RightNow Technologies (Company
Profile, Past
Stories, Case
Studies), the world’s leading provider of hosted customer service and support solutions, today unveiled RightNow 6.0the next generation
multi-channel service suite RightNow Service™ and a new module RightNow Outbound™, a permission-based email solution for proactively addressing service-
and-support issues and marketing communication opportunities. The new solutions enable companies to deliver competitively superior customer service across phone,
email, Web, and chat channels, while seamlessly integrating marketing and service communications.
With more than 200 new features and leveraging customer service best practices from more than 1,000 customer engagements, RightNow’s solutions enable Global
2000 and mid-market companies to deliver consistent, high quality service while significantly reducing operating costs. RightNow enrolled more than 30 customers as early
adopters including Activision, Inc., Andrews Federal Credit Union, nanoCom Corporation, Siemens Procurement and Logistics Services, Skechers USA, Inc., University of
South Florida, Vindigo, and Western Digital Corporation.
Today customer interaction histories often reside in separate “siloed” departments—electronic customer service channels, call centers, and marketing
divisions—within companies. With RightNow Service, companies can consolidate all of their customer service and marketing communication histories into a
centralized, agent-centric application to produce timely and accurate responses to inquiries via any “touch point.” RightNow Outbound further expands the
customer service capabilities by proactively managing customer relationships through highly personalized, permission-based outbound communications that aim to preempt
customer issues, and offer relevant products and services. Tight integration between RightNow Service and RightNow Outbound ensures companies maintain and fully
utilize complete customer interaction data to drive effective customer communications.
“Because most interactions with customers occur post-sale rather than pre-sale, both customer service managers and marketers are missing a golden opportunity to
mine rich service data to proactively address customer issues and send the most relevant marketing messages,” Sheryl Kingstone, program manager, Yankee
Group, said. “RightNow is proving its customer service and support vision by targeting this important communication gap with the introduction of RightNow Service
and RightNow Outbound. By managing both inbound and outbound communications from a consolidated platform, companies can make more strategic decisions about how
and when to communicate with their customers.”
RightNow Service
RightNow Service is a complete suite of multi-channel customer service and support (CSS) solutions that captures, tracks, assigns, and manages customer service
interactions from initial contact through resolution. Using RightNow Service’s case management, Web self-service, email management, and live chat/collaboration
modules, companies typically achieve a 10 to 30 percent reduction in calls and a 50 to 70 percent reduction in emails. As the industry’s only multi-channel CSS
suite powered by a patented, self-learning knowledge base as its core architectural element, RightNow Service drives service accuracy, speed, and consistency regardless
of how customers choose to interact with an organization.
“We couldn’t be more excited about RightNow Service’s new centralized agent console because it provides a snapshot of the entire customer data
and interaction histories in a single user screen, and will make the lives of our 200 service agents easier and more productive,” Christopher Akin, assistant director,
Information Technologies, University of South Florida, said. “Equally important, RightNow Service has great queue management features to help our service
managers allocate agent resources as the customer demands fluctuate, as well as service level management features.”
“Of all the new features in RightNow Service, I was particularly impressed by the new analytics and reporting enhancements,” Jennifer Pace, project manager,
Marketing and Research, Andrews Federal Credit Union, said. “They will provide much more flexibility in the types of customer service information I can analyze, and
the ability to customize the reports based on various departmental needs. But more importantly, the enhanced analytics and reporting will provide our company with deeper
insights into the customer trends and service performance to continually improve our customer relationship management processes.”
The new features of RightNow Service include:
•Streamlined, Robust Console for Contact Center Agent
RightNow Service is a robust thin client application with “thick-client” features (including keyboard shortcuts, drag-and-drop options, right-click operations,
and cascading menus) that provides the full power of a client/server application built on RightNow’s popular hosted model. Additionally, it allows seamless
integration with third-party systems, such as order tracking and billing applications, through custom tabs located within the same agent interface screen.
•Expanded Knowledge Base Search Capabilities
RightNow Service’s expanded knowledge base search capabilities include 200-plus file type attachments and indexing of specified portions of corporate Web sites,
allowing customers and agents to access information from a wider range of existing Web and network resources.
