“I was in Europe two weeks ago, I did 12 customer visits in three days and every single one of those customers want to talk about social [networking] and how they can apply it in their business,” says Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow.
It's just as well they are asking that as RightNow recently splashed out on its on social communities company, HiveLive, which it is now integrating as part of its wider CRM offering. “We saw the need in the market for a fully integrated social platform. We are seeing customers struggle within the highest level of customer experience, when the conversations were happening outside their four walls,” says Gianforte. “We are seeing great traction in the field of customers who already had social on their to-do list. Our customers immediately understand the power of integrating the social, web, and contact centre experiences, and we are ramping those discussions rapidly.
“The benefits for customers to embrace a social solution are obvious to a customer service or marketing VP. They can create a better customer experience through building communities. They can ship cost out of the call centre by enabling customers to help other customers. They can build brand loyalty and foster innovation and ideation, gather feedback, and bolster the data in their knowledge base. Integrating community into the RightNow Knowledge Foundation also allows the community to tap directly into the same knowledge as the website or the call centre, which in turn delivers a consistent experience and gives organisations the ability to learn more about their customers through those social interactions.”
As an example of a customer putting this social aspect into practice, Gianforte cites Husqvarna, a global leader in outdoor power equipment products like chainsaws and lawnmowers. “Husqverna plans to use our solution to provide a community, where consumers can show their pictures and tell their stories as to how they are using Husqvarna product,” he explains. “They also plan to create a private community for dealers to interact with one another, sharing tips and stories about how to best market and sell more products. They also plan on deploying a support community for their customers.”
The proof of the pudding
Gianforte argues that this sort of customer example is the only real proof of product viability only. “I know this may sound overly simplistic, but if you want to have a success in a market, sort of the requirement for most customers that you have an actual product,” he says. “While other companies talk about their future product plans for 2010 and beyond, we continue to deliver results by focusing on satisfying our customers today, and our customers are truly satisfied.
“I’ve been amused to see some competitors announcing that they have the best or smartest or even the first knowledge base in the Cloud without even having a product. I don’t know about some of our competitor’s customers, but our customers have never had much success implementing a press release. They tend to like actual product a lot better.
It's clear he has a particular rival in mind: Salesforce.com and its recent Service Cloud 2.0 announcements. “I have a lot of respect for what Salesforce has done with B2B sales force automation, but what they said in their announcement about service cloud did not line up with reality, “argues Gianforte. “They claim to have delivered the first ever knowledge base in the Cloud. That’s what we have been doing for 12 years. By their own admission it won’t be shipped till next year. They claim to have 8,000 customers on their Service Cloud. I don’t know what those customers are using it for, but in the competitive deals we’ve been in they’ve been unable to produce credible references that have any scale at all, namely over a 100 seats.
“I don’t think this is a good thing for our industry, but it’s the reality of what we’re having to deal with,” he continues. “Gartner released their Magic Quadrant here in this past quarter for e-service and knowledge base. Salesforce and InStranet were not even listed on that chart! There were a whole bunch of tiny companies listed, most you’ve never heard of, that did make the chart, but Gartner didn’t even give a courtesy mention to Salesforce or InStranet. There’s just no product there. I’m not trying to be disrespectful, but I do need to call a spade to spade and the Service Cloud 2.0 thing is really more like low hanging fog in the industry.”
A winning run
Gianforte is quick to rattle off examples of RightNow customers as prime specimens of CRM excellence, citing a recent Gartner Group summit at which RightNow customers picked up 5 awards for just that, more than any other vendor. “iRobot won the highest honour for their implementation,” he says “They quoted a 25% increase in customer satisfaction, a 30% reduction in phone call volume, and a 97% self-service rate.
“Distance Minnesota won for improving their student service, while seeing enrolment jump 18%, 30% and 85% over the past three years. Motorola was the third award winner and was honoured for reducing customer support cost by over $10 million per year. Black and Decker was also a winner for raising their customer satisfaction rate to 89%, while reducing call wait times 62%, and eHarmony was the fifth winner with a 97% customer satisfaction rate.”
Despite the ecnonomic downturn, Gianforte reckons that RightNow is still having valuable conversations with prospects who realise the need to invest in CRM technologies. “The conversations I’m having with clients tend to be lesser on IT budgets or operating budgets it tend to be around key strategic initiatives within the business and the conversation tends to centre on 'Gee, I better be delivering on great experience or I am going to loose these customers' or 'I need to figure I have to drive incremental revenue and there is money in the budgets when projects support those key initiatives'. That’s the headline. These systems that we are putting into the clients are not discretionary buys, these are systems and that are supporting key initiatives for retention of customers and attracting new customers. I don’t know what else could be more central to the long term differentiation and success of any business.”
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