Discern Announces ReportCard Monitoring Software; Question Answering Software Evaluates Itself to Maximize Customer Satisfaction and Optimize System Performance.

Business Editors & Technology Writers

MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 10, 2002

Discern Communications, a spinout of SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute), announced today that they have enhanced the reporting capabilities of Discern question answering software to dynamically monitor the software's ability to resolve customer self-service inquiries. The new ReportCard monitoring software assesses customer satisfaction and application performance, as well as analyzes system operation to help administrators keep the system optimized and keep costs down.

Discern question answering software drives up customer satisfaction in customer service and support organizations by reducing the user effort required to get precise answers to questions. ReportCard monitoring software continuously scrutinizes as customers use Discern applications, pinpoints areas of strength and weakness relative to customer satisfaction, analyzes traffic and system utilization, and helps administrators better manage their knowledgebase.

"With minimal administrative effort, ReportCard maintains the highest level of precision and customer satisfaction by monitoring and analyzing Discern performance," said Discern Vice President of Product Marketing, Seth Neumann. "By measuring customer satisfaction and other key success indicators, ReportCard gives business managers and administrators visibility into system performance so that they can act quickly to correct problems before they affect customer satisfaction."

Reports that Measure Customer Satisfaction

ReportCard highlights key indicators of customer satisfaction, including the frequency of questions asked to determine topics that are important or areas that might be confusing to users. ReportCard determines if content is available for questions asked, which directs administrators to areas where content may be needed. ReportCard also determines if Discern understands each question asked, which directs administrators to areas that may require adjustment or further content development. In addition to these self-monitoring techniques, ReportCard solicits evaluations and comments on the Discern experience directly from users. It then summarizes user ratings and displays user comments to demonstrate how users perceive their service to be.

Reports that Highlight System Usage

ReportCard features a set of reports for traffic and system management, including an analysis of traffic by query, system response time statistics, and reports detailing new content and system configuration. This set of reports provides system managers with insight into how and when customers utilize the Discern question answering solution, and how quickly the system responds, which helps drive decisions about content requirements. System usage trends might also provide an indicator of what is happening in their business.

System Administration Tools

ReportCard complements the existing Discern toolset, which helps system administrators install and manage their Discern solution. Tools are provided to: add, update and remove content; add, update and remove users; and manage information in the knowledgebase. Reports help keep administrators' content organized and accessible, simplify ongoing maintenance, and help keep performance optimized and keep costs down.

Robust and Flexible Reporting Engine

ReportCard's user interface is browser based, so administrators can access reports from anywhere, and provides the ability for contact center personnel to share, move, forward, email or route the report. In this way, contact center personnel can share report information with other contact center individuals who may have a need to review reports on a case-by-case basis. Contact centers may define the interval they want the report to cover, and the preferred file type for the report, including PDFs, XML or Excel. This allows contact centers to customize reports to analyze specific events, elements, timeframes, etc.

ReportCard also allows contact centers to assimilate data from a variety of sources, including the ACD, a CRM solution, an IVR system, etc. This is a powerful capability because it provides a cohesive view of the contact center operations, rather than a collection of unrelated reports that don't tell the complete story. Report Card runs on Windows NT, Windows 2000 or Windows XP Server.

About the Discern Solution

Discern's automated query/response technology is based on more than 10 years of work by SRI and a $25 million technology investment by the U.S. government. What differentiates Discern from alternative products is the combined simplicity of the question-answering interface, the precision of the answer engine and the ease with which customer service organizations can implement and support the solution. Using patented language-understanding technology, Discern delivers an answer, rather than a series of suggested links or a hierarchical menu.

Discern features an intuitive, browser-based toolkit for implementation and maintenance. The Discern implementation process is highly automated, meaning the Discern engine, rather than a human being, reads and interprets the information source. Deployments require a fraction of the time of alternative solutions. The Discern implementation is non-disruptive to the customer's existing environment, requiring minimal or no changes to the customer's Web site, customer resource management (CRM) software, email management system, and source materials. Open APIs through Enterprise Java Beans in a J2EE framework use XML messages for easy integration with other enterprise applications. The J2EE framework also provides scalability, redundancy and distributed processing.

Maintenance is likewise easy. Discern continues to dynamically read and interpret new information sources that are added to the application. Only a minimal amount of human resource time is required to oversee updates and monitor performance.

About Discern Communications

Discern Communications, a spinout of SRI International, provides products that automate the deployment and operation of question answering for customer service and support centers. Regardless of whether a customer's query comes from a Web page, an email or the phone, Discern provides highly precise answers, dramatically improves customer satisfaction, reduces human resource reliance, and offers a low life-cycle management cost. Discern's products are currently used by multinational corporations, U.S. intelligence agencies, and the U.S. military. News and information can be found at www.discern.com.

Discern is a registered trademark of Discern Communications. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.