In addition to the methods described on the preceding page, a number of companies have taken advantage of new technologies to deliver even better service and environments to their customers. These aren't storefront solutions in and of themselves, but they can work as excellent supplements to other systems.

Automated Answers and Advice
    Brightware uses its 20 years of artificial intelligence knowledge to interpret natural language, magically allowing its system to answer customer questions. Brightware claims that, with some training, its system can automatically reply to 80 percent of common service and sales inquiries, regardless of how the questions are phrased. Brightware can then route the remainder of the questions to your customer service department for answering.

    This technology has also been used by financial, mortgage, and health care companies to determine their customers' needs and then actively recommend a prepared solution. Say goodbye once and for all to door-to-door insurance salesmen.

    Similarly, Ask Jeeves sells its question-answering software to other businesses so their users can get the answers they're looking for, which hopefully leads them to buy more products.

Automated Recommendations
    Net Perceptions is a purveyor of collaborative filtering, an automated merchandising technology that can cross-sell items to customers with similar purchasing histories. Say a customer wants to get caught up on his aquatic-adventure reading and buys 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Moby Dick. Meanwhile, someone else buys Moby Dick and The Hunt for Red October. These collaborative filtering tools will connect that information and recommend The Hunt for Red October to the first customer and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to the other customer. By using this system, you're basically letting your customers with similar interests make recommendations to each other. And the more they buy, the more accurate the recommendations will become. Pretty cool, eh?

    These are just two examples of ways you can add value to your site and stand out in a possibly crowded field. But before you start adding bells and whistles, you may want to begin simply and locally. Start by talking to your salespeople. Your front line knows a lot about what your customers need and, more importantly, how best to communicate with them. Find out what your sales team is doing that works most effectively. Keep reading to see how this method worked for ramforless.com.