Is free enterprise search a game-changer?
Recently Coveo for Sitecore Enterprise Edition was launched into the online space, offering organizations the ability to equip websites with enterprise-grade search capability via a low-cost solution that can be expanded as its capabilities grows over the lifetime of the website. Is this a game-changer for marketers?
Kristina: Why is enterprise search important for personalizing the online experience for customers?
J.P. Provencal, Senior Vice President, Business Development, Coveo: [Our data shows] search can increase a site’s number of repeat visitors by 60%, lift page views per visitor by 33%, and-most importantly -increase conversions by more than 30%. Enterprise search technology enables the indexing and normalization of diverse content collected from experience databases. Innovative knowledge management and customer engagement platforms have incorporated these database platforms into their solutions to capture activity from all channels (e.g. WCM, CRM, Community portals, enterprise systems, social media, etc.) and use this diverse data to develop contextual awareness and personalize content accordingly.
These capabilities are critical because customers are now empowered to engage with companies when and how they choose, across an ever-evolving array of channels: social media, email, websites, self-service portals, call centers, field service, etc. Creating a personalized customer experience requires a complete, real-time understanding of the customer and their unique history with the brand and building this understanding requires real-time analysis of all the customer’s interactions with the company to date, across all channels….not just the Web.
Kristina: Is it necessary to adopt enterprise search if you already have native content management system search capabilities?
J.P.: It comes down to personalizing the customer experience. If an organization is looking to provide a more seamless, more personalized Omni-channel experience across their website, enterprise search solutions provide the ability to build a “real-time” customer profile by collecting data from across all customer channels, including social media, email, self-service portals, call centers…not just the Web. Enterprise search solutions provide the capability to index and collect customer data from these various data sources so a visitor is exposed to the most relevant content based on their unique profile, history and site activity. The result is increased conversion rates, number of return visitors and overall customer satisfaction scores. The native search capabilities built into CMS systems typically lack these capabilities and doesn’t provide the ability to index those 3rd party data sources, resulting in an incomplete customer profile, and as a result, a Web experience that is less than personalized.
