Introducing RightNow August’08, the latest version of RightNow's on demand customer relationship management (CRM) solution.

RightNow August ’08 leverages the power of Web 2.0 to enable consumer-centric organizations to turn static online support environments into branded, highly interactive online service experiences that customers enjoy - and expect.

Branding your online customer experience in a Web 2.0 World

RightNow August ’08 addresses three significant business trends that organizations shouldn't ignore. First, service is the new sales. Increased regulations on telemarketing and email, combined with difficult economic conditions means organizations must focus on retaining and building lifetime value of their customer base. The service experience is the anchor for building customer loyalty and driving revenue. Second, service is not a silo-it's your brand. Customer service is no longer an afterthought. In today's socially networked world, organizations can't hide from bad service. The ability to associate a superior customer service experience to your brand is how organizations can create competitive differentiation. And third, customer behaviors and expectations are different today. They engage through interactive Web 2.0 digital mediums and increasingly rely on and trust other consumers when making decisions about your products and services. You can choose to ignore this social phenomenon, or harness it to your advantage.

With RightNow August ’08, organizations can provide the interactive experience customers want and expect by tapping into online collaborative resources and wrapping it into an overall online brand experience that can quickly adapt to evolving consumer expectations.

Sony Online Entertainment Gets Engaged

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) entered the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) market in 1999-and started out with very basic contact center tools, which made it difficult for them to deliver a consistently excellent customer experience. Their market quickly grew, as did their customer base, so they had to make real improvements in their contact center. Plus, the nature of the online market required them to be engaged and provide an interactive outlet for customer issues. RightNow gave them the solution they needed...

"RightNow enables us to cost-efficiently deliver the premium-quality customer experience that differentiates our brand" says Brad Wilcox, executive director of global customer service, from Sony Online Entertainment

Functionality

RightNow August ’08 delivers new collaboration capabilities that help organizations create a branded, highly interactive online service experience through personalized assistance where and when online consumers need it. These capabilities improve customer satisfaction and service response time, increases first contact resolution rates, reduces phone escalations, and enables consultative selling to turn online browsers into buyers. Plus, visual interaction with consumers is key to brand building.

Customer Portal

The RightNow Customer Portal allows organizations to easily brand and personalize their website service experience, by incorporating, or mashing up, Web 2.0-enabled capabilities like video, forums, and recommendation engines that customers use and trust to make informed decisions.

Collaboration

RightNow Co-Browse lets consumers extend chat or phone interactions by securely inviting an agent to share their desktop and navigate/browse together, to resolve a support problem, fill out a form, or guide them through an online purchase.

Proactive Chat is a new feature of RightNow Chat that personalizes the online experience by presenting a chat invitation to an online consumer based on predefined actions or information, such as performing a certain number of searches on a website, or meeting certain profile characteristics.