From the Top


 
From the Top
- Executive to Executive -

Mention the word Jeeves and most people think of the helpful Internet butler that guides visitors to find their answers at Ask.com. However, the company is more than the popular search engine and provides enterprise search solutions for Web self-service under the Jeeves Solutions brand. Jeeves’ CEO, Skip Battle shares his vision for evolving the search experience to drive customer satisfaction and increases revenues.

Skip Battle, CEO and Director, Ask Jeeves, Inc. &
President of Jeeves Solutions


 
RealMarket: How does Jeeves view the world of CRM today?
 
Battle: In the early stages of CRM, companies hoped that customers could service themselves to accomplish anything and everything online. Today, the expectations have come down to reality and become more realistic. Through experiences with first implementations, vendors as well as their customers have learned more about what self-service can do and what it cannot do. Overall we have a much more educated market. This is good for Jeeves in that our products do significantly better when buyers have a sophisticated understanding of the Web channel and value the customer experience.
 
RealMarket: You talk with CEOs from leading companies. What do they see as the number one issue or opportunity facing CRM today?
 
Battle: Companies struggle with making their Web sites profitable - whether as stand alone e-commerce plays or in relation to reducing support costs. And consumers have heightened demands for the frequency and quality of service they expect. Poor service online, translates into long phone conversations with call center reps and lost sales. If companies cannot meet consumer demand for information online, they can expect high abandonment rates, eroding brand experience, unsatisfied customers and lost revenues. A lot of the companies we work with see the Web channel as an opportunity to decrease support costs as well as increase their look to buy ratios. They see their competitors constantly trying to improve their sites, raising the bar for what consumers can expect. So when they work with us, they clearly see the power of the Web and look to us to help improve site usability to help make their online experience the best it can be.
 
RealMarket: Have you been able to identify winning strategies to address that issue?
 
"Searching the Web is second only to email as the most popular online activity. . . Our experience with Ask.com, which is the second most popular search engine, has definitely taught us that search is the ultimate direct marketing vehicle."

 
 
Battle: Many studies suggest that improving the usability of a Web site will help offset the rising demand for customer service, which is an essential strategy for most businesses. Our customers have found that making search available on every page helps them do this because users can service themselves quickly and easily. The trick is picking an effective search application that also allows you to understand what questions customers are asking. It’s important for companies to figure out what users are asking and then make that information available to them.
 
And then there are those questions that are best answered through other means - like via email, chat or the telephone -and these channels have their place. But most of our customers would like to use the more expensive channels sparingly and less expensive channels like the Web to cover as many questions as possible. We estimate that about 80% of inbound questions could be answered online through effective search and self-service. With the right approach to search, you create an experience that leaves customers feeling very positive about your products, services and your company. And, you save and make money through a decrease in support costs and increase your sales revenue.
 
RealMarket: Jeeves is best known for the Ask Jeeves property. How does what you do with Jeeves Solutions differ and leverage the Ask Jeeves brand?
 
Battle: Customers come to our Web Properties - Ask.com, Teoma.com, Ask Jeeves for Kids to get answers to questions. We have companies that want to get their message to them - and the search experience enables us to present them with the right information exactly at the moment when they are looking for it. With our enterprise software, we are doing exactly the same thing, but for company Web sites. It’s all about supporting users’ goals.
 
Consumers come to corporate Web sites looking for information, products and services. And we use the search experience to connect them with what they are looking for. This benefits consumers in that they get fast and relevant information - and it benefits the company which has now suggested the product or service they’d like the consumer to learn about at precisely the moment they are asking about it. If we can make this exchange happen effectively, we are making the Web channel work to everyone’s advantage.
 
RealMarket: Is usability just about the service and support part of the equation?
 
Battle: While it is critical for service and support, providing the right information at just the right time is also very important for driving sales online. For instance, if someone is searching for vacation information on Travelocity.com, then that might be an excellent time to show information about vacation packages, hotel deals and last minute airline bargains. Search gives you the opportunity to cross sell and up sell like no other online medium can.
 
RealMarket: What areas of CRM most interested you? What areas do you avoid?
 
Battle: We are squarely focused on the search experience.
 
RealMarket: As it relates to self-service, is your offering an extension of the call center?
 
Battle: We frequently work with call centers to escalate inquiries as appropriate. Our customers like to see us as the first line of support for their customers and partners. Many of our customer’s call center representatives rely on our technology to find information when they do not know the answer. For example, one of our customers uses our technology to help call center representatives quickly pull up answers to customer support calls. This enables them to answer questions efficiently and escalate fewer calls to higher-cost employees.
 
Some of our customers have also integrated our solution into their support system. For example, one of our customers support operators regularly asks callers if they used their “Ask” application before calling. If they have not, they take them to the “Ask” feature and walk them through how to use the application. They have also recorded a message for support customers put on hold recommending they try answering their question with “Ask” before talking to a live operator. These relatively small steps have succeeded in driving more and more traffic to the “Ask” feature with each interaction saving the company money.
 
We work with marketing and brand executives because our solution gives them critical insight into what customers want and need. When you think about a marketer’s main goals and where they spend money, consumer intelligence is key. They spend a lot of time and money trying to better understand their consumers so they are very interested in our solutions.
 
RealMarket: Where does analytics fit in all of this?
 
