that’s it – any additional formatting has
to be done in difficult-to-use (and non-
searchable) attachments.
While knowledge articles look great with
no formatting, thanks to the template
stylesheets provided by Knova, full, rich
media editing means that authors can
use design to communicate even more
effectively whenever they desire.
Supports localized content with authoring
in multiple languages, the ability to link
localized versions of an article to a master
article, and the ability to export translation
workflow requests in industry-standard
formats.
KB modules are designed for a single
language. No provision is made for all
the mechanics required to keep localized
content in sync or to work with localization
vendors.
Customers demand and are now
conditioned to expect content in their native
language. Maintaining a localized, dynamic
knowledgebase requires much more than
just doublebyte support: Knova provides the
end-to-end workflow for creating, managing
and translating global content.
Allows articles to link to other articles
maintaining link integrity as content evolves.
KB modules have limited or no capabilities
for actively managing document links.
With Knova, customers and employees can
navigate flexibly to get additional details
on how to perform a step or troubleshoot
a problem without ever worrying about a
broken link.
Supports KCS, Knowledge-Centered
Support, the industry best practice for
capturing, improving and reusing knowledge
in the support workflow. Knova is KCS
Verified v4, meaning it has received the most
recent and most rigorous KCS certification in
the industry.
KB modules are not KCS Verified v4, and
their architecture doesn’t enable KCS
practices, including “flag it or fix it,”
“capture in the workflow,” “structure for
reuse,” the solution lifecycle, and much
more.
KCS is a set of processes, but without the
right technology support, it becomes too
hard for users to follow the process and KCS
can’t be sustained. Knova is built from the
ground up to support industry best practices
providing the most possible real-world value
from an investment in knowledge.
6
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
KNOWLEDGE ADMINISTRATIONWHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS
Enables automated content cleanup
and scheduled expiry keeping the
knowledgebase up-to-date and
automatically pruning no-longer relevant
knowledgebase articles.
Specialized reports show what content
is infrequently used making it easier to
separate the wheat from the chaff.
With KB modules, all content maintenance
is manual. With limited reporting, it’s hard
to even tell what articles should be manually
retired.
The greatest enemy of relevance is out-
of-date, unmaintained, no-longer-true
content. In a perfect world, content is
always assiduously maintained by hand. In
the real world, evergreen content requires
automation that Knova has and KB modules
don’t.
Supports version histories and enables
easy roll-backs so it’s clear who has done
what to articles, and it’s easy to know what
articles said at a given point in time. Roll-
backs make it easy to undo any inadvertent
mistakes made in the content update
process.
KB modules generally do not support article
versioning. They’re memory-free: If someone
changes an article, no one knows what they
did, and (absent an off-line, labor-intensive
backup recovery) it’s not possible to undo it.
One of the strengths of a knowledgebase
is that it’s dynamic—content keeps up
with changes in the world. However, with
dynamic content comes the need to manage
those changes with version tracking and
easy roll-backs to an earlier state.
Provides a bulk update capability integrated
with a knowledge inventory view that
allows administrators to rapidly work with
knowledgebase content and all metadata,
whether inside the knowledgebase
or attached to external documents.
Administrators can even do bulk search-and-
replace options, for example, if a product’s
name changes.
KB modules generally have no ability for
administrators to rapidly slice and dice
even internal data, and no way to manage
metadata changes efficiently.
When a new release comes out, or if a
product is end-of-lived, or if new policies for
information sharing are implemented, Knova
makes it easy for knowledge administrators
to make the necessary updates all on one
screen. KB modules require administrators to
open and update documents one at a time,
a herculean task.
7
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
USER AND PERMISSION ADMINISTRATIONWHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS
Unifies user management and administration
so there is a common user entity for all
roles: knowledgebase user, knowledgebase
contributor, forums participant, and/or
administrator.
Traditional CRM systems maintain different
repositories for “users” (employees) and
“contacts” (customers), which makes it
harder to manage knowledge and social
support functions that work inside and
outside the company.
Easier administration means lower total cost
of ownership for Knova, and the ability to
get better analytics that span across the
employee and customer community.
Provides fine-grain access controls and
permissions to microsites, content sources,
documents and document sections.
Most KB modules assume that content is
either externally available for everyone or
only internally available full stop. Articles
cannot be partially public with private
sections.
