Highly Personalized Self-Service Microsites
Web 2.0 Raises Consumer and Enterprise Expectations for Self-Service
Author: John Ragsdale, Vice President of Research, SSPA

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One size no longer fits all

One of the theme songs of Web 2.0 could be Burger King’s oft resurrected 1974 tune, “Have it your way.”  Customers today want information fast and on their own terms:  from peers, not companies; using their own terminology and lingo, not generic text; displayed in the layout, color and font (a la My Space) of their choice.  Web 2.0 is enabling all of these things, allowing easy exchange of information within communities of any sort, and levels of personalization and target marketing for content delivery not possible before.  But while marketers cheer the new tools and capabilities, support management are caught unprepared as customers increasingly think about self-service requirements in a new way, and the one-size-fits-all approach used today will no longer work. Common problems with today’s Web self-service include:

• Ineffective problem resolution. Customers become easily frustrated when faced with generic FAQ lists and “Google-like” search tools that return hundreds of results, with no automatic filtering based on the customer’s preferences, technical environment or products/services purchased.
• Useless related information.Offers and “also see” knowledgebase content is typically suggested identically to all customers, with no analytics to provide personalized upsell and cross-sell messages or links to related content that is specific to this customer or the context of the interaction..
• Inconsistent look and feel.Customers have a jarring experience when navigating from a “sexy” company Web site to a self-service site with a completely different UI and set of controls. Even worse, self-service sites sometimes look identical from company to company, often because OnDemand eService vendors have limited UI options, preventing firms from offering a differentiating customer experience.

Web 2.0 and the Microsite

While some areas of service and support software are reaching maturity, with little differentiation between leading players, in the area of the customer experience, innovation is occurring. The following three vendors have released functionality for creating highly personalized content, and even ‘microsites,’ meaning self-service websites specifically designed for a particular customer profile. The vendors are:

• InQuira. InQuira’s aptly named User Experience Manager (UEM) 7, first released in 2005, includes controls for business users to see how customers are using the online system, in real time, and immediately enact changes to content or site layout to streamline use and increase effectiveness. InQuira can prefilter content displayed, based on customer demographics, and with their unique “intent analysis” companies gain a fuller understanding of what customers are asking and why. In Figure 1, a sample screen shot from InQuira’s UEM shows shows the responses that are presented when a search is automatically associated with a particular user intent. InQuira also enables segmentation, which can be performed in the UEM through user profiles, meaning content can be personalized both by what someone's intent is as well as who they are or what customer segment they are a part of.

Figure 1  InQuira’s User Experience Manager

• KNOVA. KNOVA’s microsite capabilities, included in KNOVA Self-Service version 7.0, allows the site administrator to create any number of microsites, each with a different look and feel, knowledge sources, FAQs, special offers, etc., all based on customer profile or any external customer metadata. Customers will receive a highly personalized self-service Web site, based on their demographics, buying history, profitability, or any other defining characteristic. KNOVA also enables highly interactive websites, such as the example seen in Figure 2, which provide online car shoppers with an experience similar to a dealer showroom visit.

Figure 2  KNOVA Microsite Example

• Sento. With a hybrid services and software business, Sento specializes in “right channeling” multichannel interactions for big name companies like Overstock.com and McAfee. Sento released their Customer Experience Platform (CXP) earlier this year, a real-time rule builder for dynamic personalization of content and processes. Understanding that consumer facing Web sites may have no profile for the customer, rules can be based on recent clickstreams. For example, basing content or offers on products that were recently viewed or selected, or offering a live help option when “premier” customers with a high loyalty rating select self-service. In Figure 3, a screen shot from Sento’s CXP shows customer promotions and website components mapped to specific site visitors by source.

Figure 3  Sento’s Customer Experience Platform

Next Generation Self-Service for B2B: Telco’s eBonding

While microsite technology is primarily targeted toward consumers today, there is an enterprise focused self-service program gaining steam in the communications industry that has obvious implications for the technology industry:  eBonding.  Enterprise telco customers require a lot of self-service capabilities, including adding, deleting and moving lines as needed on large corporate campuses. In order to perform self-service, traditionally enterprise customers have been given access to their provider’s internal systems to check line capacity, provision new lines, etc.  The problem, however, is that most carriers have such disparate billing, inventory and provisioning systems, as well as geographically separate systems, that a large corporate customer would have to traverse a dozen or more systems at the carrier to perform self-service.

eBonding is changing all that. Corporate customers are given a single portal to access a consolidated view of all the carrier’s systems, and back end integration is provided between the company’s systems and the service provider’s systems, so new hires or scheduled department moves can automatically pass orders for line adds, changes and deletes along to the carrier with no manual intervention from the customer.

Figure 4 eBonding Involves Single Customer Portal and Back Office Integratio

Carriers such as AT&T are introducing enhanced eBonding products (see www.att.com/ebcc/bonding/ebonding.html for a full description), and enterprise software vendors specializing in billing and provisioning systems, such as Amdocs, are offering packaged eBonding solutions.

Giving customers access to view and interact with data within your internal systems will undoubtedly become more common, particularly because the infrastructure for such integrations, such as Web services, is allowing more robust machine to machine communications. Already common with partners (such as partner relationship management, or PRM, systems) in retail and manufacturing, tomorrow’s enterprise customers will be granted more autonomy to service themselves, interacting with a wide array of enterprise systems and data warehouses

The SSPA Recommends

If it has been three years or more since your last Web self-service overhaul, it is time to revisit the site design and the underlying technology.  To see if it is time for a refresh, ask yourself these questions about your self-service site:

• Does it fulfill the needs of customers? With SSPA benchmark data showing successful visits to self-service sites declining, make certain you are offering the breadth and depth of capabilities your customers need. Think about microsites for specific customer profiles or accounts, and survey customers to find out what additional capabilities they would like incorporated into self-service.
• Does it position you competitively? With more companies using service as a differentiator, be sure to evaluate the self-service options of your competitors and see how your site measures up.  Pay attention to site design, location and options.  Large companies may even want an objective 3rd party evaluation comparing their site to that of competitors.  If customers find your site lacking, it sends a message about your overall commitment to service.
• Does it offer a unique experience for each customer? If you are still using the “one size fits all” approach, it is definitely time for a tune up.  If you aren’t prepared to go down the full microsite route, at least consider building a different look and feel for platinum, gold and bronze customers, or other defined tiers. 

If you have any questions about this article, please contact Shawn Santos at ssantos@thesspa.com or 858.674.5491.