Case Study 1: One- to- One with ServiceWare Customers II

SW: What excited the people at Marconi about the ServiceWare eService Suite concept?

M: In general, when customers go to the Web for solutions, they want to emulate their best service experiences from the physical world. Therefore, we wanted a trouble- shooting or problem- flow analysis mode where people can walk through sort of a “Is this the case?” “No, it’s not” “Well try this” scenario. We were very excited to find that eService Suite would give us the ability to build trees of information that do just that. We also needed a scalable solution we could roll out worldwide throughout our existing organisation. And again, ServiceWare has provided these tools as well as the other key elements we were looking for.

SW: You mentioned that alternative solutions are based primarily on a search engine. What is the drawback to that approach?

M: From our perspective, the number one problem with a simple search- engine approach is that the information displayed to the end user is uncontrolled. Our ultimate goal is to promote self-support by opening our knowledge base to our end users. Therefore, we must have a system that allows us to edit content while providing a process flow that ensures the knowledge we provide both internally and externally has been reviewed and meets basic criteria before it’s published.

A team of internal analysts plus a worldwide network of fieldservice personnel provides customer service, installation and trouble shooting for Marconi’s constantly expanding product range. In a twopronged effort to provide consistent and high quality information while reducing training necessary to prepare analysts and field personnel, Marconi turned to ServiceWare for a Knowledge Management eService solution that could be integrated into its already internationally recognised Web- based Support Services Center.

Today, Marconi’s internal analysts are up and running on ServiceWare’s eService Suite™ knowledge management software. Expert knowledge is available to junior and senior level analysts alike and training time has been reduced dramatically. David Breit discusses the company’s experience as a ServiceWare customer in this One- to- One Interview.

SW: Can you give me an idea of what led you to ServiceWare?

M: I’d be happy to. Like many companies that experience rapid growth, we realised that small pools of information were developing throughout our organisation. To maximise the effectiveness of our support organisation, we wanted to make this knowledge available to our own people and our customers. That meant organising the knowledge in a central place. Keep in mind, this was in 1997 and we were a bit ahead of the curve. However, we knew what we wanted to accomplish and had a good idea of what would or wouldn’t meet our needs.

SW: What kind of options did you consider?

M: We found that database options fall generally into two schools of thought. One simply indexes documents and notes into a search engine so they can be easily found. The other philosophy — the one that ServiceWare fits into — packages knowledge into clean packets of information that are placed into a centralised database in a structured, organised fashion that can be presented to users and internal staff.