eGain Communications Corporation (eGain) recently announced that Argos is implementing its eGain OnDemand, the on demand version of its Knowledge Management (KM) solutions.

Argos has more than 700 stores in the United Kingdom and Ireland, employs thirty three thousand staff, serves at least hundred and thirty million customers annually and sells any type of general merchandising goods such as LCD TV’s, mobile phones, furniture, garden equipment, sports kits, kitchen utilities, video games, toys, games, jewellery, and personal care consumables.

Even though Argos is doing well, it discovered that certain customer queries, related to major high end domestic electronic good appliances like freezers, drying cabinets, trash compactors, went unanswered and some were repeated. This scenario resulted in customers being unhappy and possible business loss from these customers not buying goods through Argos in the future.

Also, sales and business loss could possibly occur indirectly through word of mouth to other potential customers.

“Given the increased complexity of brown goods queries, the decision was taken to introduce a robust knowledge management system to improve customer experience, contact centre agent productivity and first-contact resolution.,” said Graham Dear, service improvement & development programme manager at Argos' parent company, Home Retail Group.

The expertise eGain has fine tuned over the years through its KM for eService gave Argos reasonably quick results, a ten percent improvement in some cases.

The trial services were integrated within the platform Argos was already using including intuitive search options for operators which quickly brought up the accurate and relevant answers through an intelligent Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) Technology coupled with similar and repeated case histories in the form of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s).

eGain products add value to eServices by reducing the operating costs, guiding customers and keeping them satisfied. In addition it offers tight security for any customer information, and a consumer friendly User Interfaces (UI) to encourage customers to resolve problems by themselves.