Clerity Releases New Customer Support Version of Its Knowledge Market Solution; The Cost of World-Class Customer Support Just Came Back Down to Earth.

Business Editors & High Tech Writers

CINCINNATI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 4, 2001

Clerity, Inc. today announced the release of Clerity for Customer Support version 2.0, designed to enhance the Customer Support, Partner Management and eSupport initiatives of Global 2000 organizations.

Clerity for Customer Support provides the infrastructure for a web-based knowledge market that connects a company's customers, partners and employees, creating a broader self-service network in an easy-to-use question-and-answer format. This helps organizations improve web-based customer service and reduce the cost to serve by leveraging and capturing the expertise of its employees, customers and partners to answer a broader range of questions at first contact than traditional web-based self service systems allow.

Customer questions that require significant organizational networking to find the appropriate resource are difficult for traditional customer support mechanisms to address quickly and cost effectively, if at all. "Through leveraging the expertise of an entire organizational community, consisting of employees, partners, and customers, Clerity's knowledge market solution, backed by our Knowledge Groundswell(TM) methodology, creates the infrastructure for delivering answers to those questions faster and better," says George Luntz, Clerity's CEO. "Companies today have become aware of the awesome repository of knowledge within their customer and partner communities, many of whom have greater in-depth expertise on their products than the company support organization itself. Finding a way to leverage and capture this expertise has become a priority for most organizations, and Clerity for Customer Support is the solution."

Clerity for Customer Support -- an overview

Today's online support (eSupport) solutions provide answers to common questions through online FAQ content, searchable knowledge bases and online product/technical documentation. These information sources provide value to customers but are not designed to address unique, uncommon or complex customer questions, which often require costly, time-consuming involvement from company Customer Service Representative(s) ("CSRs"). These questions are often escalated, requiring expertise that is not typically found within the support team or help desk. This adds enormously to problem resolution costs and response times.

Clerity for Customer Support is a quick-to-market solution that creates profitable customer relationships, complementing traditional eSupport solutions by diverting support requests to the most appropriate expert(s), handling customer questions that most online knowledge bases do not answer and improving customer support productivity. The end result is a lower cost-to-serve, a higher rate of first-contact problem resolution and a more satisfied customer base. Clerity for Customer Support captures all question and answer pairs to build a comprehensive, growing knowledge base to shorten problem resolution cycles. Additionally, companies will also gain significant business intelligence insight into the key issues surrounding their customers, partners, products and services.

Key Features of Clerity for Customer Support

Clerity for Customer Support offers:

-- An enhanced skills repository for identifying community experts and their
areas of expertise

-- LDAP support for integration with other application and membership databases


-- Three easy-to-use methods for getting answers to questions -- by searching
the knowledgebase using an enhanced natural language search facility;
identifying experts with specific areas of expertise to answer their questions;
or by posing a question to the community at large

-- Personalized "MyPage" facilities for both requestors and experts, including
favorite questions, experts and most frequently asked questions

-- Support for open problem escalation to ensure a higher level of customer
service

-- Capture of vital statistics to help measure the effectiveness and efficiency
of the system, and to track, measure and reward user participation

-- Enhanced reporting and system administration to identify critical support
areas, knowledge gaps and issues

-- In-house or ASP delivery of the solution, with complete private branding and
integration with existing customer support sites

Adds Jason Kreitzer, Clerity's Chief R&D Officer and a co-founder of the company, "Clerity's knowledge market solutions provide corporations with a powerful weapon in the battle for improved customer relationship management (CRM), partner relationship management (PRM) knowledge management and help desk support. Clerity's technical design and powerful implementation methodology excel at connecting people and capturing their knowledge -- and that is the basis upon which organizations will have to compete in the 21st century".

About Clerity, Inc.

Clerity, Inc. is the leading provider of software, services and methodologies that facilitate, motivate and measure the dynamic sharing of knowledge, expertise and experience. Clerity's family of products are easy-to-integrate, quick-to-market solutions that, when coupled with Clerity's Knowledge Groundswell(TM) and Knowledge Economy(TM) methodology, provide the technology and infrastructure for connecting knowledge requestors with the best providers. Clerity's solutions have revolutionized the way corporations share information internally and externally by providing employee, customer and partner communities with the ability to request, receive, reward and reuse expert knowledge. Clerity's solutions are used within corporations for customer and partner communities, corporate knowledge management intranets, online trading exchanges and vertical industry portals. Clerity, Inc. is a privately held company headquartered in Cincinnati. For additional information, visit www.clerity.com or call Clerity Sales at 513-421-2200.