For the last three years, Jeeves has provided its search technology as an outsourced service to such companies as Dell, Ford, Nike, British Telecom and Verizon. The company said two-thirds of the U.S. market prefers a customer self-service tool for corporate Web sites that resides on in-house servers. Michelle Mehl, a senior manager with Ask Jeeves, told CRMDaily.com that the new product has been in beta testing for about four weeks with several of the company's existing corporate clients, including Compaq.

Customer Analytics Added

Jeeves Solutions said JeevesOne ships with fourteen summary, content optimization and customer analysis reports that track and aggregate customers" questions -- which then can be used to highlight Web site content holes and information gaps. The product also includes a built-in ROI (return on investment) calculator, allowing companies to count how many customer inquiries are being offset by use of self-service functions.

"While answering questions is seen as an absolute necessity for corporate Web sites, the opportunity to profit from the insight gained in question answering analysis has been largely ignored," said Claudio Pinkus, president of Jeeves Solutions. The company cited IDC reports that the worldwide call center services market reaped US$23 billion in revenue in 1998, a number that is projected to grow to $58.6 billion by 2003. Thus, Jeeves Solutions said, it believes the opportunity for well-constructed and intuitive self-service options that also capture information about what customers need and want is enormous.

Vertical Market Emphasis

Jeeves Solutions said it expects JeevesOne will increase its global market opportunity more than fivefold. Mehl told CRMDaily that the company first will target a series of vertical markets for its product -- financial services, telecommunications, technology, retail and automotive.

The company said its evolution into an enterprise software company gives it an opportunity to create alliances with other technology and service providers. Therefore, it intends to integrate its products more deeply with customers" content systems and contact center infrastructures. Toward those goals, Jeeves Solutions has formed a Strategic Alliances Group staffed by newly recruited software professionals.

The new software is available now and is priced starting at $100,000, according to the company. The product currently supports Windows NT and Windows 2000, and Jeeves Solutions said support for additional platforms is in the works.