Customers.com Technologies

Helping Businesses Deliver Effective Social Service by Leveraging NLP

Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology, frequently called text analytics technology, is key to analyzing what customers are saying about your company. So leveraging NLP is a big part of the best social-service products. NLP input is the content of customers’ posts, messages, and feedback, while NLP output is a tree structure that represents and contains their syntax, semantics, context, and intent. NLP processing performs tasks such as:

• Corrects spelling
• Parses content to determine parts of speech and their relationships
• Extracts entities and facts
• Resolves vague pronoun antecedents (anaphora)
• Determines the meaning of unknown words using their morphological attributes
• Identifies phrases
• Identifies relationships between words and phrases

This week’s report is about Clarabridge Analyze, Clarabridge Collaborate, and Clarabridge Engage—the Voice of the Customer/ social-service offering from Clarabridge, Inc., a privately-held software supplier based in Reston, VA. Clarabridge Analyze listens, analyzes, reports, and alerts on customer conversations on social and on internal channels. Analyze’s alerts are sent to Collaborate for their assignment and management. From within Collaborate, facilities of Engage let agents respond to and interact with customers.

How Is Customer Service Technology Changing?

How Did Customer Service Technology Fare in 2012?

With this 4Q2012 Customer Service Update Report, we complete our ninth year of quarterly updates on the suppliers and products in customer service. Yes, we’ve been writing these reports since 2004, focusing on factors that are important in the evaluation, comparison, and selection of customer service products: customers, products, and company activity, staffing, and financial performance.

This quarter the suppliers and products are:

- Aptean Knova
- Attensity Analyze and Attensity Respond
- eGain Service
- IntelliResponse Virtual Agent (VA)
- KANA Enterprise, KANA Experience Analytics
- Moxie Spaces
- Next IT ActiveAgent
- Nuance/VirtuOz Intelligent Virtual Agent
- Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service
- Salesforce.com Service Cloud, Knowledge, Marketing Cloud (Radian6)

Briefly, customer service came back strong in 4Q2012 to post a very good quarter driven by customer growth. We’re relieved and encouraged. Fourth quarters are typically good quarters for software suppliers, as their customers complete strategic projects and spend down expiring budgets. But, at the end of 2011, we were concerned. There had been a string of six consecutive mixed quarters, and it raised concerns about the state and the future of customer service software. One quarter certainly does not make a trend, but we’re encouraged. The suppliers we track have introduced or will soon introduce strong new products and major new product versions that will help their customers deliver better customer service.

Review of Virtual V-Person: Pioneer in Virtual Agent Technology

Here is our evaluation of Creative Virtual V-Person. It’s the second in our research series on virtual assisted-service. Having been founded in London in 2002 and having introduced its first virtual agent product in 2003, Creative Virtual is one of the pioneers in virtual agent technology. V-Person is a competent offering. Four features characterize and differentiate it:

• Cross-channel virtual assisted service—web, mobile devices, and social networks
• Answers that integrate application data; Python scripting is the data integration mechanism
• Comprehensive knowledge management facilities for creating, editing, publishing, and managing the answers that V-Person delivers to customers and users
• Rules-based question analysis and matching; analysts, with the help of Creative Virtual’s consultants, specify these rules

Creative Virtual targets large financial services, high tech, payroll, telecommunications, and travel businesses and city governments in English-speaking geographies. The firm has a customer base of 40 accounts, mostly in these markets and mostly in the UK.

V-Person is available for cloud or on-premise deployment. Entry level year-one subscription fees are approximately $100,000.

Here's my in-depth product review:

Creative Virtual V-Person
An Offering from a Virtual Assisted-Service Pioneer
By Mitch Kramer, Senior Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, September 20, 2012

Customer Service Suppliers Poised for Growth in 2012?

Each quarter we review the state of the customer service industry by providing updates on the nine top suppliers (after industry consolidation): Astute, Attensity, Consona, eGain, IntelliResponse, Kana, Moxie, Oracle, and Salesforce.com.

