knova knowledge management

KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTResolutionizingTM the Customer Support Experience

ABOUT KNOVA KMKnova is a full-featured knowledge management software

solution for large customer service and support organizations

– especially those who need to handle complex queries across

channels in industries such as high tech, telecommunications,

financial services and the IT help desk.

Knova helps these companies resolve customer issues quickly,

accurately, and cost effectively with unparalleled scalability.

www.kmroi.com

Knova Knowledge Management .................1 - 9

Knova Knowledge Central........................10 - 12

Knova Self Service .....................................13 - 15

Knova Communities ..................................16 - 17

Knova Analytics .........................................18 - 22

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BROCHURE | KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

KNOVA KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTPRODUCT OVERVIEW

WHAT SETS KNOVA APART? Most knowledge tools out there are lightweight modules made to handle simple FAQs and backed with basic keyword search that often

returns dubious results. Knova Knowledge Management (KM) from Aptean is a fully realized KM application built for the enterprise and

especially designed to meet the needs of high-tech customer service and support. That means even complex questions can be handled by a

self-service session on your website to drive efficiency while creating an exceptional customer experience.

That’s the elevator pitch. What follows are the detailed differentiators that make Knova the choice for the world’s largest service and support

organizations.

KNOWLEDGEBASE SEARCHWHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS

Searches with concepts, not just keywords.

Knova knows “Blue Screen of Death” is

related to “Stop Error,” and “Running Slow”

is about performance. Knova differentiates

between synonyms and concepts,

allowing fine-grain control of the search

experience. Out-of-the-box, highly tunable,

multilingual, industry specific concept maps

(“ontologies”) shorten time to value.

Most knowledgebase (KB) modules are very

literal-minded: if users don’t type something

exactly the way it’s in the document, they

won’t find it. At best, they support a

manually entered “keyword” field inside

individual articles, which is labor intensive

and hard to maintain.

Knova does away with the “what did

they call it” guessing game, returning

relevant results regardless of specific word

choice. By treating concepts separate from

synonyms, Knova increases precision and

decreases noise. Authors don’t need to

guess keywords to put in each article; Knova

provides a single place to manage concept

maps that apply to all articles and queries.

Guides users through the search process

suggesting possible products, symptoms, or

other terms you define as relevant to your

knowledge to focus results on the most

helpful content. Of course, they can always

narrow results using their own query terms

too.

If users don’t get good results from an initial

search in a KB module, it’s “game over.”

They miss out on getting help that adapts

dynamically to their context and where

they are in the search process and get only

statically configured suggestions about what

to do next.

Knova makes sure that users never run

into dead ends, which makes them more

successful with search and encourages them

to search next time too. This advantage

comes with less, not more, investment of

administration effort because suggestions

are dynamic and not static.

Corrects spelling mistakes with a friendly

“did you mean?” option.

With KB modules, misspelled words fail

silently, misleading the user into thinking

that their content isn’t there.

Knova delivers the right answers even with

misspelled words—which is what users

expect based on their experience with

Internet search engines.

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KNOWLEDGEBASE SEARCH (CONTINUED)WHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS

Supports Advanced Search, including

intelligent processing of Booleans. Users

can explicitly and precisely control search

behavior if they so choose.

A one-size-fits-all search box gives users

no way to focus results on specific sources,

types or combinations of search terms.

Users familiar with the Advanced Search

page in Internet search engines will feel at

home in Knova, but KB modules won’t meet

their expectations.

Delivers best bets and targeted documents

based on easily-defined business rules that

provide the most salient information directly

to the user—with no need for them to look

through search results.

KB modules don’t have any mechanism for

associating specific content with specific

search terms or concepts.

Some documents (like compatibility guides,

policy documents, troubleshooters, or how-

tos) are the definitive answer to a customer’s

question. With Knova, customers don’t need

to play hide-and-seek to find them.

Provides tools for visually tuning the search

experience so content and customer

experience experts can make sure that the

best content bubbles to the top for a broad

range of search queries.

KB modules just deliver an undifferentiated

results list ordered semi-randomly based on

how keywords in the search terms and the

document happen to match up.

Knova’s search engine is smart, but

visual search tuning allows nontechnical

knowledgebase or website owners to make

it even smarter—not just for one or two

popular queries, but for entire classes and

topics of popular queries. Visual search

tuning is never required, but it’s a nice

value-added option for high-ROI search

cases.

“In today’s competitive environment, customer service is a major differentiator that drives revenue and loyalty. As such, it requires attention and investment. Knova is uniquely positioned to serve enterprise companies with premium cross-channel knowledge management tools for self-service and assisted support.“

John RagsdaleVice President of Technology Research, Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA)

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UNIVERSAL SEARCHWHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS

Integrates knowledgebase content

with content anywhere outside the

knowledgebase to provide universal search

and browse: one place to go for answers

and issue resolution. With smart indexing

that leverages automated tagging based

on existing metadata, the repository, and

the content itself, Knova delivers a smart,

guided search experience that spans all

relevant knowledge sources.

