Delivering marketing expertise to the front lines

The needs of customers and business often coincide, but never so readily as when customer service representatives have knowledge about products and services at their fingertips-and never so effectively as when that knowledge is tailored to the needs of each client. This is the idea behind CSR Advisor, an expert system application we developed at AGT, a Canadian telecommunications company. The program integrates marketing expertise into the order entry process, putting it on the frontlines with customer service representatives. By encoding the knowledge of experienced marketers into CSR Advisor, we make marketing expertise available to CSRs as they create new accounts or make changes in existing ones for residential and small business customers. With CSR advisor integrated into the order entry process, customer service representatives can draw on a store of marketing expertise as they create new accounts or make changes in existing ones for residential and small business customers.<>