The first quarter of 2012 was not a good quarter in customer service. After a big 1Q2011, 2011 faded through the next three quarters as customer growth and financial performance were mixed, and product and company activity were relatively light. The fade has continued into 1Q2012.

But no fading for Salesforce.com. SFDC had another huge quarter, continuing its string of consecutive quarters, the latest better than the previous. IntelliResponse had some large deals and shifted from educational institutions to more commercial accounts.

The surprise in Q1 was Oracle RightNow. After Oracle’s acquisition of RightNow closed on January 25, Oracle RightNow began operating as a Global Business Unit, hiring aggressively and introducing regular, quarterly product releases. When Oracle announced its intent to acquire RightNow on October 24, 2011, we felt and we wrote that, post-acquisition, RightNow could quickly lose its identity and its brand and its product could disappear within Oracle’s very large software portfolio. Not the case. No losers in this acquisition. The new Oracle RightNow is bigger and is growing faster than the old RightNow.

Salesforce.com launched a new entry-level customer service offering called Desk.com, which is based on the technology that it obtained in its September 12, 2011 acquisition of Assistly. The firm also launched Salesforce Rypple, its first HCM/HR application that adds social networking to performance management. The product is based on the technology that came to Salesforce.com in its December 15, 2011 acquisition of Rypple.

In fact, Salesforce.com and Oracle make us optimistic for the remainder of 2012. All of the other suppliers have new and refreshed offerings that can help organizations address requirements, especially for social-service and for customer service processes. It’s an election year in the U.S. The economy, certainly the corporate world, appears to be growing. Corporate growth means more customers, and more customers means more customer service.

Here's my quarterly Customer Service Supplier and Product Update for 1Q2012.

Useful Social-Service Solution: KANA Experience Analytics

Here’s our evaluation of KANA Experience Analytics, KANA’s social-service offering. The product has capabilities for monitoring, analyzing, and taking action on customer conversations on the social web and on internal channels. These four factors should drive your consideration of KANA Experience Analytics:

• Powerful analytics are KANA Experience Analytics’ strength and key differentiator. These analytics automate the categorization of social posts and internal channel messages, speeding, simplifying, and making consistent one of the most difficult tasks in social service.
  
  
• KANA Experience Analytics is tightly integrated with KANA Service Experience Management (SEM), KANA’s enterprise customer service offering. Integration with external customer service systems is not as tight.
  
  
• KANA Experience Analytics delivers high value through attractive pricing, bundled consulting services, and rich capabilities.
  
  
• KANA targets only English-speaking geographies, although KANA’s Analytics’ support English (US and UK), French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
  

KANA Experience Analytics is built on technology that came to KANA in its April 2011 acquisition of Overtone as OpenMic.

In fact, acquisitions have played a major role in transforming KANA. While the firm was founded in 1999, since the middle of 2009, the firm has reinvented itself. Same name but a much different and much stronger company, a company focused on customer service.

Here’s the chronology of how Kana reinvented itself:

• Privatization by Accel-KKR. KANA’s biggest company news in 2009 was its October 27 announcement of an agreement to sell its assets and liabilities to Accel-KKR, a technology-focused private equity firm, for a cash purchase price of approximately $48.9 million. The transaction was completed on December 23. As a result, KANA’s software and services business now operate as a privately held company under the KANA brand.
  
  
• Introduction of SEM. KANA introduced KANA Service Experience Management on June 30, 2009. SEM is KANA’s enterprise customer service offering. Customer service as a process or as a “Service Experience” is what characterizes, distinguishes, and differentiates KANA SEM.
  
  
• Lagan Acquisition. On October 6, 2010, KANA announced its intention to acquire Lagan Technologies, then a privately held supplier of G2C (government to citizen) software that was founded in 1994 in Belfast, Ireland. Lagan had a customer base of nearly 200, mostly large, local government agencies, worldwide. These agencies use the product now branded KANA Lagan to serve more than 60 million citizens. The acquisition expanded KANA’s target markets to include government organizations and gave KANA a stronger presence outside the US.
  