Battle: Good question. Organizations need customer feedback. Most simple search solutions only provide click stream analysis - which is important, but it doesn’t get down to the critical information about why customers navigate in a particular way and what their true intentions are. Jeeves Analytics provides the back end tools to capture information about customer preferences and needs. When you integrate search with customer analytics you can learn a lot from what questions your customers ask and tailor your Web site to meet customers’ needs. This also plays an important role in evaluating marketing campaigns because you gain insight into which campaigns are working and which are not - based on the questions customers ask and their actions.
 
RealMarket: How do your customers use Jeeves Analytics today?
 
Battle: Our customers see Analytics as one of our primary differentiators. For example, Roche uses our technology to evaluate how questions change over time for its weight loss drug, Xenical. This allows Roche to determine whether its site is satisfying customer needs. Every question customers ask gives Roche new insights about the needs, interests and priorities of site visitors. This has allowed Roche to increase the reach of health information services while gauging the effectiveness of our technology used for Ask Xenical. For example, Roche has found that 91 percent of online visitors who used Ask Xenical took some action afterwards related to improving their health: They contacted a doctor or filled a Xenical prescription.
 
In addition, this experience helps reduce support calls. For example, last year, Roche had more than 185,631 users access the Ask Xenical feature. Roche estimates that if those were all translated into telephone calls, it would have needed six additional full-time professional information consultants to handle the volume on top of the 375,000 calls it received in 2001.
 
In understanding their consumers more, Roche significantly improved the experience consumers have with their brand online. A lot of our customers view their Web experience as synonymous with their brand experience.
 
RealMarket: What do you mean when you say the Web experience is synonymous with the brand experience?
 
Battle: The online experience is merely an extension of the brand. Consumers have high expectations for the ease with which they can interact with a company online - they expect it to be as enjoyable of an experience as they might have offline. This means growing intolerance for poor online customer service. By listening to their questions, companies learn exactly what their consumers want online and can make a clear-cut case for investing the technology and resources to make their Web sites what they need to be.
 
RealMarket: In a crowded market, how does Jeeves Solutions differentiate itself in the world of CRM?
 
Battle: We take a unique and intuitive approach to helping companies improve search and self-service for external users, i.e. customer and partners. From a Jeeves perspective, the ability to help a user of any background in an efficient and effective manner is what it is all about. Rarely are markets made up of narrowly defined demographics because people have a wide range of comfort levels, prior knowledge, word usages, etc. So organizations require solutions that adapt to a wide range of customer needs and expectations.
 
By working with many of the world’s leading companies like Ford, HP, Roche and others, we know that end users highly value a natural language and guided search experience that helps answer their questions throughout the entire customer lifecycle. We also know that companies can do more to leverage search to help impact their bottom line. The ability to influence the search results that users see, guide users to relevant answers, while also helping companies understand what’s on the minds of their customers is how we differ from our competitors.
 
"Consumers come to corporate Web sites looking for information, products and services. And we use the search experience to connect them with what they are looking for. This benefits consumers in that they get fast and relevant information - and it benefits the company which has now suggested the product or service they’d like the consumer to learn about at precisely the moment they are asking about it."

 
 
RealMarket: When people are considering search solutions, what advice do you have for them?
 
Battle: Companies that want natural language must not get stuck with the maintenance costs of their knowledge bases. With our technology, our customers don’t have to be experts in natural language; we leave that up to our engineering team. Enterprise search solutions must be easy for customers to maintain with a low total cost of ownership. In this market, companies are going to be presented with low-ball pricing. However, many times the maintenance costs over the life of the solution can far outweigh the upfront costs. We’ve seen enterprise search providers come in really cheap on the front end, but the rising costs of growing and maintaining those solutions makes it a life long struggle for effectiveness and cost management. For example, we recently competed head-to-head in a deal where the prospect was under the impression that the competitive solution would cost them $25K, and was later surprised that they would need 5 boxes to support the implementation, bringing the total cost to $125,000. Ultimately we won the deal based on total cost of ownership.
 
RealMarket: There has been quite a bit of press in the last year about CRM failure rates. How do you balance delivery versus expectations?
 
Battle: It’s important to be clear about the role of software and the role of services. We strive to set realistic expectations about what is required, what customers get with the software and what they get with the services. Again, this ties to having a good understanding of TCO.
 
When companies really understand what they can do with search, I think it exceeds their expectations because it’s a lot more than a quick navigation tool. It defines the Web experience. It’s the difference between a satisfied customer and one that abandons the site with a poor taste in their mouth. And it’s the difference between a $20 purchase and an $80 purchase when you effectively implement search that can cross sell and up sell. If you make the analogy between a good search experience and your very best sales rep or your very best call center representative, the importance of search becomes very clear.
 
RealMarket: Looking to the future, what is the biggest change you see on the CRM horizon?
 
Battle: Searching the Web is second only to email as the most popular online activity, which means consumers are familiar with using search technology to find what they’re looking for. More and more consumers are turning to corporate Web sites throughout the entire pre and post sales customer lifecycle, yet they can’t find what they’re looking for. I think online customers’ expectations are going to continue to rise and the most demanding customers will become mainstream rather than the leading edge. Our experience with Ask.com, which is the second most popular search engine, has definitely taught us that search is the ultimate direct marketing vehicle. Most organizations have some kind of search, but haven’t paid much attention to it.
 
Companies are starting to realize that offering a powerful search experience on their site is also a powerful marketing vehicle in that it reaches a consumer at the moment of highest interest - when they are searching for an answer. Whether consumers are on a site researching, attempting to perform a commerce transaction or if they need technical support, companies are starting to see search as their first line of support.
 
Click here for more information about Jeeves Solutions products.
 
top of page