All Roads Don’t Lead Home

Nothing is more annoying than going to a website only to be confronted with multiple search dialogues that all search different repository.  I was recently on a PC manufacturer site and wasted half an hour searching their product support page for an issue I was having with a driver only to realize the driver-specific support page had its own search.  Not to mention looming in the top right corner there was yet another search box that one could use at any time to search for information about the company itself. 

Coming from a technology and development background and working at a company the makes search effectiveness its number priority, it’s scary to think it took me a while to figure out this company’s support search strategy.  I can only imagine what level of success my father would have finding issues for his own PC issues when I’m unavailable to play the role of family support desk. 

That said, we’re all really excited about some of the new approaches we’re taking to search that help customers develop an Enterprise Knowledge Foundation, and get rid of all of those confusing search boxes.  Tools like RightAnswers Enterprise Gateway enable customers with broader search initiatives leveraging Google Appliances, custom search tools, Autonomy, FAST, or a developed SharePoint portal to make our knowledge a part of their Enterprise search results eliminating the need to create a another search.  Likewise customers using other search tools can easily leverage RightAnswers as their Enterprise search portal; leveraging our knowledgebase technology to hold IT and non-IT knowledge and crawl other data sources in their organization where knowledge resides in various unstructured formats.

Next time you’re on your own corporate site or a consumer site and cannot figure out which road leads to the right answer remember RightAnswers can help you and your customers whoever they may be.