NETTING IT OUT

4Q2011 was a mixed quarter for customer service. 2011 was a mixed year.

Customer growth was mixed but mostly down for the quarter. Only one of the nine suppliers we’re tracking—Salesforce.com—improved in both new and repeat customers.

Mixed financial performance resulted. However, Salesforce.com had its best ever quarter and year. And IntelliResponse and Moxie had their best years, driven by big earlier quarters.

4Q2011 was a mixed product quarter. Three of our suppliers did not make any product announcements. One announced a new product. The other announced new product versions and/or feature.

Company activity was also mixed in the quarter. Four of our suppliers did not make any company announcements. Salesforce.com made two significant acquisitions, its third and fourth of the year. Astute Solutions, eGain, and Moxie signed partnerships. The biggest company news was Oracle’s acquisition of RightNow, the third of our customer service suppliers that Oracle has purchased!

Salesforce.com earned Customer Service Stars both for 4Q2011 and for all of 2011.

Social-service has become a customer service requirement, and the social web has become a key customer service channel. We call it social-service because it’s about customers using social networks to get answers to their questions and solutions to their problems by monitoring and searching social media.

Virtual assisted-service is hot again. Three of our suppliers—eGain, IntelliResponse, and Moxie—have virtual assisted-service offerings.

(Click on image to enlarge.)

© 2012 Oracle Corporation

Illustration 1. This illustration presents Oracle’s view of the customer lifecycle.

QUARTERLY REPORTS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF CUSTOMER SERVICE SUPPLIERS AND THEIR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

With this report, we complete our eighth year of quarterly updates on the suppliers and products in customer service. These updates focus on factors that are important in the evaluation, comparison, and selection of customer service products. More specifically, we examine these factors in our quarterly updates:

• Customer acquisition and overall customer growth
• Product activity
• Company activity including mergers and acquisitions, partnerships and alliances, and hiring
• Company financial performance

In our evaluations of quarterly performance, we want to see continuing customer growth, ongoing improvements in products, steady company viability, and good financial performance. We don’t want to change our evaluations based on a quarter’s news, but we do want to raise a red flag when that news deviates from a positive, multi-quarter trend, or to wave a green flag when that news is particularly good. When significant product and company events occur, we identify and highlight those that could have an impact on customer service products and technologies, suppliers, and the market landscape.

Customer Service Suppliers and Products

Here are the customer service suppliers and products that we currently cover:

• Astute Solutions ePowerCenter, RealDialog, Social Relationship Management
• Attensity Analyze, Attensity Respond
• Consona Corporation Knova
• eGain Service, eGain Social Experience
• IntelliResponse Answer Suite
• KANA 10 Service Experience Management
• Moxie Software Customer Spaces Knowledgebase (formerly nGenera CIM nGen KB)
• Oracle Knowledge (formerly InQuira), Oracle RightNow Service
• Salesforce.com Service Cloud, Radian6

A Mixed 4Q2011 and a Mixed 2011 in Customer Service

Overall, customer service performance was quiet for the quarter in customer growth, financial performance, product activity, and company activity. Two exceptions...