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» Reported by
Julie Lavallee


If You "EasyAsk" You Shall Receive

Are your customers tired of search engines that provide them with irrelevant information? If you ask you shall receive, claims EasyAsk Inc., Littleton, Mass. (formerly Linguistic Technology Corp.). According to the company, EasyAsk, a natural language search software, retrieves current information stored in product catalogs, databases, and other formats, and returns appropriate answers. The product targets both e-business and corporate Web sites.

For both types of sites, success depends on how quickly a customer can retrieve relevant responses. A report from IDC, Framingham, Mass., indicates that 70% of potential customers leave Web sites without finding what they are looking for.

To improve customer experience, Coldwater-creek.com, a multichannel retailer of over 3,000 items of women's apparel, home, and gift items, turned to EasyAsk. "We wanted to improve our customer experience by adding more functionality to our Web site," says David Gunter, director of corporate communications of Coldwater Creek, based in Sandpoint, Idaho. "EasyAsk was easy to implement and provided a focused key word search. This functionality will be particularly important to our recent international site," says Gunter.

EasyAsk searches all relevant information from text and structured SQL databases and displays product descriptions, prices, pictures, and hyperlinks. It corrects spelling errors and identifies synonyms through contextual analysis.

In addition, the product enables the search to be refined; for example, "Show me hiking boots for under $100." Subsequent queries might refine the search by asking for "waterproof" and "only men's styles."

Being able to refine the search is key to marketing products online. IPromoteu.com, based in Natick, Mass., is a service provider to the promotional product industry. "The challenge in our industry is that our suppliers use different terms for the same product," says Robbie Weinberg, vice president of business strategies development. "For example, a supplier may use the term 'key chain,' whereas we may use the term 'key ring.' After looking at other products we found that EasyAsk gives precisely what our customers are looking for [in terms of ] results." EasyAsk tracks individual customer questions, whether the search was successful, and the item purchased.

The product supports Microsoft, Netscape, and other Web server software. The price for EasyAsk ranges from $30,000 to $240,000 depending on the configuration.

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