Problem solving tends to go off into more paths, some of which are dead ends, so you need some way for there to be a dialogue or exchange of information or a progressive disclosure of information. A tree structure for solving a problem can be very complicated. That's why people in tech support have conversations: You need feedback. Once you start opening up the issue of feedback, this gets very threatening for classic command-and-control organizations. They don't want people to say, "This is confusing" or "There's a better solution than you're offering." But that's what you should want. Interactivity means letting employees and customers have a say in what you're doing.

But interactivity is also good just as a way to keep people engaged, and it helps lock in relationships with people so they keep using the Web for more than just very rare problems. If they come only when they have a serious problem, they may not remember how to use the site or they many not have a lot of faith in it. But if they come to order airline tickets and answer expense account questions, they will probably take a more complex problem to the Web, and that's a real gain.

The final item is personalization. How important is that in a Web support site, and how do the best companies implement it? It varies. On the vendor side, we don't see much need for it with a small, single-product company. You can assume customers are pretty much alike. But as Web sites get more complex, it's almost essential to customize. For IT sites, that's generally really important. There's a big difference between the kind of information you give an executive versus a staff person. There's also going to be big differences among departments and their responsibilities -- sales people will want something different than accounting people. That's where you want to personalize.

Do you see many IT sites? We've had IT sites, but they tend to be behind the curve. Typically, IT organizations are five years behind the software companies on seeing the potential for support sites, because they're mostly focused on help desk issues, and corporate help desk deals with the simple stuff and immediately escalates anything difficult.

We got an entry the other day from a large utility company about providing electricity to customers. It answer a lot of questions, from billing to where not to dig [to avoid hitting a power line].