Microsoft has acquired Colloquis for its customer support initiatives to create computer-based interactive customer services. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. You can try out the ASA to get a feel of how intelligent the bot is.
Current online support mechanisms - FAQ and Search - have fallen short of meeting customers expectations of acceptable service, causing routine queries to be handled by support staff. Customers now expect and demand much more responsive customer service. To retain its customers, a company like Microsoft must be able and willing to answer questions and resolve issues with the same prompt attention it gives to closing sales.
Providing high-availability, high-quality customer service is neither easy nor inexpensive. For example, a live phone support will cost you in between $7.00 - $33.00 per session. Even with email support, the traditional cheap alternative will also cost around $1.50 - $7.80 per session.
Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) Overview
0 Comments Published September 29th, 2006 in Infrastructure.
The Schools Interoperability Framework Association (SIFA) is a non-profit membership organization whose members include over 300 software vendors, school districts, state departments of education and other organizations active in primary and secondary (pK-12) markets. These organizations have come together to create a set of rules and definitions which enable software programs from different companies to share information. This set of platform-independent, vendor-neutral rules and definitions is called the SIF Implementation Specification. The SIF Specification makes it possible for programs within a school or district to share data without any additional programming and without requiring each vendor to learn and support the intricacies of other vendors’ applications.
The Implementation Specification defines the software implementation guidelines for SIF; it does not make any assumption of what hardware and software products need to be used to develop SIF-certified applications. Instead, it defines the requirements of architecture, communication, software components, and interfaces between them.
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