Search is Not Enough
There’s a trend developing in businesses today. Companies are beginning to think of search in a strategic new light—search as an enabler of better customer experience; search as a trigger for other applications. But search alone is not enough to deliver the value most companies are seeking. The reality is that the lines between search and the underlying content being accessed have blurred; they are interdependent and need to be implemented in an integrated fashion.
Consider what motivates users to search a company’s website. Users seek information they need to answer a question, resolve a problem or complete a business transaction. The primary objective of search is to immediately deliver users the content they need. However, all too often, the users’ needs are not met. They are unable to access the information they most need to resolve their question or problem, or to complete their transaction. To satisfy the information needs of the consumer and deliver the transactions and conversions companies desire, search needs to be more tightly coupled with the underlying content that makes search valuable in the first place.
Consequences of Inadequate Search
Take, for example, a scenario in which a company has an abundant amount of content relating to their products and a way to manage that content well, but users are not finding the information they require. What is needed is the ability to detect when user searches do not match up with the existing content and to fine-tune the search engine so that queries that may be expressed in a variety of ways match the relevant content.
Duplicate or inconsistent information is another common problem companies face. Users who cannot find what they need will often create new content to fill a perceived knowledge gap. In addition, many companies add content to their knowledge base without first thinking through how that information will be accessed and consumed by the users. Integrating search, knowledge management and analytics does more than improve access to information; it also improves the quality of the content stored in the knowledge management system.
Consequences of Inadequate Content
Companies with strong search but weak content need the ability to recognize content gaps and a formalized knowledge management system with an automated workflow process to fill the information gap. The automated workflow routes an information gap report to the most appropriate content provider for authoring and then routes the newly created content through a review and publishing process.
In the best case, a company can formalize proactive knowledge-creation processes based on an explicit understanding of their users’ needs. It is hard to know what people are asking about and then to prioritize what content you need to create. Analytics helps identify content gaps based on what users are asking, and how frequently these gaps appear to users. These insights help managers prioritize the knowledge creation efforts needed to fill these gaps.
Integrated Search and Knowledge Management
These examples illustrate how search and the underlying content being accessed in a system are dependent on one another to meet users’ needs. Neither is adequate on its own. To deliver the best user experience, the solution will provide tightly integrated intelligent search, knowledge management and associated analytics. The solution should continually enable the evolution of both the knowledgebase and the search to become more effective in meeting users’ requirements. The ideal solution is an integrated platform: for harvesting knowledge; the ability for customers to access that knowledge; and a mechanism to evaluate user experience and implement improvements with the changing needs of customers.
What’s New—InQuira 8
InQuira introduces several new and enhanced products and features with InQuira 8, including comprehensive collaboration
functionality with the new InQuira Discussion Forums, built on top of InQuira Information Manager and tightly integrated with InQuira Intelligent Search. Forum posts are automatically filtered with the search engine to return possible answers or provide context sensitive marketing offers. Knowledge content can be contributed directly from the forums.
As part of the release, InQuira introduces InQuira Information Center. Information Center brings Intelligent Search, Discussion Forums and Information Manager together into a comprehensive knowledge portal. Information Center takes advantage of many new Information Manager features, including subscriptions and personalization. Information Manager also includes usability improvements for managing knowledge content.
InQuira 8 Intelligent Search introduces a new system manager and event log viewer to ease the administration of the system, reducing complexity and improving problem diagnosis. InQuira 8 Analytics is enhanced with session and user experience analysis, which includes new reports on InQuira Personalized Navigation, InQuira Process Wizards and complete session and activity analysis.
Visit the InQuira 8 Microsite: A one-stop resource center for the InQuira 8.0 launch. Includes screenshots, product details, executive videos, datasheets and more. http://www.inquira.com/inq8.asp
Inquira improves the quality of customer interactions through websites and contact centers with its leading intelligent search, knowledge management and analytics solutions. InQuira’s solutions leverage InQuira’s patented intelligent search technology to understand a customer’s intent in real-time, and dynamically create a personalized response that incorporates the right
information, data and links to applications from across an enterprise to meet that customer’s need. InQuira’s blue-chip customers include AT&T, Bank of America, Chrysler, BEA Systems, Fidelity Investments, Honda, Sovereign Bank and SunTrust.
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