Entries Tagged 'Popular Topics' ↓

To keep up with the latest trends in customer service, collaboration and search tools, I am always scouring the Web to soak up as much information as I can. In no particular order, here are just some of the blogs that I read on a regular basis – the list is a combination of knowledge management, customer service, collaboration, search, and CRM sites, because the nature of our business means we need to stay on top all these issues. This is only some of the great information that is available from some of the smartest people who are working in the trenches every day. Let me know what sites you read to stay informed and I will add it to my growing list!

1. KM Edge: The American Productivity & Quality Center’s (APQC) Knowledge Management blog- Carla O’Dell and Lauren Trees and some insightful commentary to news and trends.

2. John Ragsdale’s Eye on Service: VP of of Technology Research at Service and Support Professionals Assocation (SSPA), the Association for Services Management International (AFSMI), and the Technical Professional Services Association (TPSA), shares information, news and analysis on the latest technologies intended to improve customer service.

3. Content Management Connection: George Dearing’s blog combines insight from content management experts with an emphasis on collaboration tools. The blog touches on content management through various aspects including customer service, Wikis, social networks, search engines, and Web services.

4. Bill Ives’ Blog: Bill Ives’ blog discussing practical applications of portals, blogs, and knowledge management.

5. Enterprise Search Practice Blog: This blog hosted by The Gilbane Group offers analysis and the latest news on enterprise search technologies and implementations

Seriously, NLP is about to have its day in the sun, and we expect it to be a long day at that.

Any company operating in this information economy can benefit from natural language search solutions. Think about it. Knowledge workers today are confronted with a proliferation of information (which at least one firm believes contributes to a $650B drag on the economy), and it just gets worse with every new day. At the same time, it has become harder for the worker to find and apply the critical knowledge they need to do their jobs. Numerous studies show the average knowledge worker spends at least 15% of their time searching for the knowledge they need to be productive. Why? Because that critical enterprise knowledge tends to exist in unstructured form that makes it hard to harvest without technologies like natural language search solutions that can understand the intent behind the worker’s search, and indexes the searchable information sources for their actual meaning. Keyword-based search tools often fail in an enterprise environment because the searchable content is not nearly as disparate as you might find on the Web. With higher keyword frequency and density, keyword-based searches return results lists that are too long to be meaningful.

Natural language search on its own, though, will not be the panacea to increasing productivity. Search is only as valuable as the content it searches. Companies that have had the greatest success with natural language search solutions recognize that search informs content strategy, and an integrated analytics mechanism is needed to determine if the search technology and content management tool are working in concert to deliver the expected value to the knowledge worker. We have customers that apply natural language search to applications for web self-help, call center support and internal knowledge management. Companies like Serena Software and Mentor Graphics radically changed their service models on the back of InQuira’s platform to emphasize a changing customer profile. The integrated platform allows us to build applications for a wide range of business needs. The Ministry of Defence in the UK deployed InQuira’s natural language search and knowledge management solution to the agents staffing its HR call centers.