Defense Department Activity Automates Customer Service with Virtual Representative from NativeMinds

Business Wire, April 9, 2001

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 9, 2001

Defense Logistics Information Service (DLIS) Implements

Virtual Rep to Reduce Call Center Inquiries and Provide

Superior 24x7 Customer Service for Its Federal Catalog Systems

NativeMinds, Inc., a leading provider of natural language customer service solutions for the Internet, today announced that the Defense Logistics Information Service (DLIS), a field activity of the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and logistics information broker to the Defense Department, is using NativeMinds' virtual representative technology to support online customer service and reduce costs. Responsible for managing global supply chains for the military services, DLA emphasizes customer support as a strategic goal. To this end, the agency employs a wide variety of customer outreach initiatives including customer service representatives, full-service call centers and online information support.

Created with NativeMinds flagship product, NeuroServer(R), virtual representatives, or vReps(TM), are automated online personalities that emulate the best in human customer service on the Internet at much lower costs than traditional support channels. The DLIS virtual representative will route frequently asked questions from its call center and provide automated, round-the-clock customer service for its logistics products and services.

To provide customers with easier access to information, DLA ensures its World Wide Web based services are user friendly. Customers do not have to be computer experts to use the resources available. Besides making information readily accessible, DLA emphasizes that customers should not have to navigate through numerous Web pages to arrive at desired information. To support these objectives, DLIS, which operates one of the DLA call centers and online help services, is implementing virtual agent technology. This decision was made to further the DLA objective of improved customer service by:

1. Providing customers with a human face capable of interacting,

thus making the site more human and less intimidating.

2. Answering customer questions more quickly and directly.

3. Capturing a history of customer needs to improve the Web site

itself and the ability of the virtual representative to

respond to inquiries. (Without capturing such information, the

Customer Support Center is unable to determine whether a "hit"

on the site is the result of casual "surfing" or a search for

vital information.)

4. Increasing customer options for seeking information by

offering another instrument to customers who don't want to

talk to a person but find Web services too technical.

Based at Ft. Belvoir, Va., DLA provides supply support, and technical and logistics services to the military services and to several civilian agencies. The agency is the one source for nearly every consumable item, whether for combat readiness, emergency preparedness or day-to-day operations. As one of the agency's field activities, DLIS provides the electronic catalogs and other reference information on all items of supply in the Defense Department inventory. Its employees also manage business data for private industry and government contracting elements. Military and civilian personnel alike rely on the catalogs to order supplies and material.

The catalogs and reference information provide complete characteristics on the supplies from unit price to environmental attributes. The reference data is so essential to the ordering process that the DLIS call center receives frequent inquiries from customers. Based on a 1999 study, DLIS estimates that about 70 percent of the customer calls received are frequently asked questions about logistics information management products and services. Once implemented, the vRep will answer such questions online via two-way natural language dialog, preempting the need for phone calls or e-mails. The vRep will provide customers with a fast, easy way to get accurate information at any time.

"The enormous amount of information in our catalogs required that we use a solution more robust than a search engine that would frustrate users by giving them a list of links," said Luman Williams of the DLIS On Line Products Branch. "Such technology involves our customers directly by providing answers to our questions about the needs of our customers while allowing us to answer their questions."

To build the vRep, DLIS has licensed NativeMinds' flagship product NeuroServer, and is now building the vRep for itself. NeuroServer comes with a complete authoring, serving and maintenance environment that includes pre-defined content libraries, templates, and wizards to enable companies to create and maintain their own vReps. Three DLIS representatives were trained by NativeMinds to learn best practices for building and maintaining a vRep, and they have also subscribed to NativeMinds' Professional Service department's mentoring services to support their implementation. The DLIS vRep is scheduled to go live in spring 2001.