SAS announces new capabilities for ‘SAS® Conversation Center’

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) November 22, 2011 -- November 21, 2011

SAS, the leading provider of business analytics software and services, has announced the release of a new upgrade for SAS® Conversation Center, a key application of SAS® Social Media Analytics. The upgrade demonstrates the leading company’s continued move to support companies that are looking to increase business value from social media. With the new capabilities in place, SAS Conversation Center will now allow companies to engage with customers on Twitter by capturing significant tweets in real time, analyzing the message and routing them to the right department within the organization, thereby allowing for quick response action.

The new features include the presence of a new communication portal, an improved conversation timeline, automatic case closure, shared common message content and the ability to manually adjust sentiment. The new communication portal allows users to post tweets from within SAS Conversation Center, which means users will no longer have to push outbound Twitter communications from a separate application, allowing for a quicker response time to any service or care concerns. The improved conversation timeline provides color coded conversation threads to help SAS Conversation Center users to easily and quickly identify the sender and the tweet type. Also, any public posts from SAS Conversation Center that might be viewed by the customer are also included in the timeline. This feature helps users visually filter dialogue to assess and provide more rapid and appropriate responses.

One of the newer features is an automatic case closure system that automatically closes cases if there is no response from an end customer after a specified amount of time. The removal of extraneous cases will give users the advantage of focusing on the more important cases. SAS Conversation Center now also has the ability to store frequently used text, URLs and hash tags for easy retrieval. Sharing frequently used content helps organizations replicate best practices and maintain continuity in their customer communications. Lastly, the solution offers a manual sentiment adjustment, which is an important indicator in determining how to engage with a customer. Users can manually override the initial sentiment assignment and assign a new sentiment score. The new score is used in case prioritization, helping organizations determine priority, as well as improve the taxonomy used in determining sentiment.

"Brand loyalty soars when a company gets customer engagement right," said Shukri Dabagh, General Manager, SAS Middle East. "SAS Conversation Center helps organizations go beyond listening to engaging real time with customers via Twitter. Effective customer dialogue is comprised of many attributes - it must be relevant, it must be engaging, and it must provide the service or resolution that a consumer is seeking - all at the point of need. In our hyperconnected society, instantaneous positive service is king. SAS Conversation Center helps companies provide such a level of service to their customers."