empolis:Service Lifecycle Suite (e:SLS) is the knowledge management-based customer service offering from empolis GmbH (one of 270 companies in arvato AG, which, in turn, is one of six divisions in Bertelsmann AG). e:SLS was introduced in 1996. Its current version is 5.4. empolis offers the suite for on-premise deployment to the largest organizations in a range of industries. To date, empolis claims that one or more of its modules has been purchased and implemented in over 500 customer organizations.

On the PSGroup Report Card for knowledge management-based customer service products, e:SLS exceeds requirements in search and UI content management. We gave it “needs improvement” grades in escalation to case management and in analytic functionality.

e:SLS is more a set of customizable and configurable technologies than it is a set of packaged facilities that are ready for deployment right “out of the box.” If you have the resources and the organizational style to undertake the development work necessary to implement e:SLS, then we recommend that you consider it to help you deliver key elements of your cross-channel, cross-lifecycle customer service experience—especially for customers’ activities to diagnose and resolve problems with your products both on self-service and assisted-service channels.

CUSTOMER SERVICE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS AND RESOLVE PROBLEMS

This report presents our evaluation of empolis:Service Lifecycle Suite (e:SLS) against our framework for knowledge management (KM)-based customer service products. These are products that help customers get answers to their questions about your organization, your policies, and your products and services as well as to diagnose and resolve problems with those products and services. These customer service products are considered knowledge management products because they combine content management and search technologies to build customer service applications that create the “knowledge” that answers your customers’ questions.

Decision Tree Designer

© 2008 empolis GmbH

Illustration 3. This illustration shows the workspace of the Decision Tree Designer.

EMPOLIS:SERVICE LIFECYCLE SUITE

e:SLS is the knowledge management-based customer service offering from empolis GmbH, a Gütersloh, Germany-based software supplier. empolis is one of 270 companies in arvato AG. arvato is one of six divisions in Bertelsmann AG.

e:SLS was introduced in 1996. Its current version is 5.4. empolis offers the suite for on-premise licensing and deployment. To date, empolis claims that one or more of its modules has been purchased and implemented in over 500 customer accounts, mostly large organizations across a wide range of industry segments.

e:SLS has these modules:

• Dynamic Decision Trees, which guide customers or agents through an automated question and answer dialog to approach and reach the answer to a question or the solution to a problem.

• Intelligent Search, which is based on empolis:Information Access Suite (e:IAS). It provides search and navigation capabilities. e:IAS is bundled within e:SLS but is also available as a separately packaged and priced product.

• Efficient Knowledge Repository, which provides knowledge modeling, content management with rich metadata, workflow management, and translation management.

You deploy e:SLS on Liferay Portal, which also delivers the suite’s UI. e:SLS packages portlets that provide support knowledge management and search management services as well as end-user search and navigation. Deployment on this open source portal platform speeds and simplifies e:SLS implementation and ongoing support and management.

Once customized, configured, and deployed, e:SLS provides the tools and the reusable samples that enable administrators and business users to implement and manage.

e:SLS is more a set of powerful and flexible tools and technologies that your developers, administrators, and knowledge authors and editors customize and configure than a packaged, ready-to-use offering. You’ll need developers’ skills and, likely, the skills of empolis’s professional services staff to deploy e:SLS. Critical activities are:

• Knowledge modeling using Web Ontology Language/Resource Description Framework (OWL/RDF) tools

• Knowledge classification (metadata) design

• Knowledge metadata specification to support conditional and dynamic guided search via Dialogs

• Knowledge authoring and editing for knowledge documents and Decision Tree documents to support conditional and static guided search

• UI customization via portal and portlet configuration, customization, and personalization, as well as JSP/JSF development

CUSTOMERS WANT CROSS-CHANNEL, CROSS-LIFECYCLE HELP

Before we get into the details of the evaluation, let’s take a step back and put knowledge management-based customer service products into the context of cross-channel, cross-lifecycle customer service. Here’s what we mean:

• Customers want your help on every channel through which they interact with you—the Web and email for service, your contact center, physical locations (e.g., stores or walk-in centers), and your field service force for assisted service.

• Customers want and need your help at every phase of their lifecycles, through every interaction and iteration within the lifecycle phases of plan, explore, select, buy, use, maintain, and renew.

Knowledge Management-Based Customer Service

Within this context, delivering customer service to support customers’ activities to find and learn about your business, your policies, and the application, installation, and usage of your products and services are knowledge-centric. Their performance requires finding and using content. Contrast them with activities that are data-centric, that involve transactions like purchasing products, requesting refunds, or managing accounts.

These content-centric activities are cross-channel activities. Customers want to perform them using self-service facilities, and they want your help to perform them using your assisted service facilities.

From customers’ lifecycle of activities, these activities are in the explore, select, and use lifecycle phases. More specifically:

Explore and Select Lifecycle Phase Activities:

• Learn about your business and your policies for doing business—shipment, payment, returns, and support, for example

• Learn about the channels through which you do business, the facilities available and the activities supported through each channel

• Find products and services that address requirements, needs, and wants

• Learn about products and services: features and functions, detailed specifications, warranties and support, prices, promotions, and discounts

• Learn about customer service services, e.g., what’s on the Web site

• Get case studies, reviews, and references on products and services

• Learn how products can be used

Use Lifecycle Phase Activities:

• Diagnose and resolve problems

• Learn about patches, fixes, and upgrades

FRAMEWORK FOR EVALUATING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT-BASED CUSTOMER SERVICE PRODUCTS

Our framework for evaluating knowledge management-based customer service products and services has these nine top-level evaluation criteria and sets of sub-criteria for each top-level criterion.

• Cross-channel, cross-lifecycle support

• Knowledge management

• Search

• Content delivery (UI/Web content)

• Escalation

• Analytic functionality for customer service

• Architecture

• Product viability

• Company viability

In the next sections of this report, we’ll briefly describe these criteria and their sub-criteria in a little more detail. Then we’ll present our evaluation of e:SLS against them followed by our analysis. Finally, we’ll summarize our evaluations and analyses in the PSGroup Report Card for knowledge management-based customer service.

CROSS-CHANNEL, CROSS-LIFECYCLE SUPPORT

This is an easy one. By cross-channel, cross-lifecycle support, we want to name which channels and which activities a product or service supports. This criterion will classify customer service products as well as evaluate them.

Most knowledge management systems have to be cross-channel. After all, if a customer can use them, then so can an agent. And just about every one of these products supports the Web. What differentiates these offerings is what other channels they support.

Examining cross-lifecycle support yields significant differentiation. Many KM-based offerings are focused on supporting problem diagnosis and resolution. On the other end of the lifecycle, we’ve begun to see products that focus on answering customers’ questions about your business, your policies, and your channel facilities.