Hosted CRM vendor RightNow Technologies is to acquire social media firm HiveLive in a deal worth around $6m. HiveLive provides technology that enables companies to build online communities for their clients.
The Bozeman, Montana-based firm says it will integrate HiveLive’s technology into its customer relationship management (CRM) suite, offering what it calls Social CRM. The integrated technology will offer companies the ability to implement pre-built communities for customer support, engagement and loyalty and ideation and configure them for individual business needs.
Customer-generated content will also be given a boost as the acquisition will enable companies to incorporate blogs, forums and question and answer dialogues into their CRM platforms. This customer-generated content will also be incorporated into the RightNow Knowledge Base.
“Our clients and prospects are clamouring for more social web functionality. With the addition of HiveLive, we meet all the customer experience needs of consumer-focused organisations today, with market-leading e-service capabilities, a robust contact centre solution, and now an innovative social platform. It is that unmatched combination of customer experience and social expertise that gives us a much expanded opportunity to provide even more value to our clients,” said RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte.
RightNow says that the deal will complement its Cloud Monitor product, which enables firms to monitor social web activity, giving them a clearer understanding of what customers are saying about them online. It can integrate with social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and allow the company to respond to comments.
David Vap, vice president of products, RightNow, said: “HiveLive has gone far beyond traditional forum-based communities with a flexible platform that enables customer support, innovation, loyalty and lead generation. The platform can also help organisations very easily create their own unique, brand-specific consumer communities.”
RightNow will acquire all of HiveLive’s stock for around $6m in cash and the deal will add around $1m in operating expenses per quarter as a result of the increased headcount at the firm.
