When considering whether to DIY a search experience or to hire a third-party SaaS solution, it's important to consider more than just the technology. It's important to consider the wider dedicated team and resources that come with those services.
Sure, the evaluation often starts with the tech: what's the challenge, and how can software be a solution? Promoting cutting-edge platforms are typically on the "covers" of most marketing materials. But that only scratches the surface of an evaluation: the best vendors are partners, in every sense of the word. Yes, that relationship revolves around the usage and customization of technology — but by bringing actual services and people into the equation, nuances start to reveal themselves in what you're truly getting by signing up with a vendor.
At Yext, we're admittedly pretty proud of our search technology. And we talk about it from time to time. But let's discuss the other services Yext customers can receive in addition to integrating a powerful search platform.
Well, we have to start with self-service support
The reality that customers want to self-serve their issues, whether it relates to shopping for goods or services or receiving customer support, is one of the core topics that our AI search platform intends to address. In this increasingly digital world, few have the desire or patience for contacting companies directly, particularly for questions that can be answered without a meaning-of-life discussion with a live agent.
So for those questions that can be addressed through a point in the right direction, our help site is powered by the same intelligent, natural language understanding search platform. Instead of providing a scattered list of hyperlinks to "related articles," our help site provides direct answers to questions like "how often does yext scan for duplicates?". We make it easy for you to get the answers you need, whether you're building your own search experience or troubleshooting one that a dedicated Yext implementation specialist built for you.
Tapping into our community
Sometimes, though, a conversation just short of the meaning of life is helpful. And that's where our Hitchhikers program stars. We built it to both enable Yext free trial users to learn how to build out their own search experiences, and to speed up our customers' onboarding process and build up their Knowledge Graphs — the foundation to any proficient search platform. It's critical to be thorough in this process, and can take some time. It's an investment, after all.
Our Hitchhikers program is a way for any business employee to learn skills to craft and maintain a business's Knowledge Graph and more, by following tracks designed to make a fairly technical process accessible to a variety of roles.
And when a question or topic is an edge case, our Community pages and forums act as sources of information and experience-sharing. Customers can peruse, participate, or lead these discussions at their own pace. Like any effective forum, say, Reddit, our Hitchhikers Community is a place to follow dynamic topics or product release, or evergreen questions that may be months old, but relevant to you at the moment you need clarity.
Waving the white flag on an issue? White glove service is available, too
Especially for larger organizations, sometimes it's necessary to skip the FAQs and just jump to higher-touch services. And whether your business opts for Basic, Premier, or White Glove Services, you'll have some form of access to our team of experts who can help build and monitor your new search platform. Whether you're seeking assistance with troubleshooting, content approvals, or multi-language support, we have different levels of support to meet your team's needs. On the white glove services side of things, that includes one-to-one training for field users to maximize usage of the platform.
Samsung, a Yext Answers customer, took advantage of these services with great success.
"With Yext, we have access to subject matter experts and a team that very much feels like an extension of our own," Scott Messina, Director, Search and Design Strategy at Samsung, said. "The Yext team was incredibly helpful in getting us up and running and I know that they'll continue to play a big role moving forward."
So, if you want to self-serve using our easy-to-use free trial or you want a team of implementation specialists dedicated to building out your businesses search experience, you'll have multiple tiers of support and resources available to you.
You can start building your experience or get in touch with a product specialist here.