KB modules are limited to only searching

content authored in that module. There is

no facility for integrating useful content

from manuals, user communities, collateral,

or other sources of relevant information.

True, other tools can index all your content

for search, but only a true knowledge base

system can normalize search across all your

content with a consistent set of metadata

categories, user rating and usage analytics.

Customers expect “one-stop shopping.”

They hate having to go to multiple systems

and do multiple searches to get what they

need. And internal users require efficient

access to all the information they need

at their fingertips, regardless of where or

how that knowledge was created. Knova

provides access to the single source of truth

for users – making all content search the

same and look like it comes from the same

source – regardless of the source or form

that relevant knowledge takes.

“Slices” large PDF documents (like manuals)

to retrieve only the relevant sections of

content. This makes it possible for users to

easily find only the nuggets they need in

traditional, unwieldy print publications.

KB modules don’t index external sources like

manuals. The only way to retrieve a manual

(or any other large document) is as an

attachment, and KB module search ignores

the content in attachments. Even if the user

finds the attachment, they have no way to

navigate through a document that may be

literally hundreds of pages long.

Legacy content like installation guides,

product documentation, design documents,

and other PDF documents can have

extremely useful information in them—but

it often seems like trying to find a needle in

a haystack. With Knova, formal documents

are not only findable by search, but the

relevant “sections” are returned in virtually

no time at all complete with auto-generated

synopsis, greatly increasing their usability.

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PERSONALIZED SELF-SERVICEWHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS

Provides microsites tailored to specific

customer segments or groups delivering

personalized “push” content, user

experiences, and branding. Microsites are

easily configured by non-technical users and

new ones can be added in minutes as the

need arises.

Microsites also provide virtual home pages

for products.

KB modules provide a single generic portal.

Each user has the same experience, visual

design, and content as all other users,

whether or not it’s appropriate for them.

Most enterprises don’t serve a generic

customer—there are different product

interests, industries, business needs,

entitlements, and roles, all of which need

to be considered when delivering service.

Humans do this naturally, but without

sophisticated Microsite technology like

Knova’s, self-service fails to connect with

customers on their own terms.

Delivers Resolution Flows to guide

employees and agents through a

troubleshooting process. Resolution Flows

can result in precise document retrieval or

any other desired interaction, for example,

a highly efficient case opening process or

internal escalation.

KB modules generally don’t even have

rudimentary “decision trees,” a very

simplified version of Resolution Flows. Either

users like their search results, or they have to

start over from scratch.

Some situations come up again and again,

and cause significant inconvenience or

dissatisfaction among customers. Resolution

Flows can provide white-glove treatment

for these cases, stepping users through

a natural interview to guide them to the

best, most satisfying resolution whatever it

happens to be.

Embeds anywhere on your customer-facing

website as well as provides a full-featured,

out-of-the-box service and support portal

experience.

KB modules provide a static, difficult-

to-configure, one-size-fits-all end user

interface. Their search capabilities are not

designed to be integrated into other web

portals or systems.

Unless search and other knowledge

capabilities are a seamless part of the

customer experience, it’s hard to convince

customers to self-serve. Knova can integrate

anywhere: into an RMA or case opening

process, in site search, in communities—

wherever knowledge can help. KB modules

require flipping to their own page for any

search, resulting in a clunky user experience.

Scales to millions of external users and

thousands of internal users. Knova has run

service and support for some of the largest

sites on the Internet.

KB modules are architected to support

internal CRM system users—large scale

self-service was not considered in their

architecture. Accordingly, performance

suffers badly in selfservice deployments,

and simply adding servers isn’t an option.

The more self-service is used, the more

benefit the knowledgebase brings. If

self-service can’t scale, neither will the ROI.

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PERSONALIZED SELF-SERVICE (CONTINUED)WHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS

Makes content immediately available for

searching, browsing or proactive delivery.

KB modules index content periodically, so

one hour, or two, or even longer can elapse

before content is returned in searches.

When a breaking issue comes up, it’s

essential to get the word out immediately

to employees and customers alike. With

continuous indexing, Knova means never

having to wait for content.

Enables localized content presentation,

browsing and searching, giving users access

to content in their preferred languages.

Search technology in KB modules is typically

English-only, and there’s no facility for

setting preferred languages or creating

localized microsites for global users.

Self-service users who don’t find content

in their preferred language will give up on

self-service and open a case instead, or will

simply quit and be less satisfied, effective

and loyal.

