September 24, 2003

CRM Software Release by Kana

Kana Debuts Next-Gen Customer Service Knowledge App

Excerpt:
Kana has announced the immediate availability of Kana IQ 8, a major software release -- in fact, IQ's most significant in a decade -- built on the Kana iCare platform and integrated with Kana Service 8.

Kana touts IQ 8 as a next-generation customer-service knowledge product because of its significantly improved integration, its knowledge authoring and workflow, and its support for industry-specific knowledge. Kana expects these improvements to address the two most fundamental issues that concern its customers: lowering their own customer service-related costs and improving their customers' satisfaction levels.

Being able to provide customers with faster, more consistent and accurate responses to their questions is how Kana expects IQ 8 to bring value. However, Kana declined to release benchmark data or say just how much faster and more accurate IQ 8 is than the current release, IQ 7.02.

iCare Suite � Sweeter Than Ever

IQ is only a part of Kana's iCare suite of CRM products but with release 8, it becomes a more important part. "What we are offering is more of an integrated solution," says Jenifer Handler, senior product manager for IQ.

"IQ has been completely rewritten for our J2EE iCare platform and also to be more standards-based," she told CRMDaily.com. "So, in addition to tighter integration with the rest of the iCare suite, we expect this platform will provide our customers with better performance and increased scalability."

Key to Customer Satisfaction

One of the drivers for customer-service CRM -- and, frankly, one that many companies struggle with -- is providing consistent experiences and responses to customer requests from one customer interaction to another. The proliferation of customer-interface points (salespeople, customer-service representatives, e-mail communications and Web sites) -- often managed by different groups within organizations -- has only multiplied the difficulty of providing customers with timely, consistent and accurate responses.

Posted by Craig at September 24, 2003 02:12 PM