RightNow 8 is the latest version of RightNow Technologies' (Bozeman, MT) customer relationship management (CRM) suite.

One of the most noteworthy characteristics of RightNow 8 is that it allows you to establish complementary processes for developing workflows for how your company communicates with customers, and for configuring information that agents see on their computer screens as they assist customers.

RightNow 8 is conservative with its use of bandwidth; the only data it sends over the network is the data you or agents are viewing.

The suite's Workspace Designer module enables you to determine how you display information, such as customers' records or agents' to-do lists, on agents' screens.

The Customer Experience Designer module lets you create graphical workflows. The workflows can refer to automated processes, like on-line product registrations, on-line surveys and promotional e-mail campaigns to which customers subscribe. You can also use this module to schedule tasks that agents perform, such as calling prospective customers.

RightNow Feedback lets you set up surveys that you present through an on-line form, by e-mail, through your existing trouble ticketing system or through RightNow's speech recognition system. The suite's reporting module, RightNow Analytics, incorporates more than 500 pre-built reports and furnishes you with a drag-and-drop interface you can use to create your own reports.

RightNow currently offers variants of RightNow 8 for business-to-business, business-to-consumer and public sector organizations. The company plans to introduce additional variants for specific vertical industries in the near future.

Overall, RightNow 8 is one of the most intriguing new CRM tools we've seen this year, given the ease with which it lets you evaluate your approach, as well as responses from your customers, to your efforts to fulfill customers' expectations. 877-363-5678/406-522-4200, www.rightnow.com