Companies can now expose key Sugar components to enable customer self-service.
CUPERTINO, CA (May 03, 2007) –
SugarCRM Inc., the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, today announced the introduction of Customer Self-Service Portal and Knowledgebase for Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise customers. The Customer Self-Service Portal and Knowledgebase help companies improve communications with customers while reducing costs by enabling self-service of key CRM business processes.
“CRM is moving beyond the four walls of the enterprise,” said John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM. “Customer Self-Service Portal and Knowledgebase from SugarCRM give companies the ability to expose key elements of their CRM to customers to serve them more effectively and at a lower cost.”
Customer Self-Service Portal Improves Communication While Reducing Costs
SugarCRM’s Customer Self-Service Portal allows companies to provide self-service capabilities to customers and prospects for key marketing, sales and support activities. This new functionality allows non-technical users to create and deploy web-to-lead forms; enables users to log and manage support cases online; and gives users the ability to manage subscriptions to company communications in an automated fashion. All information from the Customer Self-Service Portal is automatically updated within SugarCRM, eliminating redundant or manual information processing.
The Customer Self-Service Portal is delivered via an installable piece of software that acts as a gateway between customer-facing web sites and a company’s SugarCRM implementation. Information transmitted through the Customer Self-Service Portal is encrypted at the data level and authenticated against the SugarCRM database. Similar to other parts of the SugarCRM application, the Customer Self-Service Portal is fully internationalized and supports date, time and currency conversions.
New Self-Service Portal functionality includes:
* Case Self-Service – Customers can log cases, upload relevant information, and track cases to resolution without ever having to pick up a phone. All cases are automatically logged within the SugarCRM Cases module.
* Account Updates – Allows customers to update account, contact, billing and shipping address information in one single location.
* Web-to-Lead Forms – Allows prospects to register their contact information into SugarCRM. Alerts can be created to notify the sales rep about the new lead.
* Subscription Management – Customers can select and manage their subscriptions to newsletters and email lists which are automatically registered within the SugarCRM Campaigns module.
* Knowledge Search – Reduces the number of inbound support calls by allowing customers to search for resolutions within the Customer Self-Service Portal. The self-service portal also exposes the FAQ’s written and managed within SugarCRM.
* Branded User Interface – Customer Self-Service Portal allows companies to maintain their brand identity by using the same award-winning user interface components contained within SugarCRM.
* Sugar Studio Integration – All customizations of the Sugar Self-Service Portal are managed within SugarCRM’s administrative environment, Sugar Studio, allowing for easy layout changes, custom fields, history and revision tracking.
Knowledgebase for Better Information Sharing
The Sugar Knowledgebase helps customer support and engineering teams to better manage and share structured and unstructured information. Knowledgebase allows user to create frequently asked questions (FAQs), manage files, and search and rate content – all in an easy-to-use interface.
New Knowledgebase functionality includes:
* Content Authoring and Management – Allows users to create searchable content. The system enables full text search, tagging, categorization and approvals, plus the ability to add attachments to the content.
* FAQs – Includes full support for the management of frequently asked questions (FAQs) including authoring, posting, and rating FAQs for internal and external viewing.
* Wikified User Interface – Utilizes a Wiki-like user interface for managing simple, non-technical content, including posting, linking, editing and deleting content.
* File Management – Allows user to create, store and tag files for sharing and retrieval.
* Full-Text Search – Users can perform full text searches to find the information they need quickly.
* User Ratings – Support for user’s ratings on a 1 to 5 scale so users can rank and prioritize the most useful information
* Workflow Approvals – Manages the content staging process so new material is reviewed by a manager who approves and posts the content. Workflow Approvals also includes audit tracking for revisions.
Pricing
Sugar Knowledgebase is included in the subscription of commercial editions. Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise On-Site are available for $275 and $449 per user per year respectively. Sugar Professional On-Demand and Sugar Enterprise On-Demand are available for $40 and $75 per user monthly, respectively. Sugar Customer Self-Service Portal pricing varies depending on number of users. Please contact SugarCRM for pricing information.
Availability
Sugar Customer Self-Service Portal and Sugar Knowledgebase are now available at www.sugarcrm.com. Access a free 30-day trial of Sugar Professional On-Demand.
About SugarCRM
SugarCRM is the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software for companies of all sizes. Sugar easily adapts to any business environment by offering a more flexible, cost-effective alternative than proprietary applications. SugarCRM’s open source architecture allows companies to more easily customize and integrate customer-facing business processes in order to build and maintain more profitable relationships. SugarCRM offers several deployment options, including on-demand, on-premise and appliance-based solutions to suit customers’ security, integration and configuration needs. For more information, call (408) 454-6900 or 1 87 SUGARCRM toll free in the US, email contact@sugarcrm.com, or visit http://www.sugarcrm.com.
Source: SugarCRM