eGain’s New Multisearch Gives Vendor “Best of Breed” Status for KB, MultiChannel, Self-Service, and now Search

One of the top support technology spending areas in the last 3 years has been intelligent search. With the number of content repositories–both inside and outside the firewall–increasing rapidly, both employees and customers need a single search tool that will allow them to access any number of content sources, in any format, in real time. As you can see in this chart from my annual Member Technology Survey, adoption of intelligent search technology rose 15% from 2009 to 2010, and almost of third of members report budget for search tools in 2010-2011.

 

Adoption and Planned Spending for Intelligent Search

Intelligent search is available from 2 primary sources: knowledge management vendors who have included intelligent search as part of their platforms, and specialist search vendors whose technology can integrate to existing knowledge infrastructure. But the total number of search providers has been pretty low, especially if you want a tool designed specifically for customer support and self-service–not a general purpose search tool that doesn’t really meet the use cases of support.

I’m thrilled to announce that as of last week we have one more source for intelligent search: knowledge management expert eGain. Last week eGain announced the availability of eGain Multisearch, an all-in-one search technology for web self-service and the multichannel contact center. Embedded in the eGain SelfService™ and eGain KnowledgeAgent™ products, eGain Multisearch delivers ease of navigation, content findability, and result relevance, while improving support tech productivity and ensuring best-practice compliance.

Key capabilities of eGain Multisearch include:

• Multi-access behind a simple search box: eGain Multisearch puts their extensive set of knowledge access methods—keyword, metadata, natural language and intent-based search, question-matched search, and CBR-guided help (Case-Based Reasoning) behind a simple search box. The multifaceted, multi-path, blended navigation for answers helps reduce unproductive searches. Where the advanced version of eGain SelfService is implemented, search with a virtual assistant interface is also included as a seamless option.
• Multi-sourced content: To further increase findability of answers, eGain Multisearch seamlessly federates and presents search results across website, contact center, enterprise, community, and social content.
• Multichannel consistency: The underlying multichannel customer interaction hub platform, eGain OpenCIH™, ensures that contact center portion of the federated content is consistent across customer interaction channels.
• Multi-role access: Access to search methods can be controlled by role or user. For instance, agents that are new or work in highly regulated industries can be made to follow a consistent, compliant search and interactive process.
• Multi-process expertise: Today’s contact center agents are expected to handle process-intensive customer queries such as product selection, diagnostics and resolution, contextual cross-sell and up-sell, providing sales quotes, etc. in a way that is compliant with industry regulations and best practices.

The timing of this release is perfect, as we see companies evaluating search technology to improve support productivity and self-service success. Additionally, federating online community/discussion forum content with knowledge base content is a key step toward achieving rapid ROI for community projects. I also applaud eGain for building this technology themselves, instead of forming a partnership with a search specialist (which usually have a shelf life of 1-2 years).

If you have any questions about the new release, let me know and I can ask my contacts at eGain for additional information. Thanks for reading!

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Tags: eGain, eGain Multisearch, intelligent search

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