Renders documents flexibly based on their

context (including which Microsite is being

used). Using easily updated stylesheets,

content entered using simple, structured

templates appears professional and well

designed to customers.

KB modules work with plain text and

generic templates, so their articles look more

like database entries and less like something

a customer should see. Worse still, KB

modules sometimes remove line breaks,

turning sample code or configurations into

gobbledygook.

“You only get one chance to make a first

impression,” and content appearance is

crucial. Yet, it’s not a good use of subject

expert time to have them do formatting.

With Knova, it’s easy to deliver polished

webpages without extra formatting effort.

Supports community rating of all returned

content, both authored within the

knowledgebase or indexed from an outside

repository. Community ratings guide

customers to the most popular content, and

ratings also nudge search results towards

proven winners.

KB modules may allow users to say “yes, this

was helpful” or “no, it wasn’t,” but that’s

as far as they go. KB modules just don’t

have any way of learning socially. Customer

ratings aren’t displayed on search results,

and they certainly don’t influence them. And

since KB modules don’t support documents

authored outside of their own module, users

can’t rate external documents either.

In the area of the social web, customers

expect to be able to provide ratings and

feedback, and to have their own experience

be improved and made more relevant based

on what others think too. Knova provides

this capability out-of-the-box. In addition

to better search results, there’s no need to

purchase and integrate a third-party rating

and feedback solution.

Integrates customer communities or

support forums. Search results can include

community questions and answers, and the

knowledgebase can repurpose valuable and

relevant community conversations.

KB modules have no community or forums

capability, and no way of indexing and

retrieving content that comes from a

community. Knova enables and integrates

community activity into service and support

delivery processes.

In many cases, customers prefer to get

answers from other customers, and they’re

willing to share expertise that might not

even exist inside your organization. Knova

eliminates the need to purchase and

integrate a third-party forums solution.

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KNOWLEDGE CAPTURE AND IMPROVEMENTWHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS

Provides universal template management

making it easy to tailor templates for issue

resolutions, how-tos, and Q&As. Simple,

targeted templates make it easier to capture

content and improve content structure as

well.

Most KB modules provide a generic

template (like “issue” and “solution”) that

can’t be modified or extended. Accordingly,

users end up effectively making their own

templates on the fly, increasing effort and

reducing consistency.

Good templates streamline knowledge

capture, help with the troubleshooting

process, and result in more findable, usable,

content. With Knova, it’s simple for non-

technical administrators to create and

maintain the right set of templates.

Enables WYSIWYG content entry, which

supports emphasis, code fragments, images,

and other valuable communication tools as

needed. No HTML coding is required.

KB modules generally support ASCII text,

and that’s it – any additional formatting has

to be done in difficult-to-use (and non-

searchable) attachments.

While knowledge articles look great with

no formatting, thanks to the template

stylesheets provided by Knova, full, rich

media editing means that authors can

use design to communicate even more

effectively whenever they desire.

Supports localized content with authoring

in multiple languages, the ability to link

localized versions of an article to a master

article, and the ability to export translation

workflow requests in industry-standard

formats.

KB modules are designed for a single

language. No provision is made for all

the mechanics required to keep localized

content in sync or to work with localization

vendors.

Customers demand and are now

conditioned to expect content in their native

language. Maintaining a localized, dynamic

knowledgebase requires much more than

just doublebyte support: Knova provides the

end-to-end workflow for creating, managing

and translating global content.

Allows articles to link to other articles

maintaining link integrity as content evolves.

KB modules have limited or no capabilities

for actively managing document links.

With Knova, customers and employees can

navigate flexibly to get additional details

on how to perform a step or troubleshoot

a problem without ever worrying about a

broken link.

Supports KCS, Knowledge-Centered

Support, the industry best practice for

capturing, improving and reusing knowledge

in the support workflow. Knova is KCS

Verified v4, meaning it has received the most

recent and most rigorous KCS certification in

the industry.

KB modules are not KCS Verified v4, and

their architecture doesn’t enable KCS

practices, including “flag it or fix it,”

“capture in the workflow,” “structure for

reuse,” the solution lifecycle, and much

more.

KCS is a set of processes, but without the

right technology support, it becomes too

hard for users to follow the process and KCS

can’t be sustained. Knova is built from the

ground up to support industry best practices

providing the most possible real-world value

from an investment in knowledge.

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KNOWLEDGE ADMINISTRATIONWHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS

Enables automated content cleanup

and scheduled expiry keeping the

knowledgebase up-to-date and

automatically pruning no-longer relevant

knowledgebase articles.

Specialized reports show what content

is infrequently used making it easier to

separate the wheat from the chaff.

With KB modules, all content maintenance

is manual. With limited reporting, it’s hard

to even tell what articles should be manually

retired.