With Knova, knowledge can be shared
selectively with partners, specific customers,
segments or entitlement levels. Additionally,
private information in “public” documents
provides flexibility for sharing more without
over-disclosing. For example, the customer-
facing version of an article might have a
workaround, but the internal note could
have a reference to the relevant entry in an
internal defect tracking system.
ANALYTICSWHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS
Logs the entire customer experience so
organizations can know not only what was
viewed, but how their users found it.
At best, KB modules provide reporting on
document click-throughs with no insight on
the overall customer experience.
The only way to tune and improve the
customer experience is to understand it.
Only Knova provides the breadcrumbs that
let you follow users’ paths and make them
smoother.
Measures resolution success so you can
demonstrate a compelling business case for
self-service, as well as discover the areas
that could benefit from additional content
or tuning.
KB modules may report on the number of
document clicks, and in some cases provide
search logs, but there is no measure of
customers’ success with search and no
insight into possible ROI.
Everyone knows self-service is important,
but it’s hard to measure its value and hard
to know how to improve it. Knova provides
advanced heuristics out-of-the-box that
demonstrate success and enable continuous
improvement.
8
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
ANALYTICS (CONTINUED)WHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS
Identifies content gaps based on search
traffic, search success rates, and content
coverage. This allows organizations to focus
their content development in the highest-
value areas.
KB modules may have a “searches with
no matches” report, but that yields much
less actionable insight than content gap
reports—many queries have some response,
perhaps just not a helpful response.
Organizations need to understand what
topics are generating customer interest that
is not being completely satisfied through
self-service. Knova’s Content Gap reports
provide just this insight.
Documents the impact of high-value
product improvements by reporting on how
often documents are reused to close cases,
and how often they’re viewed by customers.
Knova’s data helps quantify the value of
product enhancement or defect requests.
Some KB modules have a way of tracking
case links, but they rarely provide a
comprehensive view of the impact of
documented issues in the customer
experience.
It’s hard to get development organizations
to implement product changes without
compelling data that shows what the fix
would mean for the customer experience.
Knova provides data from both internal
and self-service use to justify engineering
investment in high-priority customer issues.
Reports on the value of team members’
contributions to the knowledge
management process. Knova provides
a comprehensive view of activities and
business outcomes that allows all team
members, and their leaders, to assess and
improve their performance.
While KB modules generally have a few
reports on knowledge activity by person,
they don’t provide a comprehensive
dashboard designed for end-to-end
performance assessment.
To be successful, knowledge management
must become part of the job. So individual
contributors and leaders need easy access
to the information they need to assess their
performance. Knova provides an integrated
dashboard that pulls together knowledge
additions, updates, reuses, ratings, and all
the other information needed to see the
value they’re creating and to coach them to
higher levels of performance.
9
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
KNOVA KNOWLEDGE CENTRALDATA SHEET
WHAT IT IS All those investments in call routing and tracking have been
necessary, and they do help manage the queue and keep you
organized, but the calls keep coming and those investments
haven’t helped you save much on your biggest expense—time.
Aptean Knowledge Central helps you to plow through that queue
by harnessing your greatest asset—knowledge. When you can
capture knowledge, share it and reuse it many times over, you are
saving time and resources. Knowledge Central is a best of breed
knowledge management (KM) tool built to capture knowledge
across the enterprise and then make it available to employees,
partners and customers with the goals of providing a superior
customer experience and a healthy ROI.
Knowledge Central gives agents, operations analysts, and
managers the full suite of functionality they need to craft the best
possible customer experience.
• An integrated resolution workbench integrates with CRM
to provide one screen that has all the capabilities needed to
solve and document each customer interaction. Knowledge
is easy to capture, author and update in the course of
solving customer problems.
• A sophisticated search uses patented technology to guide
agents through the resolution process, automatically,
delivering results from all relevant content, whether stored
inside the knowledgebase or not.
• Advanced in-process authoring tools allow you to capture
knowledge as cases are solved. Knowledge can be then be
made immediately available for reuse to help solve other
cases.
• Comprehensive analytics provide the insights needed to
assess agent performance, indentify areas for improvement
and track the knowledge that is most valuable to the
enterprise.
WHY YOU NEED IT Aptean Knowledge Central streamlines the agent experience by
providing a single screen for all needed tools and information.