•Advanced Customer Interaction Management Capabilities
RightNow Service enables service organizations to identify high-value customers for premium support delivery, and monitor the real-time Service Level Agreement (SLA)
compliance status to ensure customer expectations are continually met. Administrators can also restrict and meter customer service levels based on pre-determined
service agreements.
•Deep Customer Service Management Analytics and Reporting Engine
RightNow Service features a new analytics reporting engine that empowers service managers to track customer trends, assess service performance, and implement
customized exception alerting. Written in a new multi-level, drill-down format, the reporting engine provides trend analysis, data filters, data exceptions, roll-up/down viewing,
and exports reports in Excel, PDF, XML graphical and tabular output.
RightNow Outbound
RightNow Outbound allows customer service organizations to proactively address service-and-support issues and marketers to incorporate service data to deliver permission-
based, revenue-generating marketing campaigns. Using RightNow Outbound, fully integrated into the RightNow Service desktop console, service managers can preempt
incoming customer inquiries by proactively alerting product or service issues and providing self-service solutions to the affected customer base. Additionally, service
managers and marketers can leverage the rich customer interaction history to identify revenue-generating opportunities such as contract renewals or new product offers.
“With RightNow Outbound, we expect to increase our overall email campaign response rates through improved personalization and test cell utilization,
better insight into campaign performance, and incorporation of customer service data into proactive customer communications,” Geric Johnson, vice president of
Direct Marketing, Skechers USA, said. “As an experienced email marketer, we continue to see a growing potential in building customer relationships through email
communications. Not only does RightNow Outbound have all the features and functionalities that we are looking for in an email marketing application, but its integration with
RightNow Service will enable our service and marketing groups to collaborate to send higher quality customer email communications.”
The key features of RightNow Outbound include:
•Audience Segmentation
RightNow Outbound creates static and dynamic lists for targeted email communication based on unlimited, individual customer characteristics.
•Personalized and Rich Content Generation
RightNow Outbound creates personalized content based on each customer’s unique characteristics such as product preferences and transaction history. RightNow
Outbound allows HTML and text message editing in an advanced WYSIWYG editor.
•Message Optimization
RightNow Outbound brings a revolutionary approach to message optimization by eliminating the repetitive steps usually required during the test cell phase of campaign
creation. RightNow Outbound’s streamlined approach to test cell functionality allows service managers and marketers to test alternative email messages and
creatives for effectiveness significantly faster than other email marketing solutions. RightNow Outbound automatically tabulates the results to indicate the best campaign
format, content, and timing for that specific mailing.
•Inline Analytics and Reporting
RightNow Outbound allows service managers and marketers to measure the campaign performance and analyze the customer response data to enhance future email
campaigns.
“Customer service organizations are under tremendous pressure to support more customers and more products without increasing the headcount,” Greg
Gianforte, CEO and founder of RightNow, said. “But companies must achieve service efficiencies without sacrificing service quality and also learn to utilize the rich
service data to proactively manage customer relationships. The enhancements to RightNow Service and the introduction of RightNow Outbound have again demonstrated
our commitment to listening to our customers and delivering solutions that respond to their needs.”
Availability
Both RightNow Service and RightNow Outbound will have general availability in October 2003 in the United States. Existing RightNow customers who purchased RightNow
eService Center 5.5 can upgrade to RightNow Service free of charge. For more information about the product upgrade or pricing, contact RightNow at 877-363-5678 or visit
www.rightnow.com.
About RightNow Technologies
RightNow Technologies is the leading customer service and support solutions company that radically and rapidly improves the effectiveness of service and support
operations with easy-to-implement/easy-to-use technology, replicable best practices drawn from the industry's broadest base of successful implementations, and
engagement terms that create accountability for delivering quantifiable results.
RightNow has delivered these benefits to more than 1,000 customers worldwide such as: Air New Zealand, Ben & Jerry’s, Briggs and Stratton, British Airways,
Cisco, Dolby Laboratories, Inc., Electronic Arts, Pioneer, Raymarine, Remington, Sanyo, Specialized Bicycles, and more than 150 public sector clients including the Social
Security Administration and the State of Florida.
Founded in 1997, RightNow has offices in Bozeman, Dallas, San Mateo, London, and Sydney, with an associated office in Tokyo. RightNow's products are available in 17
languages worldwide. For further information visit http://www.rightnow.com/.
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