A Conversation with ... Michael Murphy, CEO, Inquira
"What they tried to do is structure content that's currently strewn about the organization into structured knowledge management and workflow systems. But the real world is in a state of flux. That's where the opportunity for us is."
An effective system, Mike explains, can't be limited to one source of information. If it's stuck only extracting from the call center knowledgebase, it will be blind to all the other stimuli that exist across the organization. Furthermore, structuring information in order to place it in the call center knowledgebase is difficult in its own right. So a system that sits across any and all information sources, and is basically agnostic to where the information comes from, is key. It also has to analyze, categorize and index automatically and in real-time. That's the part that changes it from mere search-and-retrieval to full-blown knowledge management. InQuira now couples its retrieval capability and its ability to understand customer intent with the more common knowledge and content management functions, such as authoring, collaboration, analytics and workflow. This allows happenings anywhere in the company to be captured and made available in nearly real-time on the website, and to the CSRs.
Are the days of the traditional call center numbered? No, but they've changed. Managers still have to justify their service contracts based on their ability to resolve a certain number of problems...they just do it in a different way. "With the Web, you can now expose tech manuals and white papers and information that allows the customer to bypass the call center," says Mike.
"With an automated self-service system in place, you can show the logs of all the questions being answered, and all the revenue being generated because of the system. Not only are they getting questions answered, but they're getting them answered quicker."
And, hopefully, better. The only thing worse than dealing with a call to your CSR is getting a call after the customer has had a bad experience on your website. Not only do you have a call (bad enough), you have one from a caller with an attitude (much worse.)
And that's exactly the kind of situation InQuira is trying to solve.
Andy Moore is a 25-year publishing professional, editor and writer who concentrates on business process improvement through document and content management. He is now publisher of KMWorld Magazine and its related online publications. As editorial director for the Specialty Publishing Group, Moore is the editorial chair for the "KMWorld Best Practices White Paper" series. Moore is based in Camden, Maine, and can be reached at andy_moore@verizon.net.