These are just some of the features that help drive service and
support efficiencies:
• Speed time to resolution as it delivers relevant knowledge
based on the specifics of each case or incident, utilizing
relevant search results, resolution flows and guided search.
• Web content, wikis, support forums, content management
systems, and other relevant knowledge are integrated into a
single precise search result.
• Comply with industry best practices, such as the
Consortium for Service Innovation’s Knowledge-Centered
Support (KCSSM) and ITIL incident management, problem
management, and service management processes.
10
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
• Quantify ROI and enable Voice-of-the-Customer reporting
using advance analytic tools.
• Assess and improve individual and team performance with
specialized dashboards.
• Provide accurate search results with Aptean’s deep natural
language processing.
WHAT IT DOES Adaptive Search and Navigation—Provides a deep natural
language understanding of queries and cases for accurate
results while guided search helps agents frame issues and locate
solutions.
Self-improving search—The system gets “smarter” as it is used,
constantly increasing the relevancy of search results.
Seamless agent resolution from CRM—Integrates seamlessly
with Aptean Case Management or your own CRM system to
capture dynamic case notes, e-mail, solutions and collaborations
in CRM.
Resolution Flows—Automatically triggered by case context to
achieve optimal resolution. Construct and deliver best practices
and policies for resolution and provide integrated process support
with knowledge delivery.
Collaborative support—Expert locator and forums integration
leverages expertise inside and outside the enterprise.
Recommendation & Visual Search Management—Search-
context driven recommendations and offers and allow broad sets
of permissioned users to improve search effectiveness.
Microsites—These personalized role-based agent portals allows
managers to push alerts news, and messages to the right agent
segment.
Knowledge Umbrella—Integrates structured and unstructured
data including web content, file systems, databases, CRM systems,
CMS systems, wiki and forums content, utilizing auto-classification
and segmentation features.
In-process authoring—A knowledge capture workflow is built
into natural agent processes with KCS support and process
flexibility including steps to recommend, draft, improve, approve
and publish content.
Advanced actionable analytics—Monitor and measure
success with analytics that give you deep insight into knowledge
management initiatives over long periods of time.
“Knowledge-Centered Support is a proven practice for capturing, improving, and taking advantage of knowledge with each customer contact. The list of support organizations implementing KCS continues to increase, as does the success they accrue by making their staff more efficient, their self-service more effective, and their customers more successful.“
David KayLeading Knowledge Management Consultant, Co-author of Collective Wisdom: Transforming Support with Knowledge
11
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
MORE ON KNOWLEDGE CENTRAL Aptean Knowledge Central is built on a simple design philosophy:
streamlining the agent’s job means higher productivity, happier
customers, and happier staff. Unlike other tools that return
seemingly random search results, require users to flip from screen
to screen, and force agents to leave their primary tools to work
with knowledge, Knowledge Central eases the task of resolving
customer issues with one-stop shopping for all the knowledge and
tools agents need to resolve customer issues.
Knowledge Central gives agents, operations analysts, and
managers the full suite of functionality they need to craft the
best possible customer experience. An integrated resolution
workbench integrates with CRM to provide one screen that has
all the capabilities needed to solve and document each customer
interaction. Knowledge is easy to capture, author, and update in
the course of solving customer problems. A sophisticated search
uses patented technology to guide agents through the resolution
process, automatically, delivering results from all relevant
content, whether stored inside the knowledgebase or not. And
comprehensive analytics provide the insights needed for assessing
agent performance, continuously improving the customer
experience, and making a solid business case for knowledge
management.
Remember the time and resources you’ll be saving? As your agents
solve issues more efficiently, customers aren’t sitting in the queue
as long and their problems are being solved faster (that is, if they
didn’t already solve their issue using the knowledge you made
available via Aptean Self-Service—but that’s a different datasheet)
and that makes everyone happier.
P.S. Happier customers make repeat customers.
“Through effective knowledge management we achieve an important balance between customer satisfaction and cost containment.“
Dan BellSenior Vice President and General Manager, Canon ITS
12
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
DATA SHEET
WHAT IT IS If you’re old enough to remember the days when an attendant
pumped your gas, you may recall that consumers took up the
nozzles reluctantly when pump-your-own stations became the
norm. Customers saw this as a way to cut jobs and costs at the
expense of good service, and it forced consumer to do the work.