The greatest enemy of relevance is out-

of-date, unmaintained, no-longer-true

content. In a perfect world, content is

always assiduously maintained by hand. In

the real world, evergreen content requires

automation that Knova has and KB modules

don’t.

Supports version histories and enables

easy roll-backs so it’s clear who has done

what to articles, and it’s easy to know what

articles said at a given point in time. Roll-

backs make it easy to undo any inadvertent

mistakes made in the content update

process.

KB modules generally do not support article

versioning. They’re memory-free: If someone

changes an article, no one knows what they

did, and (absent an off-line, labor-intensive

backup recovery) it’s not possible to undo it.

One of the strengths of a knowledgebase

is that it’s dynamic—content keeps up

with changes in the world. However, with

dynamic content comes the need to manage

those changes with version tracking and

easy roll-backs to an earlier state.

Provides a bulk update capability integrated

with a knowledge inventory view that

allows administrators to rapidly work with

knowledgebase content and all metadata,

whether inside the knowledgebase

or attached to external documents.

Administrators can even do bulk search-and-

replace options, for example, if a product’s

name changes.

KB modules generally have no ability for

administrators to rapidly slice and dice

even internal data, and no way to manage

metadata changes efficiently.

When a new release comes out, or if a

product is end-of-lived, or if new policies for

information sharing are implemented, Knova

makes it easy for knowledge administrators

to make the necessary updates all on one

screen. KB modules require administrators to

open and update documents one at a time,

a herculean task.

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USER AND PERMISSION ADMINISTRATIONWHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS

Unifies user management and administration

so there is a common user entity for all

roles: knowledgebase user, knowledgebase

contributor, forums participant, and/or

administrator.

Traditional CRM systems maintain different

repositories for “users” (employees) and

“contacts” (customers), which makes it

harder to manage knowledge and social

support functions that work inside and

outside the company.

Easier administration means lower total cost

of ownership for Knova, and the ability to

get better analytics that span across the

employee and customer community.

Provides fine-grain access controls and

permissions to microsites, content sources,

documents and document sections.

Most KB modules assume that content is

either externally available for everyone or

only internally available full stop. Articles

cannot be partially public with private

sections.

With Knova, knowledge can be shared

selectively with partners, specific customers,

segments or entitlement levels. Additionally,

private information in “public” documents

provides flexibility for sharing more without

over-disclosing. For example, the customer-

facing version of an article might have a

workaround, but the internal note could

have a reference to the relevant entry in an

internal defect tracking system.

ANALYTICSWHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS

Logs the entire customer experience so

organizations can know not only what was

viewed, but how their users found it.

At best, KB modules provide reporting on

document click-throughs with no insight on

the overall customer experience.

The only way to tune and improve the

customer experience is to understand it.

Only Knova provides the breadcrumbs that

let you follow users’ paths and make them

smoother.

Measures resolution success so you can

demonstrate a compelling business case for

self-service, as well as discover the areas

that could benefit from additional content

or tuning.

KB modules may report on the number of

document clicks, and in some cases provide

search logs, but there is no measure of

customers’ success with search and no

insight into possible ROI.

Everyone knows self-service is important,

but it’s hard to measure its value and hard

to know how to improve it. Knova provides

advanced heuristics out-of-the-box that

demonstrate success and enable continuous

improvement.

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ANALYTICS (CONTINUED)WHAT KNOVA DOES HOW IT’S DIFFERENT WHY IT MATTERS

Identifies content gaps based on search

traffic, search success rates, and content

coverage. This allows organizations to focus

their content development in the highest-

value areas.

KB modules may have a “searches with

no matches” report, but that yields much

less actionable insight than content gap

reports—many queries have some response,

perhaps just not a helpful response.

Organizations need to understand what

topics are generating customer interest that

is not being completely satisfied through

self-service. Knova’s Content Gap reports

provide just this insight.

Documents the impact of high-value

product improvements by reporting on how

often documents are reused to close cases,

and how often they’re viewed by customers.

Knova’s data helps quantify the value of

product enhancement or defect requests.

Some KB modules have a way of tracking

case links, but they rarely provide a

comprehensive view of the impact of

documented issues in the customer

experience.

It’s hard to get development organizations

to implement product changes without

compelling data that shows what the fix

would mean for the customer experience.

Knova provides data from both internal

and self-service use to justify engineering

investment in high-priority customer issues.

Reports on the value of team members’

contributions to the knowledge

management process. Knova provides

a comprehensive view of activities and

business outcomes that allows all team

members, and their leaders, to assess and

improve their performance.

While KB modules generally have a few

reports on knowledge activity by person,

they don’t provide a comprehensive

dashboard designed for end-to-end

performance assessment.

