CRM suite takes three-pronged approach

The suite consists of three separate applications -- RightNow Service, RightNow Sales, and RightNow Marketing -- that deliver real-time, actionable customer insight across departments, RightNow said.

RightNow Service, a multi-channel customer service and support (CSS) application, enables service organizations to handle customer inquiries via phone, e-mail, live chat, and Web self-service. Version 7.0 adds features such as Offer Advisor, which suggests targeted offers and promotions based on a customer's history and demographics; computer telephony integration, which provides automatic screen-pops for incoming calls; and complete customer histories that agents can refer to during service interactions.

RightNow Sales integrates with RightNow Service and RightNow Marketing to provide sales reps with a full customer profile, including a common contact record, service incident history, and marketing lead details, RightNow said. New features include pipeline management and forecasting, contract/proposal generation, and integration with Microsoft Office.

RightNow Marketing is designed for the creation and execution of multi-channel, multi-stage campaigns. It can also evaluate the effectiveness and financial impact of marketing programs, RightNow claimed. New features include a graphical campaign designer and complete campaign tracking; integrated Web forms for capturing customer data; and an event-triggering feature that automatically sends e-mails based on activity in the other two RightNow modules or a third-party program.

Scheduled to ship before the end of this quarter, RightNow CRM 7.0 runs on Unix operating systems supporting MySQL and Oracle database management systems; and on Windows 2000 and Server 2003 operating systems supporting Oracle and SQL Server. RightNow offers both hosted and non-hosted deployments; pricing is the same for both. The company would not provide exact pricing information for the suite, other than to say it sells monthly, multiple-year, and perpetual solutions.