Service Isn't Just About Being Nice, It's About Resolving Issues

KANA has unveiled KANA Resolution, a solution that Brian Kelly, executive vice president of products and marketing, describes as delivering "the ROI promised by CRM by focusing on the resolution process." The solution, geared for large contact centers, is built on a Web-services architecture. Key features include prebuilt adapters that enable integration with call center applications from Siebel, Clarify, PeopleSoft, and SAP; integration capabilities with KANA Response and KANA IQ to allow for self-service and agent assisted-service; a Resolution desktop that enhances existing service environments with a process-driven interface; and support for cross-selling and upselling. According to Kelly, KANA Resolution simplifies the resolution process by removing challenges agents typically face when trying to remedy customer problems. "It's left to them to figure out when to use what and how to use it from a tool perspective, and what KANA Resolution has done is brought together all the key features...and basically guides the agent through the process," he says. "We're replacing a collection of tools and point products...including things like search and knowledge management, access to back-end systems, [posted] notes on their screens, scratch pads, [and] their colleagues." The release, says Tim Hickernell, vice president of META Group, is an example of a trend to integrate knowledge services, workflow, and customer interaction management to smooth the problem-resolution process. "Instead of having a reporting phase and then maybe an escalation or resolution phase and some workflow...the trend has been to try to develop...technologies that integrate all of this," he says. "So when I'm looking for a solution or I'm reporting it to a service personnel as a customer, I've got knowledge services available to try to help me solve the problem and workflow behind that that is adapting the solution, as well as adapting any escalation that's required at the same time." According to KANA IQ customer ADC Telecommunications, the solution's integration capabilities, along with the ability to access preexisting solutions, will help enhance the company's agent productivity. "It brings many things together in one place and helps the internal user be more efficient," says Candyce Anderson, ADC project manager." But what's most attractive to Anderson are the cross-sell and upsell opportunities. "I really like the way it presents solutions to the users so they can provide those to the customers," she says. "It actually can prompt the user with a solution or it can prompt them...so they don't have to remember everything that they're talking to the customer about." Also included in KANA Resolution is Resolution Designer, which allows business analysts to design and manage resolution workflows, and Screen Flow Designer, a component of Resolution Designer that provides a tool for building HTML forms used in resolutions. Hickernell says it's really about integration: "It's a game of integration always, and by having the integration out of the box and having the workflow designers automatically integrated with all of the necessary components and services is really what's new here." Related articles: Achieving Customer Service Success Through Service Resolution Management The Demand for Hosted Service Offerings Is on the Rise KANA to Acquire Hipbone

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