Online self-service was viewed that way by many companies in the
nascent days of the web. But there is a big hole in the comparison
... customers embraced self-service. It let them find answers during
not-so-regular business hours and set them free of endless hours
of on-hold music. Today it is a must-have and some even become
belligerent when forced to call customer service.
Self-service used to mean a static list of FAQs, and later a basic
site search that returned some pretty shady answers and links
to likely unrelated pages. Aptean has always taken a different
approach. Aptean Self-Service mines the knowledge you have
housed in many places—your website, customer forums, wikis,
documentation, knowledge base content, and more—and
presents it through a highly customizable, personalized Microsite.
Microsites are customer portals that enable branded marketing
and personalized support based on factors such as products
owned, geography, profile and preferences. Context-sensitive
pagelets can be proactively generated in the course of a search to
provide relevant news, alerts and offers for products and services.
This allows for highly targeted selling options, seamlessly guiding
the user to marketing content or even a live agent.
Of course a Microsite may have some FAQs but they’re now
dynamic, based on the hottest topics and relevant to the specific
product or service topic being addressed. And site search has
become an intelligent knowledgebase search that gets smarter
each time it’s used.
An integrated resolution workbench integrates with CRM to
provide one screen that has all the capabilities needed to solve
and document each customer interaction. Knowledge is easy to
capture, author and update in the course of solving customer
problems.
WHAT IT DOES
Intuitive self-service interface—consolidates support content with
personalized delivery and guides site visitors to the answers they
need with minimal clicks.
Adaptive Search and Navigation—backed by a integrated search
solution set:
• Deep natural language understanding of queries and cases
for accurate results.
• Guided search helps agents frame issues and locate
solutions.
• Resolution flows optimize the handling of common high-
value customer requests.
KNOVA SELF-SERVICE
13
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Self-improving search—means the system gets “smarter” as it
is used, constantly increasing the relevancy of search results and
recommendations. Seamless escalation to assisted support—when
you need it, it’s there. The user’s session history is passed with the
escalation, so the agent can see the searches attempted and users
don’t need to repeat themselves.
Integration with CRM—enables capture of session information
to the customer record.
Personalization—supports segmentation along multiple
enterprise-defined dimensions such as product, industry, and
region. Personalizes all aspects of the customer experience
including content, recommendations and processes.
Analytics for insight—self-service analytics provide voice-of-
the-customer reporting while specialized dashboards help leaders
assess the value of knowledge and quantify the ROI for self-
service.
ISN’T SELF-SERVICE JUST FOR THE EASY QUESTIONS? Aptean Self-Service handles the easy issues just fine, but that’s
not what it was built for ... the Aptean knowledge management
platform was designed to help solve complex questions, for both
agent-assisted service AND self-service. Resolution flows are pre-
scripted step-by-step instructions that guide users through even
complicated fixes to common issues.
An added benefit—audience segmentation controls allow Aptean
Self-Service administrators to specify who sees what. That means
you can entitle internal users to see a more detailed solution set
than you provide to customers or the general public, or you can
provide more or less information to customers based on their SLA.
The bottom line? No matter how easy or complex the issue,
Aptean Self-Service gets the right answers to the right users
efficiently and effectively.
MORE ON SELF-SERVICE Aptean Self-Service provides service and support organizations
with all of the capability they need to create an award winning,
customer satisfying, and call deflecting website. A simple
administration console lets service and support website owners
to create personalized Microsites for different customers and
segments such as partners, premium support customers, and field
service personnel.
Resolution flows guide customers through a specific process
for specific high value issues. Personalized content panes and
subscriptions keep customers up-to-date on the issues they care
about. And CRM integration makes sure customers never hit a
dead end: with the right entitlement, customers or partners can
log a new case or incident that automatically includes all of their
self-service history, improving the handoff to assisted service and
speeding time to resolution.
When the filling station went to self-service, it did eliminate
some jobs and that can still be a concern, but more and more,
call center agents no longer see self-service as a threat to their
jobs. Self-service is deflecting the mundane and repetitive calls
so agents are able to concentrate on solving new and more
challenging issues. Solve those issues a couple times and you have
some new knowledgebase content that can be solved through
self-service ... then the next issue comes along. It’s the circle of
life right there in the knowledgebase. And those agents are now
smarter, more efficient and maybe a little prouder of their work.
Maybe they even get promoted to knowledge authors. Hey, isn’t
that called job security?
