YextSupportAnswersTo improve the problem-solving process for customers and customer service representatives, Yext introduced Support Answers. The company offers an AI-powered Answers Platform that understands natural language so that when people ask questions about a business online, they get direct answers – not links.

The market launch came at a time when more and more people started to look for answers on their own on the Internet but couldn’t find the right solutions to their problems. According to Gartner, for instance, around 70% of all customers use self-service tools, but only 9% can use these highly automated channels to completely resolve their problems. As a result, many of them end up turning to live support, which certainly creates additional costs for the company and increases the time it takes to resolve problems for the already frustrated customers.

 

Yext's AI-based solutions, which are specifically tailored for a range of customer service scenarios, understand the intent behind customers' questions and provide direct answers by referring, for instance, to the company's FAQs, product manuals, or help articles.

 

By providing a comprehensive self-service solution, Yext streamlines the problem-solving process not only for the customers looking for information on a company's website, but also for the customer service staff looking for information on internal portals as they guide customers through the troubleshooting process.

 

Yext Support Answers includes the following solutions:

 

  • Help page search: Companies can now implement Yext's advanced natural language processing (NLP) on their help page, so that when customers search via the search bar, they immediately receive answers based on the company's FAQs, guides, tutorials, videos, e-books, product manuals and more – without even having to contact customer support once. Various algorithms, including “extractive question answering” and semantic text search, enable the best result to be presented instead of a listing of hyperlinks.

  • Desktop search for employees: To reduce the number of information silos and the waiting times for customers, companies can centralize all content relevant for customer support in the internal portal for the individual customer service employees. When employees have access to accurate, up-to-date data in one central location while serving customers, they can resolve issues both faster and more efficiently.

  • SEO for help center: When customers ask support questions about third party search engines, like Google, companies are still able to answer those questions via search engine optimized landing pages and synchronized FAQs that improve results, page ranking and the likelihood to appear as a featured snippet.

  • In-app support: Companies only need a few lines of code to implement a digital concierge for their web, mobile, and desktop apps that provides a dynamic, chat-like search experience. If companies provide answers to customer questions in an intuitive way directly in an app, they can reduce unnecessary expenses for their support teams.

  • Knowledge Base: Yext’s solution is based on Yext's Knowledge Graph, a central, brain-like database for storing, viewing, editing, and approving all customer service-relevant information – and the relationships between that data. This solution enables teams to create their own self-service repositories of information, including FAQs, support articles, product guides, and more, displayed during a great search experience.

  • Avoidance of case forms: Companies can proactively prevent the creation of customer support tickets and offer customers alternative options for self-help. When avoiding case forms, clients are suggested appropriate answers as they fill in details about their problem in the form.

 

Marc Ferrentino, Chief Strategy Officer at Yext, said that customers highlighted often that they don't like contacting customer support. However, for a very long time, companies were not equipped with technologies that were powerful enough for customers to solve their problems on their own. “That changes with the introduction of Support Answers as this solution uses the various search algorithms on our platform to interpret people's intentions and provide contextual and direct answers – in a way that meets the needs and expectations of customers while saving companies time and money", Yext’s CSO concludes.

 

By Daniela La Marca