Coveo Survey of Customer Care Executives Finds Customers, Executives and Employees Lack Contextually Relevant Information When They Need It

QUEBEC--(Marketwire - May 22, 2012) -

• Customers find contextually relevant information from vendors valuable, but they have a difficult time getting to the information they need when they need it, according to a recent survey of customer service executives conducted by Coveo.
  
  
• In the survey of more than 120 customer service and support executives conducted April 17 at the 2012 Customer Care Leadership Forum in New York, only 15 percent reported that their customers, if asked, would say that they could get to information they need, when they need it. Of the respondents, 99 percent reported that access to contextually relevant information is at least "somewhat important" to their customers.
  
  Customers are not alone in their challenges to find contextually relevant data. Just 13 percent of executives surveyed believe employees can effectively tap into the collective knowledge of their organizations. In addition:
  • 79 percent said they can only sometimes or almost never get the information they need about their businesses and their customers to make informed business decisions quickly
  • 51 percent said they themselves can only "sometimes" get at the information
  • 28 percent noted they can "almost never" get the necessary details
  • Eight percent said they could not get at the information at all
    
    
• Just 22 percent of executives said employees can easily access the information they need to do their jobs. The remaining participants reported that their employees likely do not (29 percent) or "maybe" (41 percent) have access to the information they need. An alarming 8 percent said they did not believe employees could access the information.
  
  
• The Argyle Forum survey provides irrefutable evidence that customer-facing organizations continue to be challenged to access and share relevant information to make more informed business decisions. Moreover, they lack the ability to share that information with the customer, preventing them from making timely, informed decisions.
  
  
• Coveo's Insight Solutions instantly assemble information that is contextually relevant and personalized to the user, end-to-end throughout the enterprise. Coveo solutions engage knowledge to engage customers, helping executives, employees and customers access the information they need to facilitate decision making, improve day-to-day efficiencies and operations and cultivate one-to-one customer relationships.
  
  
• Based on Coveo's industry-leading Enterprise Search 2.0 platform, Coveo Insight Solutions index data from virtually any system -- in the cloud, on social networks and behind the firewall, and present it in role-based consoles configured to work the way the user prefers.
  
  
• Coveo customers worldwide are leveraging the Company's award-winning Insight Solutions to address the issue of insight deficits -- turning relevant information into actionable insight that is yielding an immediate return on investment.
  
  
• In addition to the information above, other survey findings that underscore the need to combine social media and enterprise data to ensure employees and customers have the information they need, with context include:
  • 73 percent of respondents said their employees rely on a mix of personal networks and systems the company gives them to get their jobs done.
  • 13 percent said employees rely mainly on their own networks.
    
    
• For expanded research, resources and advice download the Coveo eBook on "Unlocking Knowledge to Engage Customers."
  
  

Quotes:
Louis Têtu, CEO, Coveo: "The survey findings reflect today's reality -- the accelerating growth and fragmentation of data -- in the cloud, in social media and in enterprise systems -- make it nearly impossible for customers, executives and employees to leverage contextually relevant information when they need it to solve challenges, make critical decisions and just to do their jobs. The new category of Insight Solutions, aims to solve these challenges by instantly assembling and enriching data from any system to present contextually relevant information mashups, making sense of the information clutter for front-line staff in sales, services, engineering and operations. Further, the continued consumerization of IT within the enterprise creates the expectation that it will be as easy to access relevant information from the enterprise as it is for our personal lives, and enterprises must deliver or fear potential backlash from the customer."

Paul Greenberg, distinguished analyst: "For some time now I had noted that Insight Solutions would emerge as its own software category and with good reason -- if customer engagement is to work, then insights into how customers want it to work are becoming increasingly necessary. Likewise, employees and executives must have the information, opportunities and processes readily available to make the informed business decisions that will lead to insightful customer-focused best practices."

About Coveo
Coveo transforms companies' ability to gain insight from diverse and overwhelming amounts of unstructured and structured data, whether it exists behind the firewall, in the cloud or in social media. Coveo's unified indexing technology connects broadly with all systems to create a virtual integration layer, from which role-based Insight Consoles present consolidated, correlated information mashups. Greater insight enables more effective and efficient customer service, more relevant customer experiences, increased sales and shorter sales cycles, faster innovation for better product development and ultimately, increased profitability.

Coveo customers range from Fortune 100 companies such as Lockheed Martin, PepsiCo and Verizon, to Global 2000 companies such as GEICO, CA Technologies and T-Mobile, to mid-sized businesses such as Terumo Medical, IBM Netezza and Children's Hospital of Boston. For more information, visit www.coveo.com.