Chain Plans Book-Smart SearchesChain Plans Book-Smart Searches

Books-A-Million Inc., the No. 3 U.S. book chain, has more than 200 stores but operates in the shadow of Amazon.com Inc. and its two larger retail competitors, Barnes & Noble Inc. and Borders Group. To better compete, the company recently armed its sales associates with software that can bring the searchability of the Web to the retail floor.

This spring, Books-A-Million, most of whose stores are in southern states such as Florida, Mississippi, and Virginia, rolled out a search engine for sales associates' computers that lets them find books for customers given only scant information.

Searching for products on its Web site and in stores had become a problem for Books-A-Million, resulting in disappointed customers leaving stores empty-handed, says VP of IT Susan Harwood. "You don't always have the most experienced customer-service associate on hand," she says. "You can't tell them to go out and make servicing the customer a priority if it's going to be a frustrating experience for them both."

In March, the company switched on software from Endeca Technologies Inc. that can crawl the company's Web site and database of in-store inventory to recommend titles that fit customers' descriptions, or make recommendations on related titles that might be of interest. Using a previous search engine, Books-A-Million customers were lucky if employees could locate a title in the store, Harwood says.

Endeca's "guided navigation" software differs from popular search engines like Google by organizing results into categories such as subtopic and price instead of presenting them in a long list, the vendor says.

Retailers, including Barnes & Noble, Crate & Barrel, and Eddie Bauer, also have licensed 5-year-old Endeca's technology. Barnes & Noble uses the software in its online "book browser" feature, which organizes titles into categories such as "mystery and crime," "medicine and science," and "diet and health." But putting the technology in employees' hands is atypical, says Endeca CEO Steve Papa. "It's an emerging area." The cost of deployments can range from $100,000 to $5 million, he says.

Giving employees who talk to customers access to recommendation engines is relatively common in the financial-services industry, says Sheryl Kingstone, an analyst at market researcher the Yankee Group. But it's unusual for a retailer, she adds.

According to Harwood, Endeca's software can do for Books-A-Million's stores what it already has done for its Web site. In three months, online orders are up, and new customers are finding the site because search engines are pulling up Books-A-Million results more frequently. Getting results out of the in-store app will require some fine-tuning, she says. Eventually, she expects to see an increase in in-store sales and a decrease in special-order requests.

But recommendation engines are only as good as the data behind them, says Forrester Research analyst Laura Ramos. Unless Books-A-Million can tap into the volume of data on reader feedback and related purchases that Amazon has compiled, the company could be better served by hiring more knowledgeable employees, she says. "I'm not convinced the tool's going to make the sales clerks smarter."