Effective self-service functionality can make a company's customer experience stand out, and solid search capabilities play a key role in ensuring that customers quickly find the resources they need. With the introduction of Coveo's new Sitecore native search app, Coveo for Sitecore Pro Cloud Edition (as well as an on-premises version of the same tool), companies can add context to customers' searches and improve the relevance of the content that is returned in a search.
"Both B2B and B2C users have high expectations for search because we all learned search from Google," says Mark Floisand, chief marketing officer at Coveo. "For most users, search is a navigation tool. It's how people get around site pages, so it has to be contextually relevant. You don't want to make customers dig deep for the content that they need. It should be easy to find."
The proliferation of content has been a positive development for content marketers, but it has created some challenges as well. The more content there is, the more difficult it is to tag, sort, and keep it up-to-date. Furthermore, neglected content hurts search, Floisand explains.
That's where intelligent search comes in. The tool analyzes the searches that take place on any given site and uses the analytics-based machine learning capabilities of Coveo Reveal, a self-learning search service, to generate recommended searches and search results based on site activity. The Pro Cloud Edition also includes Coveo Usage Analytics, which is programmed to provide insights on what "engages customers on the site," according to a company statement.
"If it's a consumer electronics site and a consumer searches for 'mouse,' then a generic search will return lots of results and it's up to the consumer to sort through them and narrow it down. If [Coveo's intelligent search] powers it, then it can take into account something such as a recent incompatibility issue, and omit those results," Floisand says. The product is designed to improve consumers' initial interactions with Web pages, he adds.
There's also the option of customizing search even further for registered customers—ones that have actually logged in to use an e-commerce site. Though this component isn't part of the product yet, it can be added to the search capabilities and will take previous customer behaviors, such as purchases, into account, says Nicolas Bordeleau, product manager at Coveo. "It's not automated yet, but it can be incorporated to [further] improve search results," he says.
The tool will be most beneficial for companies that are looking at search as just one component of a holistic, self-service-driven experience. "Wherever an interaction between a customer and a company takes place, customers want to be able to look out for themselves," Floisand says. "They want to find things and do things on their own. Intelligent search is a big part of that."