Software optimizes customer service and support.

Press Release Summary:



Integrating social Web technologies with customer service workflows, Helpstream Fall 2008 Release enables companies to deliver intelligent and timely issue resolution while driving customer engagement across business functions. To identify needs of customer base, idea sharing can consist of 1-line suggestion as well as formatted HTML, multimedia attachments, and links to web-based content. Community members can vote on ideas and, based on permissions, see how submissions are ranked by community.



Original Press Release:



Helpstream Announces Fall 2008 Release



Idea Sharing and Enhanced Community Integration Highlight Ground Breaking Advancements in Next Generation Customer Service and Support

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 16-/ -- Helpstream, the world's first truly social customer service and relationship management system, today announced the general availability of the Helpstream Fall 2008 release, containing substantial new features designed to help companies stop deflecting and start engaging their customers like never before. By further extending the power of Web-based customer service communities and making them easier to deploy and use, Helpstream enables companies to deliver intelligent and timely issue resolution while driving effective customer engagement across all business functions.

"There's a growing awareness of the power of turning customers into problem solvers by extending customer service to the Web via integrated communities," said Anthony Nemelka, CEO of Helpstream. "As we're finding out first hand from our customers, this innovative approach is driving significant benefits such as faster and better issue resolution, improved repeat business, and lower service costs."

By integrating advanced social Web technologies with customer service workflows, Helpstream enables companies to substantially improve service effectiveness through innovative strategies such as community-based self service, web-enabled service desk, and collaborative on-line help. With Helpstream companies can focus community building efforts on the needs of customers to drive active member participation. This natural alignment between the needs of companies and their customers creates the critical ingredient for a successful on line community.

The Helpstream Fall 2008 release features idea sharing -- a type of crowdsourcing that enables organizations to identify the needs of their customer base. An idea can be as simple as a one-line suggestion or can contain rich media such as formatted HTML, multi-media attachments and links to Web-based content. Community members can vote on ideas and, based on permissions, can see how submissions are ranked by the community. This ground breaking capability encourages deeper participation and contribution in the community by enabling customers, partners and employees to post suggestions and refine or vote on ideas posted by other users.

"Helpstream's Fall '08 release is fantastic," said Rosa Terrazas, Director of Customer Support, BigTent. "The highly configurable user interface combined with single sign-on allows us to offer a seamless end user experience between the BigTent community platform and our self service portal. Thanks to the tight integration with community we can now enable customers to post and vote on everything from new ideas to solution articles and general content. This feedback is very important to us because one of our core values is being very customer centric."

Additional highlights of the Fall 2008 release include the following:

-- Content and Reputation Scoring: Voting is enabled on any solution article and contributes to end user collaboration and expertise reputation scores visible to all members of the community.

-- SalesForce and Google Single Sign On: Google and SalesForce users can seamlessly log into Helpstream with their existing credentials.

-- Automatic Conversion of Solution Articles: Automatically include articles from Question and Answer threads into the Knowledge Base.

-- Enhanced Community Integration: Improved administration and access control for all types of content including solutions, Q&A, FAQ, suggestions, discussions, and interactive checklists.

-- Personalization: New "My Profile" and "My Subscriptions" pages now provide easy administration of personalization features and content subscriptions.

-- Self Service Portal: Allows users control over the visual design of the portal look and feel including attributes such as screen background, icons, fonts, highlight and link colors. System managers can now control "What's New" and "What's Hot" sections of the home page, determining the appearance and sequence of top rated, frequently-used, new and recently updated content.

Helpstream will be showcasing the Fall 2008 release at the Service and Support Professional Association (SSPA) Services Leadership Conference on October 20-21 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Pricing and Availability

The Helpstream Fall 2008 release is immediately available at helpstream.com/. Standard Services are available free. Premium features are offered in Professional, Corporate and Enterprise Editions to fit any budget. Corporate Edition with 5 agents starts at around $8,000 annually. Please visit helpstream.com/ for details.

About Helpstream

Helpstream is the world's first truly social customer service and relationship management system. It provides companies an effective way to support their customers and build outstanding customer relationships. Helpstream integrates social Web technologies with modern customer service and collaboration processes to drive effective customer and partner engagement across all business functions. Helpstream's SaaS design makes it fast to deploy, easy to use and affordable. It can be deployed as a complete customer service system or as an integrated self-service and community case resolution complement to existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. Helpstream has over 100 customers in various industries including high tech, government, healthcare, financial- and professional-services. Helpstream is a private, venture capital-backed company headquartered in Mountain View, California. For more information, please visit helpstream.com/.

About Big Tent

Big Tent Design, Inc. is where trusted groups connect online. The free platform for family-friendly organizations strengthens group involvement and simplifies group management. By combining the best of today's social networking features with group management tools, Big Tent helps real-world communities share, communicate and organize online and in-person. Founded in 2006, the company is headquartered in San Francisco and currently hosts parents groups, PTAs, preschools, clubs and other community groups nationwide. For more information about Big Tent, please visit: http://www.bigtent.com/.

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