Laurent Simoneau is president and CEO of Coveo, and one of the industry's top enterprise search experts. Prior to joining Coveo, Simoneau was CTO of Copernic, an early leader in desktop search. We asked him about the changing role of enteprise search, especially in customer service and other specific use cases across a company.

FierceContentManagement: You've been a critic of the idea of the knowledgebase. Why is that and what approach do you think is better?

Laurent Simoneau: It's not that we're a critic of the knowledgebase--in fact, we think it's an important component of the overall customer service knowledge ecosystem--it's just that the proliferation of data and number of systems containing customer information has made it so that the knowledgebase alone is not enough as a single repository for housing all information needed to handle customer service. Add into the mix the explosion of social media, and it becomes impossible to manage customer information in a knowledgebase alone. We've seen many companies spend valuable time and money moving information to a single, centralized system of record, only to have data continue to proliferate outside of that system.  

Recent research we conducted with Omega Management Group showed that while 67 percent of customer service departments had implemented a knowledgebase, that same percentage said all the information needed for customer service agents continued to reside in anywhere from five to more than 20 different systems. 

Our advice is to leave customer data where it is--including, when appropriate, in the knowledgebase--and provide access to it via an Enterprise Search 2.0 Platform, configured specifically for an organization's customer service operations. Think of this as a layer above the entire customer support infrastructure. With an Enterprise Search 2.0 Platform configured for customer service (we call ours the Knowledge 360 for Customer Service), customer service agents, managers, even customers themselves, gain immediate, efficient, single-screen access to critical customer, product and issue-resolution information, regardless of what system it resides in. Such 360-degree views of information help companies make better, more informed business decisions and allow agents to more quickly and efficiently answer customer inquiries, helping to increase first call resolution, decrease call handling times, and other important metrics. 

FCM: Where do search and business intelligence intersect?

LS: Business intelligence systems and tools have brought some insight into core business information, but these tools require significant investment and expertise to identify, locate, and design the model for analysis, as well as move data into a data warehouse in order to perform the analysis. After all that, you get BI on historical information. One of our customers once said, "BI tools are great, if you have a report writer sitting right next to you to help make sense of it all."

Enterprise Search 2.0 provides ubiquitous access to dynamic business analytics based on its interaction with all data from throughout your information infrastructure, in near real time. They do not require predefined in-depth analysis, report design or data movement; rather, they enable dynamic, near real-time business analytics--with the ability to dive directly into the original data--to quickly understand not only what the data shows, but why.  

FCM: What role does search have in content management, knowledge management and Enterprise 2.0 collaboration? 

LS: Given the IDC prediction that by 2020 there will be 15 quintillion files in existence, search will play a vital role in how organizations will manage and access their knowledge. Data--and the vast majority of this data being created is unstructured--will never be contained; it will continue to proliferate, particularly with the growth in popularity of social networks and communities, both inside and outside the firewall. Many companies have found great success deploying our Unified Index (a defining characteristic of Enterprise Search 2.0) which provides a virtual integration layer across all information systems--forming the basis for 360-degree views of information preconfigured for personal relevance. Coveo takes the raw data and turns it into actionable knowledge though operations such as correlation, consolidation and normalization.

For Enterprise 2.0 collaboration, Enterprise Search 2.0 connects people through information, and cuts down silos between departments and geographies, as well as allows for both user ratings and usage rankings of the most useful information. Implicit expertise finding (that is, based on employees' and customers' communications and contributions rather than their explicit stating of skills and experience) connects the dots between the knowledge and the person, helping employees and even customers to share knowledge and expertise freely.

FCM: Where are the innovations in search today?

LS: Enterprise Search 2.0 is an important, transformational technology that changes the way employees work. Whether the information is structured or unstructured, in text or voice, or in social media channels, Enterprise Search 2.0 brings it into a single, unified index from which companies can provide self-service information access to various constituencies, from specific groups of employees and customers, to prospects and partners. This approach allows IT departments to leverage their existing technologies and avoid significant costs associated with system integrations and data migration projects. It also helps companies avoid pushing their processes into a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter framework. 

Beyond the unified index, another important innovation within Enterprise Search 2.0 are 360-degree views of information, in which organizational data can be displayed according to the needs and interests of the user. New dashboards give users unprecedented views of information correlated from disparate systems. Using customer service as an example, they can display account information, related customer cases and sales opportunities, customer posts from social media channels, and other information located across the knowledge ecosystem. Coupled with operational analytics powered by Enterprise Search 2.0, organizations become more agile and responsive to their customer bases. Having complete, relevant and timely knowledge readily available--via a 360-degree view configured for personal relevance--in an intuitive, interactive dashboard is a real breakthrough.

FCM: How can search help customer call centers work more efficiently?

LS: It's become an industry joke that "alt tab" is the most commonly used program among customer support agents; they often have anywhere between 12 and 20 systems open at a time. Predictably, it takes time to locate information that resides across various systems as agents don't have a 360-degree view of necessary information. This negatively impacts customer service and satisfaction levels, as well as an organization's bottom line, when agents can't find customer, product and other related information to resolve customer issues.

In the recent survey we commissioned with Omega, we found the biggest problems are caused by inefficient access to information needed to solve customer issues. Seventy percent of respondents indicated they face significant challenges as a result of agents not being able to find customer information, citing case handling time (50 percent), customer satisfaction (49 percent), and first contact resolution (49 percent) as their top three challenges.

With an Enterprise Search 2.0 Platform, CSRs and managers gain immediate, efficient, single-screen access to critical customer, product and issue-resolution information, regardless of what system it resides in. No more toggling between multiple applications; no moving data into a single repository or "system of record." Gone are the days of having a dozen different applications open at once to resolve customer issues. 

Our customers utilizing these innovations have realized drastic benefits. IBM Netezza has seen a 67 percent reduction in time spent identifying known customer issues, and another one of our customers increased customer self-service satisfaction by 10 percent as well as significantly reduced average case handling time. Across the board, our customers have identified hard cost savings from $2 million to more than $10 million per year in hiring avoidance. By increasing agent productivity, we help our customers to scale customer service operations without hiring as frequently, even when fast company growth causes customer service inquiries to surge-year after year.

Related Articles:
Coveo 6.5 concentrates on personalized business analytics 
Coveo 6.1 expands search into Enterprise 2.0 data 
Coveo releases free enterprise search tool