U.S. Green Building Council Selects AnswerDash's Contextual Website Help Technology to Power USGBC.ORG

SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - Oct 8, 2014) - AnswerDash, Inc., the world's leading contextual answer technology for websites and web applications, today announced the general availability of its intuitive Q&A software that helps consumers easily find the information they need through its point-and-click "answer layer" technology. Adding to its roster of customers, AnswerDash also announced that the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has selected its technology to enable website self-service, empowering people to glean the answers they need by simply placing their mouse over images and words found on the website. 

Helping to Educate About Sustainable Practices

"Creating a website with a great customer experience is key to us," said Ashley Katz, director of marketing, U.S. Green Building Council. "We chose to adopt AnswerDash's technology to offer site users instant answers to their questions. We have estimated that the number of assisted support tickets has been drastically reduced, resulting in over $14,000 in support savings over the last 30 days."

USGBC is composed of over 13,000 member organizations, including builders, environmentalists, corporations, and non-profits, whose mission is to transform how buildings and communities are designed, built, and operated to be more environmentally and socially responsible. USGBC develops and administers the widely known Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building program, which guides energy efficient design, construction, operations, and maintenance of buildings, houses and communities.

"We are thrilled to announce the U.S. Green Building Council as a customer in tandem with the general availability of our solution," said AnswerDash CEO Jake Wobbrock. "With the help of AnswerDash, customers visiting the USGBC site will find answers at the ready, ensuring that all of their questions about energy efficient and socially responsible building are answered quickly and easily. Results thus far show that nearly all site visitors get helpful answers, stay on the site longer, and view more pages with AnswerDash. In fact, about six times as many visitors get help from AnswerDash than conventional solutions like FAQs, knowledgebases, or live chat, and AnswerDash works alongside these solutions to make them even better."

Say Goodbye to Website "Help Islands"

Born out of four years of scientific and market research at The University of Washington Information School, AnswerDash improves the customer experience of a website or web application in ways that drive increased sales, reduce customer churn, lower support costs, and yield valuable insights to inform site improvements for the desktop, tablet and smartphone web. The company's technology provides a drop-in, point-and-click, contextual "answer layer" that resides atop website or web application content, enabling users to get their questions answered instantly without having to change pages or dig through help material.

According to 451 Research Analyst Matt Mullen, AnswerDash provides a "first line of defense" for customer queries. Mullen added, "By adding smarter, contextual linking to knowledge that already exists, the company demonstrates that customers can be serviced with the right information at the right time." Typically, website customer service solutions are "divorced from the user's context" and are generally under-utilized as a result.

Instead of interrupting customers by sending them to siloed question-and-answer pages like FAQs, forums, or knowledgebases to get help (what CEO Wobbrock calls "help islands"), which can create frustration and lead to site abandonment, the AnswerDash contextual Q&A technology allows consumers to find more information about anything they see on the page by simply clicking or tapping directly on that particular object. AnswerDash's proprietary search technology retrieves the most relevant Q&A related to whatever item on the page is selected.

Users can ask new questions, too, and after a company answers a question once, the answer becomes part of a growing "answer layer" for all future visitors to see and benefit from, without further involvement by the company. Just a few days after adopting AnswerDash, customers enjoy a built-up answer layer that acts as a first responder for the most common questions that people have on the site.

AnswerDash also integrates with existing online helpdesk systems, live chat systems, and knowledgebases by connecting to them in interesting ways. For example, if a site has a live chat provider, AnswerDash can hand off a user's question to the live chat system when necessary, making live chat more effective by heading off commonly repeated questions in favor of complex questions requiring a human touch.

The AnswerDash product has multiple features and benefits:

• Built-in contextual help - AnswerDash provides a customer's website or web application with a visible tab labeled "Q&A" on the side of the page that users can select to reveal the "answer layer," in which they can click or tap around the page and discover relevant questions and answers.
• Mobile support - AnswerDash provides mobile web users with answers on any device without making them type, switch screens, or even leave the page they are on. With an iPhone or Android device, visitors can simply tap on the object or text on the screen they have a question about, and relevant answers appear in-context.
• Customer control over content - Customers have full control over who can write Q&A and whether or not those Q&A need to be approved or edited before appearing on the site.
• Rich media answers - AnswerDash's answers can include not only text, but also links, images, and even videos that play in-place, giving users a rich experience.
• Easy installation - Installation is as simple as adding a single line of JavaScript to a customer's page. Optionally, customers can set colors and fonts to match their site.
• Intelligent selection-based answer retrieval - Q&A is not hard-coded onto site pages. AnswerDash's patent-pending "object search" retrieves Q&A related to any selected UI element (links, images, buttons, text labels, etc.). Because AnswerDash is search-driven, customer web apps and websites can evolve and the correct Q&A will still appear in relevant places. It also means Q&A must be entered only once, and it will appear in the appropriate places on the site.
• Non-duplicate Q&A - Real-time search results reveal existing questions that were already answered. Often, site visitors find that their question has already been addressed, and therefore they do not need to ask it again.
• Conversion A/B testing - A built-in tool lets online retailers measure the impact of AnswerDash on their conversion rate. AnswerDash has been shown to increase conversion rates by double-digit percentages, while lowering support costs due to deflection of common questions that visitors have when using a web site or web app.
• Visitor insights - AnswerDash reveals how visitors interact with a site so that customers can make site improvements to areas with frequent visitor inquiries.
  
  

For more information, including a demo showing how AnswerDash works, visit www.answerdash.com.

About AnswerDash
AnswerDash, the world's leading website contextual answer service, offers businesses tools to improve the customer experience of websites or web applications. AnswerDash enables companies to deliver instant contextual answers to their customers right where they need them, whether on desktop or mobile platforms. By providing quick relevant answers, AnswerDash increases sales, reduces support costs, and provides valuable insights to online businesses.