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When a company decides it wants to establish its own internal collaboration network for its employees, it also has to determine the parameters of whom that network will includeinside and outside the company.
Newcomer Moxie Software, which appears to be helping redefine the enterprise social networking market, has a different idea. The 2-year-old company came out March 21 with a new version of its cloud-service Spaces by Moxie platform that not only networks a company’s employees with outside contractors and business partners, but also brings customer service directly into the network.
Customers? Inside a company’s network? Right now, there are network administrators fainting as they read that line. But not so fast; there is an explanation.
Keeping the Channels Separate and Distinct
The secret to all of this, Moxie President and CEO Tom Kelly told eWEEK, is keeping everybody and their interests channeled correctly within the right type of collaboration network. Security here is paramount, so that a customer, partner or contractor outside the firewall doesn’t find himself or herself in an area that’s inappropriate.
“The biggest challenge CEOs face today is getting their enterprises closer to their customers,” Kelly said. “To provide real benefits, enterprise social IT must deliver real customer value. Our suite makes it easier for organizations to find and deliver the right answer to customers through their channel of choice.”
Companies now must go where its customers are gathering, whether it be Twitter, Google+, Facebook or any other social network, so they can respond to them as needed. Using this new software package, enterprise employees can connect with customers directly and point them to help desks and other information sources more efficiently.
Kelly described Spaces by Moxie as “the first customer-centric enterprise social software suite that converges customer communications with employee collaboration into a single offering.”
Full-Featured Feature Set
Spaces by Moxie includes the following features:
- Expert Connect: Enables cross-departmental collaboration for customer service and support, IT, human resources, and sales and marketing to ensure efficient customer communications across channelsemail, community, chat, Knowledgebase and social media.
- Activity Stream App: Integrates activity streams into communication channels for faster knowledge sharing and collaboration.
- Real-Time Insight: Enables real-time visibility into issues in the field for faster resolution.
- Virtual Response Team: Automates the creation of Web 2.0 tools (activity feeds, wikis, projects and groups) that bring resources together quickly to collaborate.
- Click-to-Publish: Seamlessly publishes content to the Knowledgebase portal, reducing the time spent finding the right answer.
- Spaces Connect: A comprehensive integration framework with secure APIs and prebuilt connectors, integrating Spaces by Moxie with applications such as CRM, ERP, contentmanagement, HR and other third-party applications.
Kelly said the new version of Spaces by Moxie will be available by March 31.
A bit of history: Moxie originally was named nGenera, but it changed identities in 2010 and considers that its birth year. Kelly said he is aiming the company to become the most user-friendly social media application suite available.
The company has more than 600 enterprise customers.
Chris Preimesberger is Editor of Features & Analysis for eWEEK. Twitter: editingwhiz