Although it now offers sales and marketing functionality, RightNow has remained true to its belief that customer service is the key to understanding customers and meeting their expectations, which is why all of its applications are underpinned by its iKnow self-learning knowledge base where information from the knowledge base can be used in customer interactions to help organizations meet customer expectations.
The release of the 8.0 version of the overall RightNow application aims to make customer information more immediately relevant and usable during customer interactions, whether they are overt sales or service-based activities, form part or a company’s marketing program, or are initiated by the company or its customers.
The focus is on using customer information to improve the experience an individual has with a company, where experience is defined as the sum of the individual’s interactions with the company’s products, people, and processes, and providing tools that help organizations adopt an outside-in perspective on customers.
The company has added a range of new functionality, including a Customer Experience Designer and a Feedback module. The Customer Experience Designer consists of a workflow engine and graphical design tool that can be used to design, deliver, and modify processes that span sales, marketing, and customer service. It will enable organizations to map customer-facing processes such as complaint-filing or online product registration, to ensure smooth transition between departments.
The Feedback module is designed to allow organizations to capture and measure customer feedback in real-time, across all touch-points so that action can be taken, such as routing customer comments to the design department, which could, in theory, contact the customer for more detailed information that can be used in future designs. The aim is to capture feedback and automate both follow up and analysis, enabling a sense and response type of operation.
Analytics capabilities have been added, such as the Report Design Center that allows users to customize report formats using a drag-and-drop tool to assemble relevant information. Playing to the trend for role-based interfaces, multiple reports can be brought together in a dashboard or homepage. A historical trending feature will also be introduced.
The role-based interface theme is continued with the Workspace Designer also using drag and drop to enable users to customize their desktop workspaces.
In addition, RightNow has added vertical solutions, catered for through pre-built templates and enabled through the use of the other new features,
Where other on-demand vendors have opted for Ajax, RightNow has used .NET-based smart client technology. According to the Jason Mittelstaedt, VP of marketing, Ajax did not enable the creation of a client that could poll the range of enterprise applications needed. RightNow was also concerned about the usage environment and the need for fast performance and availability in large, high volume, mission critical call center environments.
Having begun as a customer service-oriented CRM provider, RightNow has steadily expanded its footprint, but without losing its focus on the customer. This development pattern is set to continue with the company providing functionality that is neither traditional CRM nor front office in nature but is highly relevant to the customer.
According to Mr Mittelstaedt, the company mapped the complete customer lifecycle from initial need, to research and ultimately to sales and support, then mapped RightNow solutions to the lifecycle. That is what led it to expand into non-CRM areas such as feedback and will drive future developments designed to help organizations view their operations from the customers’ perspective.
This approach will probably mean that the company has plenty of headroom for growth within a solid but still relatively small business. It has a $100 million-plus annual revenue run rate, 34 quarters of continuous growth, 1,700 customers, and is in a better financial state than Kana Software, which also operates in this area.
It said more than 50% of its revenue comes from large enterprises. It is operating in a growing market that is driven by companies that realize they cannot compete on price or functionality and are looking at the way they handle their customers as a means of establishing a competitive advantage.
