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Informative Inc. next week will roll out a version of its c-Feedback Suite of customer relationship management software that company officials said would enable businesses to more effectively use customer feedback.
c-Feedback captures, analyzes and distributes customer feedback to financial services, consumer goods, technology and media companies.
Specifically, the software gathers customer input from surveys, Web sites, help desk e-mail boxes and customer service help desks. With that the software can create personalized responses to customer inquiries, alert customer service or sales staff when individual customers are having problems with a product, or feed data into market research systems to enhance a companys marketing or product development.
The software, which is sold as a hosted environment, also includes integration with other enterprise system from companies like Siebel Systems Inc. through XML integration application programming interfaces.
Officials from the Brisbane, Calif., company highlighted c-Feedbacks capability to capture unstructured customer input, such as free-form comments at the end of an electronic survey, using a natural language adapter. The software can interpret these free-form responses and then route them to specified responders.
For instance, c-Feedback may identify a dissatisfied customer and immediately connect him or her with a live customer service representative to resolve the issue. In this way, companies can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, said Cliff Apsey, Informatives vice president of marketing.
“The old way was when you did a customer survey you had to make sure the methodology was right so you could gather the historical data. Now its about what your customer is actually saying now,” Apsey said. “Its important to deal with people as individuals.”
Informative also will announce that it is acquiring Recipio, the San Mateo, Calif., company that developed the unstructured data input technology in c-Feedback. All 18 of Recipios employees, including CEO Tom Kehler, will join Informative. The deal, whose value was undisclosed, is expected to close in a few weeks.