RightNow puts its money where its mouth is

Vinnie is going to love this. RightNow made the following announcement:

RightNow Technologies today bolstered its world-class software-as-a-service (SaaS) capabilities with a money-back guarantee.

“If we don’t meet our on demand ‘up-time’ commitment to our customers, we will give them their money back.” Greg Gianforte, chief executive officer at RightNow.

The details are contained in Laef Olsen, RightNow's CIO's blog:

RightNow just “upped the ante” in this area by offering up to a 99.9% availability SLA for those customers who are deploying our solution in mission critical environments; for example in integrated, multi-channel contact center desktops.  That is great by itself, but we also went further and now offer to “send you a check” if we don’t deliver.  A nice gesture to be sure, but the real comfort (and frankly, the whole point) is that putting “teeth” in your SLA is the strongest incentive and signal that we’ll take the actions required to avoid getting bit.

As always, the devil will be in the detail. While I imagine this will bring a smile to Vinnie who I'm sure negotiates this kind of deal with boring regularity, the fact is that an offer on the table of this kind is exactly the right message to send customers. You get pain? We share it. How often do you hear a software vendor say that?