[Sigia-l] Web software which generates questions and answers

[Karl Groves]

I've taken a very close look at RightNow's knowledgebase solution and tend to like it very much - mostly for its administrative functions.  I think the UI could stand to be better.
It has a very powerful search, using things like natural language searching, and allows you to create your own set of synonyms for items. For instance, credit union's typically refer to checking accounts as "Share Draft".  So, you can tell the application to return items containing the term "Share Draft" whenever someone searches for "Checking Account".

The reporting tools allow you to see what people are searching for, whether they found what they wanted, and how often they search for that particular item.  IMO, this would be a good way to find weaknesses in the site's IA.

The other thing that I liked was that it had the ability to allow users to search the knowledgebase while waiting in the call queue.

I recommend having a demo from the folks at RightNow to see what it can do.  I like it quite a bit, but it is an extremely expensive application, IMO.

Their sales pitch revolved around the ROI from saved calls, and decreased online chat help sessions. But our call and chat volume was not high enough and call queues not long enough to even allow for the ROI. I think the ROI is clearly there for much larger companies than ours, it just comes down to support volume and we didn't have enough to support the large price tag.

-Karl


> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org 
> [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On Behalf Of
> W words
> Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 6:46 AM
> To: SIGIA-L
> Subject: [Sigia-l] Web software which generates questions and answers
> 
> 
> A few people I know are talking about software from Rightnow 
> which adds a
> question and answer capacity onto a website. It's being sold 
> as an answer to
> the problem of huge numbers of phone calls to call centres.
> 
> Commonly asked questions are noted and answers are built up 
> from content and
> questions. I imagine some kind of artificial intelligence is 
> used in what
> must be fairly sophisticated programming.
> 
> Has anyone any experience with this?
> Does it really do what it claims?
> Is this really a useful form of communications where users 
> get an answer to
> a fact but may not get all the facts they need as they would if they
> read/accidentally glanced at surrounding text?
> 
> Regards
> Irene Wong
> 
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