RightNow CX May 2011

Cross-Channel Case Management, Knowledge Management, and Account Management

June 30, 2011

RightNow CX May 2011 is the current release of the CRM Suite from RightNow Technologies, Inc., a publicly held, Bozeman, MT-based supplier of cloud computing software and the topic of this product evaluation. RightNow CX’s facilities for case, knowledge, and account management and for social network monitoring help organizations deliver customer service across self-service, assisted-service, and social-service channels. Its support for process-oriented assisted-service is its strongest feature. Its UI for self-service is its weakest. Introduced in 1997, 2000 customer organizations have deployed RightNow CX to date.

NETTING IT OUT

RightNow CX May 2011 is the current release of the flagship CRM offering from RightNow Technologies, Inc., a publicly held, Bozeman, MT-based supplier of cloud computing software. RightNow CX provides a broad and deep array of customer service capabilities that it delivers across self-service, assisted-service, and social-service channels. To date, 2,000 customer organizations have deployed RightNow CX.

On our Customers.com Customer Service Report Card, the customer service capabilities in RightNow CX May 2011 exceed requirements in customer interaction support through automated, guided, and process-oriented customer service interactions, channel support through rich and flexible support for assisted-service and social channels, escalation through a wide range of escalation mechanisms between channels, and analytic functionality. RightNow CX May 2011 needs improvement in UI content management. It earns grades of "meets requirements" for all other evaluation criteria.

The customer service capabilities in RightNow CX are a best fit for customer service with these characteristics:

• Consumer-oriented companies and government organizations

• Integrated and internal knowledge management, case management, and customer/account management

• Broad channel support including social channels

• Process-oriented, guided, and automated assisted-service interaction support

If these characteristics match your organization and the products that you offer, then RightNow CX is an excellent choice for the software to help deliver excellent, cross-channel customer service.

1. This illustration shows the way that RightNow organizes of the capabilities of RightNow CX.

CUSTOMER SERVICE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS AND SOLVE PROBLEMS

Customer service products help customers get answers to questions and solutions to problems through case management, knowledge management, and account management capabilities. Customer service products support the self-service, assisted-service, and social-service channels that customers use to interact with and about an organization and its products and services. Customer service products support customer activities in many phases of the lifecycle of their relationships with an organization, especially activities to install and use products and services and activities to manage and maintain accounts.

In this report we evaluate the customer service capabilities of RightNow CX February 2011 against our framework for evaluating cross-channel, cross-lifecycle customer service products.

RIGHTNOW CX MAY 2011

Cross-Channel Cross-Lifecycle Customer Service

RightNow CX May 2011 is the current release of the CRM suite from RightNow Technologies, Inc. The suite includes the three CRM applications...