ASND in CIO Magazine:
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CIO Magazine - December 1, 1998
Linking It Together
The epitome of Web customer service is to have a seamless integration of multiple channels-all tied to your customer service database. Ascend Communications Inc., a network infrastructure technology provider for telcos, Internet service providers and corporations, is approaching that model with a new method of online service it launched in November with Acuity, formerly known as iChat. Ascend uses both Acuity's WebCenter and iChat products. Ascend, based in Alameda, Calif., has tiered service so that technicians can get the help they need, at a price they're willing to pay. The extensive ramp-up came in part because of a customer focus group the company ran with some surprising results, says John Pohl, senior director for global integration service marketing. "We found out they were looking for something non-traditional. They wanted to bypass the phone and our call center entirely," Pohl says. "They were telling us, 'I'd not only pay extra to get this service, I'd consider switching vendors to get it.'" That
Ascend has an extensive knowledge database online and also has chat capabilities as well. But the moment that visitors to the Web site requests a chat session, all of the information about which pages they have visited, their company information, records of any previous uses of customer service (using the phone or Web) is delivered to the technician who fields the chat session. "We know who we're interacting with before we even say hello," Pohl says. The software also has an intelligent agent that prescreens the customer based on the chat request form. The agent searches the site for any pages in the knowledge database that might relate to the customer's question and delivers those to the technician.
The company intends to use its chat capabilities for such unusual services as broadcast chat sessions in which it will run seminars for large groups over the Net giving instruction on installing or troubleshooting a particular technology.
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