To be successful, knowledge management

must become part of the job. So individual

contributors and leaders need easy access

to the information they need to assess their

performance. Knova provides an integrated

dashboard that pulls together knowledge

additions, updates, reuses, ratings, and all

the other information needed to see the

value they’re creating and to coach them to

higher levels of performance.

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KNOVA KNOWLEDGE CENTRALDATA SHEET

WHAT IT IS All those investments in call routing and tracking have been

necessary, and they do help manage the queue and keep you

organized, but the calls keep coming and those investments

haven’t helped you save much on your biggest expense—time.

Aptean Knowledge Central helps you to plow through that queue

by harnessing your greatest asset—knowledge. When you can

capture knowledge, share it and reuse it many times over, you are

saving time and resources. Knowledge Central is a best of breed

knowledge management (KM) tool built to capture knowledge

across the enterprise and then make it available to employees,

partners and customers with the goals of providing a superior

customer experience and a healthy ROI.

Knowledge Central gives agents, operations analysts, and

managers the full suite of functionality they need to craft the best

possible customer experience.

• An integrated resolution workbench integrates with CRM

to provide one screen that has all the capabilities needed to

solve and document each customer interaction. Knowledge

is easy to capture, author and update in the course of

solving customer problems.

• A sophisticated search uses patented technology to guide

agents through the resolution process, automatically,

delivering results from all relevant content, whether stored

inside the knowledgebase or not.

• Advanced in-process authoring tools allow you to capture

knowledge as cases are solved. Knowledge can be then be

made immediately available for reuse to help solve other

cases.

• Comprehensive analytics provide the insights needed to

assess agent performance, indentify areas for improvement

and track the knowledge that is most valuable to the

enterprise.

WHY YOU NEED IT Aptean Knowledge Central streamlines the agent experience by

providing a single screen for all needed tools and information.

These are just some of the features that help drive service and

support efficiencies:

• Speed time to resolution as it delivers relevant knowledge

based on the specifics of each case or incident, utilizing

relevant search results, resolution flows and guided search.

• Web content, wikis, support forums, content management

systems, and other relevant knowledge are integrated into a

single precise search result.

• Comply with industry best practices, such as the

Consortium for Service Innovation’s Knowledge-Centered

Support (KCSSM) and ITIL incident management, problem

management, and service management processes.

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• Quantify ROI and enable Voice-of-the-Customer reporting

using advance analytic tools.

• Assess and improve individual and team performance with

specialized dashboards.

• Provide accurate search results with Aptean’s deep natural

language processing.

WHAT IT DOES Adaptive Search and Navigation—Provides a deep natural

language understanding of queries and cases for accurate

results while guided search helps agents frame issues and locate

solutions.

Self-improving search—The system gets “smarter” as it is used,

constantly increasing the relevancy of search results.

Seamless agent resolution from CRM—Integrates seamlessly

with Aptean Case Management or your own CRM system to

capture dynamic case notes, e-mail, solutions and collaborations

in CRM.

Resolution Flows—Automatically triggered by case context to

achieve optimal resolution. Construct and deliver best practices

and policies for resolution and provide integrated process support

with knowledge delivery.

Collaborative support—Expert locator and forums integration

leverages expertise inside and outside the enterprise.

Recommendation & Visual Search Management—Search-

context driven recommendations and offers and allow broad sets

of permissioned users to improve search effectiveness.

Microsites—These personalized role-based agent portals allows

managers to push alerts news, and messages to the right agent

segment.

Knowledge Umbrella—Integrates structured and unstructured

data including web content, file systems, databases, CRM systems,

CMS systems, wiki and forums content, utilizing auto-classification

and segmentation features.

In-process authoring—A knowledge capture workflow is built

into natural agent processes with KCS support and process

flexibility including steps to recommend, draft, improve, approve

and publish content.

Advanced actionable analytics—Monitor and measure

success with analytics that give you deep insight into knowledge

management initiatives over long periods of time.

“Knowledge-Centered Support is a proven practice for capturing, improving, and taking advantage of knowledge with each customer contact. The list of support organizations implementing KCS continues to increase, as does the success they accrue by making their staff more efficient, their self-service more effective, and their customers more successful.“

David KayLeading Knowledge Management Consultant, Co-author of Collective Wisdom: Transforming Support with Knowledge

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MORE ON KNOWLEDGE CENTRAL Aptean Knowledge Central is built on a simple design philosophy:

streamlining the agent’s job means higher productivity, happier

customers, and happier staff. Unlike other tools that return

seemingly random search results, require users to flip from screen

to screen, and force agents to leave their primary tools to work

with knowledge, Knowledge Central eases the task of resolving

customer issues with one-stop shopping for all the knowledge and

tools agents need to resolve customer issues.

