Automating The Call Center's Last Mile

Kanisa Inc. has rolled out the latest generation of its customer-service application suite, which includes the release of a support-center function providing automated problem resolution.

Kanisa Support Center integrates wide-ranging resolution functionality, targeting the bulk of the customer-service center cost overhead. It's an area that has been left largely unaddressed in the past, says Ben Kaplan, vice president of marketing for Kanisa.

"While much of the customer-service process has now been automated, with a lot of cost removed from routing processing and case management, what remains is the last bastion of unautomated cost, the resolution process," Kaplan says.

Currently, customer-support centers often piece together resolution applications with a variety of software and related processes, but the overall solution often places too much responsibility on the service agent, he says. "At the end of the day, you're asking an agent to do an incredible amount of work, diagnosing the problem, complying with company policy and procedure, and doing it all efficiently, effectively, and at low cost."

Kanisa's 4.0 release of its application is already in use by more than 50 companies, and yesterday it released 5.0, which includes the expanded Support Center. Apple Computer Corp. plans to roll out Support Center 5.0 to more than 2,000 service agents, according to Kanisa.

Support Center 5.0 includes one-click CRM data access, which integrates with leading applications from Amdocs, PeopleSoft, and Siebel Systems. The application also completes guided search, interview scripting, structured collaboration, automated response templates, intuitive knowledge authoring, prepopulated case notes, and root-cause analytics.

In addition, the Kanisa5 suite of customer-service applications includes Support Site, which lets customers solve problems themselves; and Site Search, which lets customers use their own words to guide them to the most appropriate sales, marketing, or customer-service resources.

Site Search was created through the acquisition of the software division of Ask Jeeves Inc. in May.