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CRM & Knowledge Management, Privacy

Asked on Jan 3 2007 9:03:16:000AM

Q

1. How can KCRM assist in knowledge management in relation to the customer relationship?
2. How about the use of cookies? Impact of privacy of the customer with cookies?
3. What happens if such knowledge was hacked or sold to others? Privacy?
4. How can technology assist and build up the trust of the customer in the knowledgement management process?

Suha Mir, Mumbai, India
ASuha,

Here are answers to your questions in the order in which they were asked:

1. How can KCRM assist in knowledge management in relation to the customer relationship?

Knowledge enabled CRM or KCRM for short, brings together collaboration technologies, knowledge bases, and CRM to enhance customer interactions. Primarily the usage is found in service and contact center environments. Some common benefits include improved search, which enables customers and agents to find the right product the first time, upsell and cross-sell algorithms, which can identify products and services that should be paired together, and repository capabilities that provide lessons learned by agents for use in training or future program designs. ATG, eGain, Infor's Epiphany, Kana, KNOVA (soon to be part of Made2Manage), and RightNow represent vendors with key knowledgebase functionality tied to a eService offering.

2. How about the use of cookies? Impact of privacy of the customer with cookies?

As you know, cookies are files written to a customer's disk and read by the http server program so that the server program knows that a customer has visited the site before. KM programs utilize this to tailor personalization features, assess patterns on the site, modify the site to meet customer expectations, and determine improvements such as up-sell/cross-sell algorithms. Most organizations will have an explicit privacy policy that defines what is done with the information gathered, how and what information is shared with whom, opt out policies and policy for updating or deleting personally identifiable information (PII). Privacy impact is no different than using a site like Amazon, eBay, or Yahoo!.

3. What happen if such knowledge was hacked or sold to others? Privacy?

Privacy policies, single sign-on (SSO) security, auditing trails provide various levels of security and privacy to the user. Audit trails and SSO specifically address any internal risks. Privacy policies address the issue of sold PII. Most companies have an explicit policy that states they will never sell PII.

4. How can technology assist and build up the trust of the customer in the knowledgement management process?

Easy to use, intuitive user experiences allow customers to build trust and comfort with any system. One constant philosophy is to always err on the side of customer privacy and design broad use cases for customers, employees, and partners.

Meet the expert

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst, Forrester Research Inc.

As a member of Forrester's Tech Vendor Strategy and Enterprise Applications & Business Process Platforms research teams, Ray analyzes trends in ERP for the enterprise and mid-market, delivers strategic guidance in software licensing and pricing, researches business processes such as the order management cycle and continuous customer management, and assesses functional areas such as Customer Data Integration and the impact of SOA on packaged applications. With this understanding of the overall ecosystem of solutions, technology, and system integrators, Ray provides strategy and guidance for many governmental and commercial clients navigating through the vendor selection process.
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