Knowledge Central gives agents, operations analysts, and

managers the full suite of functionality they need to craft the

best possible customer experience. An integrated resolution

workbench integrates with CRM to provide one screen that has

all the capabilities needed to solve and document each customer

interaction. Knowledge is easy to capture, author, and update in

the course of solving customer problems. A sophisticated search

uses patented technology to guide agents through the resolution

process, automatically, delivering results from all relevant

content, whether stored inside the knowledgebase or not. And

comprehensive analytics provide the insights needed for assessing

agent performance, continuously improving the customer

experience, and making a solid business case for knowledge

management.

Remember the time and resources you’ll be saving? As your agents

solve issues more efficiently, customers aren’t sitting in the queue

as long and their problems are being solved faster (that is, if they

didn’t already solve their issue using the knowledge you made

available via Aptean Self-Service—but that’s a different datasheet)

and that makes everyone happier.

P.S. Happier customers make repeat customers.

“Through effective knowledge management we achieve an important balance between customer satisfaction and cost containment.“

Dan BellSenior Vice President and General Manager, Canon ITS

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DATA SHEET

WHAT IT IS If you’re old enough to remember the days when an attendant

pumped your gas, you may recall that consumers took up the

nozzles reluctantly when pump-your-own stations became the

norm. Customers saw this as a way to cut jobs and costs at the

expense of good service, and it forced consumer to do the work.

Online self-service was viewed that way by many companies in the

nascent days of the web. But there is a big hole in the comparison

... customers embraced self-service. It let them find answers during

not-so-regular business hours and set them free of endless hours

of on-hold music. Today it is a must-have and some even become

belligerent when forced to call customer service.

Self-service used to mean a static list of FAQs, and later a basic

site search that returned some pretty shady answers and links

to likely unrelated pages. Aptean has always taken a different

approach. Aptean Self-Service mines the knowledge you have

housed in many places—your website, customer forums, wikis,

documentation, knowledge base content, and more—and

presents it through a highly customizable, personalized Microsite.

Microsites are customer portals that enable branded marketing

and personalized support based on factors such as products

owned, geography, profile and preferences. Context-sensitive

pagelets can be proactively generated in the course of a search to

provide relevant news, alerts and offers for products and services.

This allows for highly targeted selling options, seamlessly guiding

the user to marketing content or even a live agent.

Of course a Microsite may have some FAQs but they’re now

dynamic, based on the hottest topics and relevant to the specific

product or service topic being addressed. And site search has

become an intelligent knowledgebase search that gets smarter

each time it’s used.

An integrated resolution workbench integrates with CRM to

provide one screen that has all the capabilities needed to solve

and document each customer interaction. Knowledge is easy to

capture, author and update in the course of solving customer

problems.

WHAT IT DOES

Intuitive self-service interface—consolidates support content with

personalized delivery and guides site visitors to the answers they

need with minimal clicks.

Adaptive Search and Navigation—backed by a integrated search

solution set:

• Deep natural language understanding of queries and cases

for accurate results.

• Guided search helps agents frame issues and locate

solutions.

• Resolution flows optimize the handling of common high-

value customer requests.

KNOVA SELF-SERVICE

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Self-improving search—means the system gets “smarter” as it

is used, constantly increasing the relevancy of search results and

recommendations. Seamless escalation to assisted support—when

you need it, it’s there. The user’s session history is passed with the

escalation, so the agent can see the searches attempted and users

don’t need to repeat themselves.

Integration with CRM—enables capture of session information

to the customer record.

Personalization—supports segmentation along multiple

enterprise-defined dimensions such as product, industry, and

region. Personalizes all aspects of the customer experience

including content, recommendations and processes.

Analytics for insight—self-service analytics provide voice-of-

the-customer reporting while specialized dashboards help leaders

assess the value of knowledge and quantify the ROI for self-

service.

ISN’T SELF-SERVICE JUST FOR THE EASY QUESTIONS? Aptean Self-Service handles the easy issues just fine, but that’s

not what it was built for ... the Aptean knowledge management

platform was designed to help solve complex questions, for both

agent-assisted service AND self-service. Resolution flows are pre-

scripted step-by-step instructions that guide users through even

complicated fixes to common issues.

An added benefit—audience segmentation controls allow Aptean

Self-Service administrators to specify who sees what. That means

you can entitle internal users to see a more detailed solution set

than you provide to customers or the general public, or you can

provide more or less information to customers based on their SLA.

The bottom line? No matter how easy or complex the issue,

Aptean Self-Service gets the right answers to the right users

efficiently and effectively.