  
• Overtone Acquisition. On April 5, 2011 KANA announced that it has completed its acquisition of Overtone, Inc., then a privately held social listening firm that was based in San Francisco, CA.
  
  
• Trinicom Acquisition. On April 24, 2012, KANA announced that it had completed the acquisition of Trinicom, a privately held, Wilp, Netherlands-based supplier of cloud-based customer service software. KANA Business Edition, the former Trinicom’s T5, provides contact center, response management, knowledge management, self-service, community, chat, virtual assistant capabilities, and campaign capabilities for small and mid-sized businesses and government organizations. Trinicom has an installed base of 250 customers, mostly in the Benelux countries. This is an excellent acquisition that delivers significant benefits to KANA, to Trinicom, and to their customers. It expands KANA’s customer service offerings to address SMB requirements with a well-proven product suite. It expands KANA’s market reach into Western Europe. And it increases KANA’s customer base and revenue base significantly.

Today, KANA has four product lines that address requirements for multi-channel customer service for businesses and government organizations of all sizes in a wide range of geographies. The firm has a customer base of 850 accounts and a staff of 400 employees. In 2011, KANA had revenues approaching $90 million. In 2012, KANA has reached a $100 million run rate. This new KANA has become a customer service leader.

Do You Handle Customers’ Queries via Social Media?

As consumers or as business people, we use the social web to answer questions and solve problems about products, services, and businesses.

For so many of us, Twitter or Facebook have become the primary sources for answers. Tweet first; research later.

Patty Seybold often reaches out for help on Twitter and Facebook: “Can’t access Verizon Wireless voicemail from Europe, any clues?” or “Time Warner Internet down in Boothbay, anywhere else?” or “What’s the best XXXX product for doing YY?”

I personally prefer forums and communities. They’re focused, not so noisy, and they sometimes have notifications facilities. For instance:

The forums on Apple products—iPhone, iPad, and the various Macs—are great for “crowd-sourcing” answers on “how to” questions about using these products.

The mycarstats.com forum helps me diagnose and resolve problems with my 1999 Volvo before I take it to Frank, my mechanic. I replaced the antenna mast myself with help from the forum.

The experts in the communities on davesgarden.com have answered many of my questions about plants and plant care for my very heavily shaded property in Massachusetts. I’ll be planting Astilbe and Hosta this year.

How Do You Collect and Respond to Social Queries?

The fact that customers and prospects are buzzing about their issues, asking questions, and looking for recommendations and advice via the social web creates a problem and an opportunity for most companies. The problem is obvious: how do you know what customers are asking/saying about your brand/and your products if you’re not monitoring the social web? The opportunity is equally obvious: if you can spot and respond quickly to customers’ social queries, you gain their respect and their admiration. Not surprisingly, there are products your organization can use to help take advantage of this opportunity. We call this category of products “social-service” solutions.

Attensity Analyze and Attensity Respond: Not for the Faint of Heart, but Offering Exceptional Value

Social media is hot. And so are the tools that marketers are using to analyze consumers' social behavior and social conversations. Attensity offers three such tools: Attensity Analyze, Attensity Respond, and Attensity Pipeline. Attensity combines its analysis of the conversations that consumers have with one another and with your employees—in your own customer service applications and forums—with the conversations they have "with the world" using social media tools.

Review of Salesforce Radian6

Radian6 is a division of Salesforce.com. It’s a social listening, analysis, and service platform. Radian6, the social-service platform, has components for monitoring the social web, analyzing monitoring results, and engaging with and delivering customer service to social web users. 

SFDC acquired Radian6 in March 2011 and has let it run independently ever since out of its Fredericton, NB, Canada HQ. Radian6 had become very successful in the social listening, analysis, and engagement platform business, claiming that it had acquired 3,000 customers since its April 2007 product introduction.