The Hindu Business Line : Forget that phone; chat for help

Talisma Answer is a self-learning software that reads and filters incoming e-mails, deciphers the question the customer intended to ask (contextual understanding) and routes it to the concerned customer service personnel with some suggestions for probable solutions.

If the probability of its self-generated answer is high, it can be programmed to respond directly to the e-mail, explained Mr Tim McMullen, Senior Vice-President - Products and Alliances, Talisma.

Answer could turn the chat with the customer into a much faster and efficient interaction. It also offers the `bot' option, software that allows an agent to remote-control your application. This is useful while filling up forms - the customer service personnel at the Web site can point out the necessary fields and ensure faster completion of your task.

The addition of these features into the chat application would happen by Q2 '07, said Mr McMullen.

Another introduction is video chat on the firm's Click-to-Talk software, which will happen next year.

Click-to-Talk is currently a voice application that uses voice over IP (with which one can make phone calls over the Internet) to allow customers to talk about their grievances to enterprises and service providers.

The firm is also planning to tie up with various instant messengers such as Skype, MSN Messenger and AOL to ensure denizens of the Internet feel more comfortable in adopting chat as a means of feedback or getting technical support. The messengers would integrate with Talisma's back-end infrastructure (servers, CIM application and even their lifecycle management platform) to ensure the enterprise had a centralised database.

Customer interaction management has not yet caught up in India, said Mr Girish Krishanmurthy, Managing Director - Asia Pacific, Talisma Corporation. He said the market was still in its infancy and would see an adoption in terms of using the online medium as a channel for interacting with consumers only in the next 9-12 months. VoIP would, he said, take off faster than other options in India.

Interaction - a biz

"Customer is God," is now an obsolete adage. For the layman who suffers the hour-long `Hold' music, day after day, just to clarify or rectify his service, the proclamation rings untrue. Even in a hospitable country such as ours, almost every service provider - be it a bank, a Web site, a cellular operator or gadget maker - has made enemies of its users.

Interacting with the customer is slowly becoming a business, with international companies such as Avaya and Talisma offering software that will help enterprises and service providers manage and deal with the millions of complaints pouring in, effectively.

With the rise in broadband penetration across the country, many Indians are looking to the Internet to solve their issues, instead of reaching out for the phone to dial the helpdesk.

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