MORE ON SELF-SERVICE Aptean Self-Service provides service and support organizations

with all of the capability they need to create an award winning,

customer satisfying, and call deflecting website. A simple

administration console lets service and support website owners

to create personalized Microsites for different customers and

segments such as partners, premium support customers, and field

service personnel.

Resolution flows guide customers through a specific process

for specific high value issues. Personalized content panes and

subscriptions keep customers up-to-date on the issues they care

about. And CRM integration makes sure customers never hit a

dead end: with the right entitlement, customers or partners can

log a new case or incident that automatically includes all of their

self-service history, improving the handoff to assisted service and

speeding time to resolution.

When the filling station went to self-service, it did eliminate

some jobs and that can still be a concern, but more and more,

call center agents no longer see self-service as a threat to their

jobs. Self-service is deflecting the mundane and repetitive calls

so agents are able to concentrate on solving new and more

challenging issues. Solve those issues a couple times and you have

some new knowledgebase content that can be solved through

self-service ... then the next issue comes along. It’s the circle of

life right there in the knowledgebase. And those agents are now

smarter, more efficient and maybe a little prouder of their work.

Maybe they even get promoted to knowledge authors. Hey, isn’t

that called job security?

“Each time a new solution to a problem is captured and rolled out to self- service, our dealers are able to solve our customers’ problems better and faster. The system constantly gets better, and so do our dealer and customer satisfaction levels.“

Steven Peterson Knowledge Manager, CNH Dealer eBusiness Systems

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WHAT IT DOES Adaptive Search and Navigation—Provides a deep natural

language understanding of queries and cases for accurate

results while guided search helps agents frame issues and locate

solutions.

Self-improving search—The system gets “smarter” as it is used,

constantly increasing the relevancy of search results.

Seamless agent resolution from CRM—Integrates seamlessly

with Aptean Case Management or your own CRM system to

capture dynamic case notes, e-mail, solutions and collaborations

in CRM.

Resolution Flows—Automatically triggered by case context to

achieve optimal resolution. Construct and deliver best practices

and policies for resolution and provide integrated process support

with knowledge delivery.

Collaborative support—Expert locator and forums integration

leverages expertise inside and outside the enterprise.

Recommendation & Visual Search Management—Search-

context driven recommendations and offers and allow broad sets

of permissioned users to improve search effectiveness.

Microsites—These personalized role-based agent portals allows

managers to push alerts news, and messages to the right agent

segment.

Knowledge Umbrella—Integrates structured and unstructured

data including web content, file systems, databases, CRM systems,

CMS systems, wiki and forums content, utilizing auto-classification

and segmentation features.

In-process authoring—A knowledge capture workflow is built

into natural agent processes with KCS support and process

flexibility including steps to recommend, draft, improve, approve

and publish content.

Advanced actionable analytics—Monitor and measure

success with analytics that give you deep insight into knowledge

management initiatives over long periods of time.

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DATA SHEET

KNOVA COMMUNITIES

HARNESS THE KNOWLEDGE IN FORUMS In today’s highly-connected society, forums are emerging as

the first step towards gaining insight and solving problems.

However, forums remain a disconnected silo from the enterprise’s

information and communication channels.

Aptean has elevated the value of forums by incorporating them

into the overall enterprise customer experience. Deeply integrated

into the complete suite of applications, Aptean Communities

delivers increased brand loyalty, reduced support calls and

improved knowledge.

EXPERT CUSTOMERS ENABLE A COLLABORATIVE FORUM EXPERIENCE Some of your best and most reliable subject matter experts aren’t

located within your contact center or even within your company—

they are your customers who spend day in and day out using the

product.

In complex support environments, expert users are highly technical

and often capable of solving problems for themselves as well as

other users. Why not leverage their knowledge as a valuable part

of your knowledge base?

Your users are domain experts who bring unique qualities and

knowledge about your product that can make for better support

content and defect submissions, and they’re willing to share this

knowledge.

GAIN INSIGHT WITH ANALYTICS Forums are a powerful marketing tool to provide early insights

into trends such as changing opinions and attitudes. This allows

a company to gain a deeper understanding of how customers

perceive the enterprise and its products. Analytics provides a view

into emerging issues and questions as well as unmet needs to

drive product improvements.

LIKE TO KNOW?• Reduce incidents to the support center

• Increase brand loyalty

• Capture customer feedback and insights

• Integrate forums into the overall communications strategy

• Leverage powerful forums content and contributions

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INTEGRATE WITH SERVICE DELIVERY Aptean Communities seamlessly integrates with other support

channels, providing one view into all of a company’s collective

knowledge. Sometimes customers call support looking for

answers. If provided the opportunity however, many will opt to

find answers themselves via user forums OR self-service. Most

forums today are highly stand-alone, but by integrating forums

content with the service resolution process, Aptean offers a

unique opportunity to add third party expertise and knowledge to

the self-service experience.

