PRESS RELEASE

 

September 25, 2002				Contact: Maureeen Richey
				Phone: 510-543-3420

 

AskAnything Technologies Integrates With CRM from FrontRange

 

 

San Francisco, CA, September 25, 2002-AskAnything Technologies, Inc., a provider of Web-based customer support software, announced that its product can now integrate with Goldmine and HEAT, two mid-market CRM systems from FrontRange. This is the result of a technology partnership that formed between the two software companies in 2001.

 

AskAnything's software provides companies with an online support center where their customers can find answers to questions. The software is designed reduce support costs by reducing the number of repetitive customer questions that reach support representatives.

 

Because so many companies are using CRM software to track customer correspondence, AskAnything decided that it could expand the appeal of its software by enabling it to share information with a CRM system. "We wanted to integrate with FrontRange because we thought that a mid-market CRM would best complement our software," explains Stephen Roth, AskAnything's predident. "FrontRange put our software through rigorous testing before choosing to form a partnership with us." Roth says that AskAnything's relationship with FrontRange has already been productive. Since integrating, AskAnything has signed up with a number of FrontRange's resellers and customers.

 

The core of AskAnything's technology is the dynamic FAQ system, which is a database of frequently-asked-questions (FAQs) that automatically builds itself using customer’s questions from support personnel’s answers. A customer goes online and enters a question on the company's support Website. The AskAnything software performs a search based on the question and returns any FAQs that are a close match. The customer can email the question to the company when there is no suitable answer among the FAQs.

 

For a company using a CRM system from FrontRange, the email gets automatically entered as either a "lead" or "call ticket" into the FrontRange database where it can be accessed and answered by a support representative. This is a departure from the way that customer information is traditionally entered into FrontRange. Usually, customer information is entered manually by a support representative when a customer emails or telephones. With AskAnything, a company can now have customer emails automatically added to FrontRange's database.

 

The dynamic nature of the FAQ—its ability to automatically build itself—comes into play when a support representative answers the question that is now logged into FrontRange. The representative has the option to update AskAnything's database of FAQs with the new question and answer when emailing the answer back to the customer. By updating the FAQ, the next customer with the same question will not have to contact a support representative.

 

With CRM integration, all customer questions that come into AskAnything's FAQ database also get fed into a company's CRM database. This means that a company can automatically build an online FAQ based on actual customer questions, and at the same time, the company can keep track of what individual customers are asking. On the flip side, customer support representatives can add answers to AskAnything's FAQ database, where they can be viewed by all customers, and at the same time, they can respond to individual customers. Thus, CRM integration adds a new level of automation to AskAnything's core technology.

 

AskAnything uses Web services technology to integrate with FrontRange. Web services has allowed for information sharing between AskAnything's online application where customers go to get help, and FrontRange's CRM application where support representatives go to keep track of customers. According to Roth, the net result is quicker problem resolution for customers and a reduction in support costs for company's using FrontRange. And AskAnything is not stopping there. The company plans to continue broadening its customer base by integrating with more CRM systems in the near future.

 

 

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