“Each time a new solution to a problem is captured and rolled out to self- service, our dealers are able to solve our customers’ problems better and faster. The system constantly gets better, and so do our dealer and customer satisfaction levels.“
Steven Peterson Knowledge Manager, CNH Dealer eBusiness Systems
14
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
WHAT IT DOES Adaptive Search and Navigation—Provides a deep natural
language understanding of queries and cases for accurate
results while guided search helps agents frame issues and locate
solutions.
Self-improving search—The system gets “smarter” as it is used,
constantly increasing the relevancy of search results.
Seamless agent resolution from CRM—Integrates seamlessly
with Aptean Case Management or your own CRM system to
capture dynamic case notes, e-mail, solutions and collaborations
in CRM.
Resolution Flows—Automatically triggered by case context to
achieve optimal resolution. Construct and deliver best practices
and policies for resolution and provide integrated process support
with knowledge delivery.
Collaborative support—Expert locator and forums integration
leverages expertise inside and outside the enterprise.
Recommendation & Visual Search Management—Search-
context driven recommendations and offers and allow broad sets
of permissioned users to improve search effectiveness.
Microsites—These personalized role-based agent portals allows
managers to push alerts news, and messages to the right agent
segment.
Knowledge Umbrella—Integrates structured and unstructured
data including web content, file systems, databases, CRM systems,
CMS systems, wiki and forums content, utilizing auto-classification
and segmentation features.
In-process authoring—A knowledge capture workflow is built
into natural agent processes with KCS support and process
flexibility including steps to recommend, draft, improve, approve
and publish content.
Advanced actionable analytics—Monitor and measure
success with analytics that give you deep insight into knowledge
management initiatives over long periods of time.
15
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
DATA SHEET
KNOVA COMMUNITIES
HARNESS THE KNOWLEDGE IN FORUMS In today’s highly-connected society, forums are emerging as
the first step towards gaining insight and solving problems.
However, forums remain a disconnected silo from the enterprise’s
information and communication channels.
Aptean has elevated the value of forums by incorporating them
into the overall enterprise customer experience. Deeply integrated
into the complete suite of applications, Aptean Communities
delivers increased brand loyalty, reduced support calls and
improved knowledge.
EXPERT CUSTOMERS ENABLE A COLLABORATIVE FORUM EXPERIENCE Some of your best and most reliable subject matter experts aren’t
located within your contact center or even within your company—
they are your customers who spend day in and day out using the
product.
In complex support environments, expert users are highly technical
and often capable of solving problems for themselves as well as
other users. Why not leverage their knowledge as a valuable part
of your knowledge base?
Your users are domain experts who bring unique qualities and
knowledge about your product that can make for better support
content and defect submissions, and they’re willing to share this
knowledge.
GAIN INSIGHT WITH ANALYTICS Forums are a powerful marketing tool to provide early insights
into trends such as changing opinions and attitudes. This allows
a company to gain a deeper understanding of how customers
perceive the enterprise and its products. Analytics provides a view
into emerging issues and questions as well as unmet needs to
drive product improvements.
LIKE TO KNOW?• Reduce incidents to the support center
• Increase brand loyalty
• Capture customer feedback and insights
• Integrate forums into the overall communications strategy
• Leverage powerful forums content and contributions
16
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
INTEGRATE WITH SERVICE DELIVERY Aptean Communities seamlessly integrates with other support
channels, providing one view into all of a company’s collective
knowledge. Sometimes customers call support looking for
answers. If provided the opportunity however, many will opt to
find answers themselves via user forums OR self-service. Most
forums today are highly stand-alone, but by integrating forums
content with the service resolution process, Aptean offers a
unique opportunity to add third party expertise and knowledge to
the self-service experience.
Forums are integrated to the suite at the level of content,
reputation, business process and customer experience. The
insights, posts and responses from the user community can be
leveraged as answers for customers on the self-service site. The
same reputation engine that tracks and identifies the best users
pushes the best content from the forums for resolution. Questions
from users that are asked on the self-service site can be escalated
to experts in the forums as well as escalated to the contact center
and managed through business processes.
MANAGE THE EXPERIENCE NOT THE DISCUSSION Embedding forums within a website allows companies to offer a
rich and dynamic customer experience. Aptean Communities are
available with our Knowledge Driven Support and Knowledge
Management solutions. They tightly integrate with Aptean Self-
Service and Aptean Knowledge Central for a customer experience
that can be optimized around users, search, business process and
overall site experience and management.
