Emeryville, CA September 24, 2001 Jeeves Solutions, a division of Ask Jeeves Inc., today announced the general availability of JeevesOne, its first, packaged, question-answering software product.
In a statement, the company said, JeevesOne delivers cost-effective, intelligent self-service. For the last three years, Jeeves Solutions has delivered its technology as an outsourced service or application service provider (ASP) to companies such as Dell, Ford, Nike, British Telecom, Verizon and other industry leaders.
According to the company, two-thirds of the U.S. market prefers a self-service solution that is customer-resident and delivers valuable customer insight, and JeevesOne is designed to meet those criteria. In addition to significantly reducing support costs, JeevesOne will help companies deliver better products and services by learning from every question customers ask.
With the successful launch of JeevesOne, we've delivered a product the market needs on time, and achieved a major milestone we set out for ourselves at the beginning of the year, said Skip Battle, CEO of Ask Jeeves. The availability of JeevesOne for Jeeves Solutions and the acquisition of Teoma, the leading next generation search technology, for our Web Properties division represent significant advances in our technology and products. I believe Ask Jeeves now has the tools to compete effectively in both our business units even in this difficult market place.
Jeeves Solutions expects JeevesOne will increase its global market opportunity more than fivefold. According to the American Marketing Association's Honomichl Report, companies spend an estimated $7 billion dollars on market research annually in order to better understand the needs and preferences of their customers. IDC reports that the worldwide call center services market totaled $23 billion in revenues in 1998, and is projected to grow to $58.6 billion by 2003.
Cost-effective, intelligent self-service solutions are crucial for companies in the current environment of demanding customers and limited budgets, said Robert Mirani, director of CRM strategies for Yankee Group. Although companies have invested millions of dollars in [customer relationship management], content management and other solutions to interact and respond to customers, many still execute ineffectively in using self-service so that customer communications is managed optimally. Solutions like JeevesOne can help provide the missing link through high value customer analytics tools and an easy-to-use question answering system all controlled within a company's firewall.
