Who would ever think that the butler really did it? - Product Information

Communications News, April, 2001

Search solution offers natural-language question-answering technology to small businesses and online shoppers.

Office products giant Office Depot faced the challenge of expanding its online customer service offerings on officedepot.com--in order to better support its small business services and online shoppers. Part of that improved support included providing its customers with the answers they need to questions about the website's extensive product line in an intuitive, interactive environment.

Office Depot also wanted to expand its successful brick-and-mortar customer service model online and needed to furnish customers with an easy interface and real-time customer support, while delivering detailed feedback about customer behavior. The firm chose an online solution from Ask Jeeves Business Solutions, a division of Ask Jeeves Inc., a provider of natural language navigation and business intelligence, whose valet icon recalls P.G. Wodehouse's famous character.

The Office Depot application was built with the goal of self-sufficiency. The implementation team works closely with Office Depot's technical support staff to ensure an understanding of the product and an ability to manage it independently.

Jeeves Business Solutions enables companies to understand their customers' needs and preferences through the questions they ask. With natural-language question-answering technology, Jeeves provides both a user-friendly navigation tool and a customer intelligence system. Based on the feedback coming directly from customers using proprietary analysis and tracking tools, Ask Jeeves helps companies optimize Web content and direct product, sales and marketing strategies.

Answers is a Web-based application that will run on most hardware platforms. Office Depot deployed the solution on the site--as Ask Office Depot--to allow customers to ask questions about its products and services, from computers to coffee, using natural language. The tool gives Office Depot's customers an intuitive and user-friendly online interface that helps them make more informed purchase decisions by asking questions in plain English.

Customers can ask questions, such as "Can I pick up my online order at a store?" or "Where can I find a comfortable chair?" and immediately be presented with links to the most relevant content on officedepot.com.

First, customers enter full-sentence questions in their own words into the Ask Office Depot question box. The question is interpreted for word meaning, context and grammar, and compared against the knowledge base to find precise, relevant matches. Jeeves confirms the question asked and suggests several related questions to promote cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

With a simple click, the customer goes to the answer he is seeking, with no additional navigation. Questions are tracked using the Jeeves Insight analytics tool, and the tool applies industry knowledge to analyze the information and offer insight into customers' wants, needs and expectations.

The data provided to Office Depot via Ask Jeeves' customer intelligence and analytics platform, Jeeves Insight, assists in understanding and improving the effectiveness of Office Depot's online presence. By tracking user interactions, the search tool gathers data for understanding performance metrics, preferred product features and the completeness of content. The solution acts as a 24-hour customer focus group to help Office Depot enhance Web content, direct product development and improve distribution and marketing efforts, all while increasing customer loyalty and decreasing support costs.

It also brings the company's customer service values to the website and allows e-commerce to be conducted more efficiently.

Other areas of product information are currently not available online. Office Depot is currently working with Ask Jeeves to enhance the service, further enabling customers to navigate the extensive catalog of products and product information on officedepot.com.

Office Depot gets a monthly report summarizing details as to what questions customers are asking and what content they are seeing, as well as what content they are looking for that Office Depot does not have.

Through the provider's account management, Office Depot is also able to address day-to-day issues with product implementation and functionality, as well as discuss strategic solutions for e-CRM issues via Ask Jeeves' other e-commerce and e-support services.

http://businessask.com/home.asp Circle 271 for more information from Ask Jeeves