Abstract
The shift in customer role from a source of revenue to a source of innovation has resulted in an increased demand for a direct interaction with customers, via more advanced and real-time solutions. This may drive organisations to complement Electronic Customer Knowledge Management Systems (E-CKMS) with new interactive multimodal metaphors. There is little known about CKM empirical studies, which investigated whether multimodal metaphors as part of a CKM interface can outperform the text with graphics only metaphors. Thus, this paper describes an investigation about the role of multimodal interaction in improving E-CKMS efficiency compared to text with graphics only metaphors. The examination of this hypothesis was carried out empirically on two E-CKMS experimental platforms (text with graphics only and multimodal) designed for this study. Two independent groups of users (n=20 for each group) evaluated the two interface versions of E-CKMS. Results suggested that the multimodal CKM interface was more efficient than the text with graphics only interface.