Having a Cloud Computing offering is attracting executive interest at the highest levels, reckons Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow Technologies.
“So far this year, I have personally visited over 75 customers and partners across the globe. One of the things that I track to understand how discussions have shifted are the tittles of the people I met with, interestingly this year, a meeting with more CEOs and COOs than ever before. What this tells me is what we are doing for companies is gaining an importance,” says Gianforte. “Senior execs in the world's largest consumer organisations are not taking these meetings because they like taking meetings, but because customer experience is flat and centre on their agenda and SaaS is front and centre as well.”
Cloud Computing is also changing the way organisations approach their call centre strategies, argues Gianforte. “The bulk of contact centre seats are in B-to-C organizations and they tend to be in larger enterprises,” he notes. “ If you look at historically, the bulk of the revenue in the space today goes to the Oracle Siebel platform with others like Vantive, Scopus, Remedy these others. All of that adds up to about $3.5 billion a year. We believe the disruptive nature of SaaS should significantly increase the size of that marketplace because we can serve 30, 50, 70 seat call centres where that would have crushed under the weight of historical Siebel product.”
The economic advantages of the Cloud model are also incentivising interest. “Nobody is spending money if they are not solving a problem and that is the headline. There has to be a problem. An organisation facing a Siebel maintenance payment, that is a compelling event,” says Gianforte. “ It is not hard to find a Siebel deployment when the customers are not happy. These maintenance payments are large and I think if they can find an alternative solution that actually meets their business requirements, there is willingness to spend there. We also see an uptick in alternative agents. By that I mean both work-at-home agents and offshore agents. Traditional client server contact centre solutions do not support work-at-home agents very well. You need a Cloud-delivered solution that just requires an internet connection.”
Customer Experience
It's also important to focus on the end user's customer exprerience, another factor that plays to Cloud Computing, suggests Gianforte. “We provide the most comprehensive end-to-end multi channel consumer experience platform in the SaaS industry,” he claims. “Our multi channel capabilities empower consumers to choose how they engage within organisation whether it be the web, cell service, email, chat or phone call or Web 2.0 technology such as blogs or services like Twitter and YouTube. The ability to integrate all of these interactions helps manage consumers' qualifications and transforms the customer experience.
“Companies need strategies to address rising consumer expectations without driving up cost. Empowering consumers to resolve their own issues is the key strategy and communities are one effective tool. We are seeing open communities arise everywhere, FaceBook, LinkedIn, MySpace are just a couple of examples. Companies must develop methods to monitor and participate with these communities as to become more main stream. Additionally, creating company-sponsored communities presents an opportunity to build loyalty with consumers and leverage enthusiast to reduce customer service cost, build loyalty and capture ideas from the consumers.”
He concludes: “I believe the customer experience will not solely be owned by the customer care division, but will be an integral part of an organisation's identity. We see organisations shifting from a mentality that asks 'how do I answer my consumer's question?' to more of a mentality about consumer empowerment. Instant messaging, texting, Twitter are contributing to the heightened consumer expectations increasing the need for immediate responses to their questions.”
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