KANA Software, Inc., a global leader in customer service solutions delivered on-premise or in the cloud and used by more than 900 organizations worldwide, including half of the Global 100 and 250 government entities, today introduced its KANA Express multi-channel web customer service solution aimed at mid-sized businesses and divisions and subsidiaries of global brands.
KANA Express offers comprehensive and end-to-end customer service and interaction management capabilities delivered on-demand via the cloud using a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, which provides access to enterprise level performance, support, and infrastructure previously out of reach for mid-sized businesses while reducing operational costs. Given their fiscal complexities, capital constraints and increasingly super competitive business environment, KANA Express was designed to empower mid-sized organizations with an on-line focus to gain rapid, affordable access to multi-channel web customer service and contact center technology.
"Mid-market companies must match or exceed the level of customer engagement of their enterprise peers to stay competitive and relevant, yet are especially challenged in doing so due to smaller budgets and IT staffing," said James Norwood, CMO for KANA. "KANA Express offers exceptional multi-channel web customer service functionality with the requisite reliability, ease of use, proven low total cost of ownership (TCO), and rapid return on investment that only the cloud can offer, enabling mid-sized businesses to successfully execute on their customer experience strategies."
A single, integrated platform ensuring consistent customer service across all channels including phone, email, live and automated chat, web self-service, and social media, KANA Express unifies customer contact records and knowledge resources and automatically delivers contextual help and information when and where it is needed. The solution is scalable to handle hundreds of thousands of transactions a day, even for businesses with as few as 20 call center agents.
At the heart of KANA Express is a centralized and powerful knowledge base that automatically scans text in emails, chat sessions and web self-service interactions to intuitively and quickly display relevant answers and information across channels in seconds -- consistently and accurately. The solution also features sophisticated integral reporting and analytic capabilities that support proactive performance management by providing real-time insight into the status of each customer, department and agent. A powerful integration server supports ease of connectivity with front office and unified communication systems such as IVR, ACD, CTI and CRM, as well as back office functions such as accounting and ERP systems.
Addressing Key Mid-Market Growth Drivers: Technology and Customer ServiceKANA Express aligns with a dual focus on customers and technology as crucial growth drivers for mid-market enterprises in a down economy. According to Deloitte's Midmarket Perspectives: 2012 Report on America's Economic Engine, mid-market executives see technology and a focus on the customer as a way to overcome barriers to growth, which include weak market demand and rising costs, and as a means to help them achieve their strategic priorities. "Executives at midmarket firms are planning to grow their companies through innovation, capturing higher-value customers, boosting revenue per customer, and improving customer loyalty," says Tom McGee, national managing partner of Deloitte Growth Enterprise Services.
Delivering the Full Benefits of Cloud ComputingAvailable on-demand, KANA Express is accessed via a web browser, requires no separate hardware or software installation, and is securely delivered, managed and monitored in the cloud by KANA. Offering low cost of entry and lower TCO, KANA Express customers benefit from world-class infrastructure without capital expenditures, and guaranteed service level backed uptime. Day-to-day administration of the system (including business continuity and disaster recovery) is handled in a secure SAS 70 certified data center with the applicable levels of redundancy, scalability and security. Customers also benefit from flexible "pay-as-you-go" pricing; apart from the initial implementation service, all other costs are paid as part of an annual subscription.
Customers leveraging the KANA Express offering have seen exceptional improvements in the execution of customer engagement initiatives, such as an increase in email productivity by 25%; same-day email response of more than 95%; reduction in incoming email by 50%; and web self-service issue resolution/satisfaction of more than 90%.
Addressing the Full Spectrum of Customer InteractionTrue multi-channel customer experience management across traditional (voice, web, e-mail) and emerging (chat, social) channels is essential to simplify complexity, contain costs and meet the demands of today's Internet user -- all while supporting good experience. Mid-market companies increasingly recognize the need to support efficient, intuitive and engaging service across all customer interactions. To this end, KANA Express is offered as a series of "packaged experiences" -- the agent experience, the web experience, the social experience, and the mobile experience -- with each offering able to be implemented singularly or collectively in a seamless fashion.
A suite of agent-facing applications in a single desktop, KANA Express Agent Experience includes capabilities to handle inbound and outbound email response management, call management (including campaigns and CTI connections) and white mail (letter, fax and counter documentation). The solution also applies and monitors SLAs/response times, allowing organizations to easily manage customer service interactions and monitor responses from a single platform.
KANA Express Web Experience provides customer-facing web applications including Web self-service (with natural language search, FAQ, auto-suggestion, and portal services), Live Chat, Virtual Assistant (automated chatbot), and Web form submission. Via these powerful and flexible offerings and focused knowledge management, companies who rely on online can improve the effectiveness and consistency of service delivery alongside transactional self service by ensuring that customers always find the answers they need at the right moment.
KANA Express Mobile Experience provides smartphone applications for customer service, while KANA Express Social Experience provides advanced social monitoring and analytics, allowing organizations to listen to and identify important messages in social media, and engage directly with customers.
A number of standard implementation services are offered which cover implementation of all standard modules and training for most common project requirements, as well as individually tailored packages of implementation consultancy, technical assistance and training. KANA Express can be implemented and operational in many cases within 8 to 12 weeks.
About KANA SoftwareKANA makes every customer experience a good experience. A global leader in customer service solutions delivered on-premise or in the cloud, KANA lets organizations take complete control over customer service interactions, so they can take care of customers, while managing costs and reinforcing brand. By unifying and maintaining context for customer journeys across agent, web, social and mobile experiences, KANA solutions have reduced handling time, increased resolution rates and improved net promoter score (NPS) at more than 900 enterprises, including half of the Global 100 and more than 250 government agencies. KANA is based in Silicon Valley, California and has offices worldwide.
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KANA is a registered trademark of KANA Software, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Contact: Erin Lutz Lutz PR for KANA Software, Inc. +1 949 293 1055