RightNow announced the availability of RightNow 8.1, the company's on demand solution for customer service, sales, marketing and feedback. RightNow 8.1 includes RightNow Connect, a standards-based service oriented architecture (SOA) integration framework that is designed to help companies connect their customer relationship management (CRM) solution with other systems in the organization.
The new version of RightNow's CRM tool also includes support for 21 languages and dialects. A goal of RightNow Connect is to allow companies to get a complete view of customer activities from across every system and channel throughout their organizations.
"Large enterprises have customer data stored in multiple systems," said David Vap, vice president of products at RightNow. "With our standards-based approach to integration, RightNow Connect will help our clients leverage disparate data to provide customers with timely, personal and consistently high quality service, while minimizing the cost of integration. With RightNow Connect we also have a new online development community that will facilitate conversation, technical exchange and brainstorming between RightNow, partners and customers."
According to RightNow, RightNow Connect can perform several types of integrations within the enterprise including:
Data integration -- moves data between RightNow and other computing platforms and databases, such as DB2, Oracle, SQL Server and legacy systems
Business process integration -- connects RightNow data or functionality with business process management systems such as WebMethods, WebLogic and WebSphere Business Integrator
Desktop integration--combines the RightNow desktop with other desktop applications such as Microsoft Office
Packaged application integration--connects RightNow to other packaged applications such as SAP, Siebel, JDE, and PeopleSoft
Communications integration--provides seamless connectivity for RightNow applications to common call center technologies like the Genesys Customer Interaction Management Platform
RightNow has several partnerships that support the integration capabilities found in RightNow Connect. For example, RightNow Connect includes a pre-built adapter for Genesys 7.5, a customer interaction management system.
According to RightNow, with this integration, when a customer engaged in a self-service session on the phone opts for agent assistance, the system automatically selects the best agent and provides that agent with the customer's history and context of his or her self-service session to maximize cross- and up-sell opportunities while delivering optimal customer service.