Forums are integrated to the suite at the level of content,

reputation, business process and customer experience. The

insights, posts and responses from the user community can be

leveraged as answers for customers on the self-service site. The

same reputation engine that tracks and identifies the best users

pushes the best content from the forums for resolution. Questions

from users that are asked on the self-service site can be escalated

to experts in the forums as well as escalated to the contact center

and managed through business processes.

MANAGE THE EXPERIENCE NOT THE DISCUSSION Embedding forums within a website allows companies to offer a

rich and dynamic customer experience. Aptean Communities are

available with our Knowledge Driven Support and Knowledge

Management solutions. They tightly integrate with Aptean Self-

Service and Aptean Knowledge Central for a customer experience

that can be optimized around users, search, business process and

overall site experience and management.

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DATA SHEET

KNOVA ANALYTICS

WHAT IT IS Measure twice, cut once. The old adage is sound advice if you’re

with the cast of This Old House—it saves headaches, keeping

the project on time and on budget. The same holds true when it

comes to measuring your service and support initiatives.

Sizing up those metrics used to be a pretty cut-and-dry process.

We knew that shorter hold times are better; higher abandonment

rates are worse. Unfortunately, it’s no longer as easy as getting out

the tape measure. Today’s customers expect a superior customer

experience through a mix of support channels like self-service,

chat, forums and the traditional phone call.

More advanced tools are needed to measure our efforts. Powered

by QlikView business intelligence software from QlikTech, Aptean

Analytics is a visual, intuitive set of tools with predefined role-

based reports built on cutting edge technology. They solve the

problems of old school OLAP cube-based reporting which was

limited and slow. And they solve newer problems associated

with reporting consistently across multiple service and support

channels.

Aptean Analytics help you answer pressing business questions that

will help you drive to the truth about your service levels, like:

• Who is creating value in the knowledgebase and where are

the gaps?

• What’s the highest value product improvement we can

make?

• How can we tune our customer experience to better resolve

issues?

• How effectively are service and support staff closing cases?

Does their escalation rate meet expectations? How well are

they meeting their service-level agreements (SLAs)?

WHY YOU NEED IT Aptean Analytics are designed to meet the needs of today’s busy

and complex service and support operations, offering flexibility

and scalability that has never been available before:

• Analyze and compare data over long periods of time—after

all knowledge programs grow and evolve over the years, not

months.

• Process large amounts of data without bringing the system

to its knees.

• Measure cases and knowledge together—analytics are

designed to answer business questions, not just report on

the activities that took place in any one particular technology

silo.

• Meet end user expectations—by providing an intelligent,

visually rich interface.

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WHAT IT DOES In-memory analytical processing—allows you to analyze large

data volumes on the fly so that it becomes possible to look at data

across long periods of time.

Associative data model—people think in non-linear paths

by building associations, and so do our analytics. This logical

approach connects a wide range of data sources efficiently and

gives us faster access to data.

Prebuilt high-value reports across three areas—Authoring,

Knowledge and Success analysis.

Flexibility to create custom reports—report formulas and

calculations are exposed and can be easily modified to suit

individual needs and without the need for technical expertise.

Visually interactive interface—Drives user adoption and

increases usability across multiple roles in the organization.

MORE ON APTEAN ANALYTICS Aptean Analytics’ associative in-memory technology brings fast

results and better decision-making through a series of role-

based pre-defined dashboards designed to help line managers,

operations analysts, knowledge program managers and website

owners do their jobs more effectively.

Line managers need to understand how well their team

members are executing their knowledge and case management

processes, and what value they’re creating in the knowledgebase.

Knowledge program managers need to understand the health of

the knowledgebase and the processes that keep it continually

renewed and up-to-date. And self-service website owners need

analytics that will help them continuously improve the customer

experience, online resolution rates, and call deflection.

For each of these users, Aptean provides role-specific dashboards

that analyze critical areas such as workflow status, knowledge

effectiveness, contributor productivity, and much more.

“Knowledge-Centered Support is a proven practice for capturing, improving, and taking advantage of knowledge with each customer contact. The list of support organizations implementing KCS continues to increase, as does the success they accrue by making their staff more efficient, their self-service more effective, and their customers more successful.“

David KayLeading Knowledge Management Consultant, Co-author of Collective Wisdom: Transforming Support with Knowledge

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About Aptean: Aptean helps businesses profit, innovate and grow where the work gets done—in the call center, on the floor of the factory, at the end of the assembly line. That’s where Aptean’s CRM, ERP and Supply Chain software applications enable nearly 5,000 customers to satisfy their customers, operate more efficiently and stay at the forefront of their industry.

Aptean is where software WORKS. For more information, visit www.aptean.com

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