17
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
DATA SHEET
KNOVA ANALYTICS
WHAT IT IS Measure twice, cut once. The old adage is sound advice if you’re
with the cast of This Old House—it saves headaches, keeping
the project on time and on budget. The same holds true when it
comes to measuring your service and support initiatives.
Sizing up those metrics used to be a pretty cut-and-dry process.
We knew that shorter hold times are better; higher abandonment
rates are worse. Unfortunately, it’s no longer as easy as getting out
the tape measure. Today’s customers expect a superior customer
experience through a mix of support channels like self-service,
chat, forums and the traditional phone call.
More advanced tools are needed to measure our efforts. Powered
by QlikView business intelligence software from QlikTech, Aptean
Analytics is a visual, intuitive set of tools with predefined role-
based reports built on cutting edge technology. They solve the
problems of old school OLAP cube-based reporting which was
limited and slow. And they solve newer problems associated
with reporting consistently across multiple service and support
channels.
Aptean Analytics help you answer pressing business questions that
will help you drive to the truth about your service levels, like:
• Who is creating value in the knowledgebase and where are
the gaps?
• What’s the highest value product improvement we can
make?
• How can we tune our customer experience to better resolve
issues?
• How effectively are service and support staff closing cases?
Does their escalation rate meet expectations? How well are
they meeting their service-level agreements (SLAs)?
WHY YOU NEED IT Aptean Analytics are designed to meet the needs of today’s busy
and complex service and support operations, offering flexibility
and scalability that has never been available before:
• Analyze and compare data over long periods of time—after
all knowledge programs grow and evolve over the years, not
months.
• Process large amounts of data without bringing the system
to its knees.
• Measure cases and knowledge together—analytics are
designed to answer business questions, not just report on
the activities that took place in any one particular technology
silo.
• Meet end user expectations—by providing an intelligent,
visually rich interface.
18
BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
WHAT IT DOES In-memory analytical processing—allows you to analyze large
data volumes on the fly so that it becomes possible to look at data
across long periods of time.
Associative data model—people think in non-linear paths
by building associations, and so do our analytics. This logical
approach connects a wide range of data sources efficiently and
gives us faster access to data.
Prebuilt high-value reports across three areas—Authoring,
Knowledge and Success analysis.
Flexibility to create custom reports—report formulas and
calculations are exposed and can be easily modified to suit
individual needs and without the need for technical expertise.
Visually interactive interface—Drives user adoption and
increases usability across multiple roles in the organization.
MORE ON APTEAN ANALYTICS Aptean Analytics’ associative in-memory technology brings fast
results and better decision-making through a series of role-
based pre-defined dashboards designed to help line managers,
operations analysts, knowledge program managers and website
owners do their jobs more effectively.
Line managers need to understand how well their team
members are executing their knowledge and case management
processes, and what value they’re creating in the knowledgebase.
Knowledge program managers need to understand the health of
the knowledgebase and the processes that keep it continually
renewed and up-to-date. And self-service website owners need
analytics that will help them continuously improve the customer
experience, online resolution rates, and call deflection.
For each of these users, Aptean provides role-specific dashboards
that analyze critical areas such as workflow status, knowledge
effectiveness, contributor productivity, and much more.
“Knowledge-Centered Support is a proven practice for capturing, improving, and taking advantage of knowledge with each customer contact. The list of support organizations implementing KCS continues to increase, as does the success they accrue by making their staff more efficient, their self-service more effective, and their customers more successful.“
David KayLeading Knowledge Management Consultant, Co-author of Collective Wisdom: Transforming Support with Knowledge
19
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/Aptean
LINKEDIN: www.linkedin.com/company/Aptean
TWITTER: www.twitter.com/Aptean
YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/user/Aptean
FOLLOW APTEAN
KNOVA WORKS FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SUPPORTPut Knova to work for you!
About Aptean: Aptean helps businesses profit, innovate and grow where the work gets done—in the call center, on the floor of the factory, at the end of the assembly line. That’s where Aptean’s CRM, ERP and Supply Chain software applications enable nearly 5,000 customers to satisfy their customers, operate more efficiently and stay at the forefront of their industry.
Aptean is where software WORKS. For more information, visit www.aptean.com
Copyright © Aptean 2015. All rights reserved.