Two-For-One Suite

Kana Inc. this week will release its first integrated E-customer-relationship management product suite since its June merger with Broadbase Software Inc., a maker of analytical customer-interaction tools.

The Intelligent Customer Acquisition and Retention for the Enterprise Suite, or iCare, simplifies the functions of all Kana and Broadbase products to let companies manage customer interactions across multiple channels. It also gives businesses access to a single view of customer interaction data gathered across contact-management centers, customer self-service sites, and marketing departments.

The package consists of six components, all designed to facilitate quick responses to customer-service inquiries and improve marketing efforts.

Half of the components focus on E-mail. For example, Kana ResponseIQ links customer E-mail inquiries to a self-service server. A new feature removes inquiries from the queue when customers indicate they've solved their problem. When service agents are needed, Kana Response distributes E-mail, instant messages, and Web inquiries to them. Both self-service and agent-assisted applications draw from a single information database, and a new learning algorithm automatically adjusts suggested solutions based on how previous problems were resolved.

The marketing and customer-service applications include analytics to increase the value of customer interactions across multiple channels. Kana Contact Center, now based on Enterprise JavaBeans and Component Object Model standards, prioritizes the most profitable customers. Kana Marketing tries to bolster those relationships with analytic, data-mining, and personalization features.

"This is a broad offering that encompasses the aspects of what businesses need to provide self-service and assisted service, and that's what solutions are going to look like going forward," Yankee Group analyst Brian Jones says. But as Kana has been racing to convert the Broadbase technology to a Java 2 Enterprise Edition platform, vendors such as E.piphany Inc. and Siebel Systems Inc. are moving to the next phase of CRM-helping customers integrate CRM with back-office systems, says Kevin Scott, a marketing strategies analyst at AMR Research.

The iCare package is available now at $95,000 for single applications and $300,000 for the full suite.