RightNow launches latest on-demand CRM release

On-demand customer relationship management (CRM) vendor RightNow Technologies has today made the latest release of its software-as-a-service delivered platform available.

The new release includes a number of features designed specifically to integrate CRM data with and enhance the public-facing (supplier or customer) parts of a company's web presence.

For example, a new knowledge syndication widget offers the ability to surface relevant information from the CRM support knowledge base or frequently asked questions (FAQ) sections directly on sales or transactional pages of the main website, dynamically matching page content with the surface links displayed within the widget.

In addition, RightNow November '07 introduces new homepage layouts and redesigned customer and supplier portals, as well as extended language support for 12 additional, mainly Eastern European, languages including Russian, Romanian, Lithuanian and Greek.

The November '07 update, the fourth in as many quarters, also marks a change in product branding for the vendor, which would have been called RightNow 8.3 but for the fact that dates have replaced numbers for this product launch onwards.

Joe Brown, RightNow's general manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), told IT PRO the new product nomenclature reflects a change to more frequent, quarterly incremental releases, "so updates are easier for the customer to manage than one big release every year to 18 months," he said.

He added that the new design features are based on analysis of how people use the current knowledge base and direct customer feedback to ensure intuitive and simple customer experiences, while the additional language support means the platform can now be delivered in 33 languages, more than any other on-demand CRM player.

February's release updated desktop, customer interaction and analytic functions; May added a new integration framework and developer toolkit; and August saw the introduction of voice personalisation and chat features.

"In this last of our quarterly releases since moving to this release model at the beginning of the year, we are rounding out our efforts to make the customer experience as relevant as possible today," added Brown.