Crossroads 2002 A-List Award Winners

QUIQ, Incorporated
San Mateo, CA

QUIQ Connect
> Online Customer Knowledge Base

CUSTOMERS AT WORK

A global enterprise hosts a large community of customers online. Given the number of people and emerging issues, person-to-person issue resolution is a particularly expensive and time-consuming mode of operation. QUIQ’s customers are interested in leveraging the business community itself as a support resource. High-tech manufacturers and a software provider were among the reference customers. Common strategic objectives included:

§ Shortening the time required to address a customer issue

§ Increasing the use of self-service support channels

§ Improving the productivity of support personnel

WHY QUIQ?

Companies use QUIQ’s Web-based customer knowledge base to establish the front line of all their customer support issues. With QUIQ Connect incorporated into their Web sites, organizations capture the dialogue between customers, employees, and experts. This knowledge base can be searched and indexed so customers have easy access to relevant answers. QUIQ Connect also provides companies with the functionality to rate both entries and experts on line. This allows companies to grow the value of the knowledge base and the participant community over time.

BUSINESS IMPACT

Near-term value: Complex products and unique customer needs can lead to lengthy customer support telephone calls. QUIQ Connect provides customers with relevant context right away and then throughout the support process. QUIQ’s customers have reduced customer support backlogs significantly within weeks of implementation.

Enterprise innovation: By establishing the online customer community as the premier customer support resource, companies invest in a process that users come to trust. Individuals with minor queries find answers without risking the dissatisfaction of a long telephone support interaction. With the proper escalation processes in place, QUIQ’s clients have also managed to reassure their customers that complex queries will also be resolved quickly. One customer support organization has defined escalation so that internal engineers resolve unanswered questions.

Technology gains: The value of QUIQ Connect comes from the technology’s process and reporting features. Client organizations have developed nuanced escalation policies for customer queries and specific rewards programs for frequent contributors. By incorporating product engineers and product marketing people into the workflow for customer support, one company has used QUIQ Connect to improve the organization’s overall awareness of customer and industry issues.

SUCCESS FACTORS

Project strategy: People, people, people are the lifeblood of a successful QUIQ implementation. Experienced customers stress that they have monitored and rewarded expert user contributors with appropriate incentives such as confidential briefings and CTO meetings.

Learning: In order to drive traffic through the online self-service channel, companies need to change agent behavior as well. By encouraging agents to post replies to the community, one company has steadily grown its online community participation by more than 10 percent per month.

Resources: Over time, companies must monitor the effectiveness of their knowledge taxonomies to make certain that the needs of their many audiences are met (e.g., topics that address B2B and B2C issues).

Fit: Companies with sophisticated products and customers will find QUIQ a valuable partner in the area of customer support.

COMPANY INFO

QUIQ, Incorporated is a private company with 60 employees.

650.294.2900
www.quiq.com
Published: January 2002