RightNow: CRM is dead

Surprise! Jason Mittelstaedt, CMO at RightNow (the company that for a long time has been among leaders of the CRM industry) says that nobody wants to hear about CRM anymore, because they have heard it all and no longer believe the promises of CRM vendors. According to Jason, last year, the annual CRM Conference, which was held by Gartner and sponsored by RightNow - was the dead event and attracted minimal public interest. Vendors were showing the presentations that they have given seven years ago. Jason argues that CRM is a bit old hat, and it is time for a new generation of software that RightNow calls CX (Customer Experience). RightNow is not a pioneer in Customer Experience theme. Industry players have been talking about CEM (Customer Experience Management) already for a couple of years. So, what's the difference between CEM and CRM?



What's the difference between CEM and CRM?



Don't look for some hidden sense in how "relationship management" differs from "experience management". Yes, "experience" - sounds better, but it has no influence on the software functionality. It still must include the customer base, customer interactions history, order base, support tools, marketing tools and analytical reports on sales, marketing and service. In any case, customer "experience" depends on how the customer software helps employees in managing customer "relationships".

But if companies are no longer happy with CRM brand, than vendors need to invent a new brand, for example CEM. But you can't create the new brand by just replacing one word in the title. Fortunately, recently the significant shift in CRM sphere has taken place and it's a good chance to create a new customer philosophy. And the reason for this shift was one simple fact: Customers use the Internet.

Internet = Experience



Internet has brought two major things in a customer life. First, it is very convenient channel of communication with companies. Secondly, the Internet has given birth to social networks, where the customer can discuss companies and products with others. Both of these innovations have a strong influence on the customer "experience".

Today customer wants to buy in the Internet, get support over the Internet. He would like to have online chat, forum and knowledge base on company's website. And even better - a personal account, where he could see his orders history, support history (so the new customer system should provide access not only for employees but also for customers). The customer would be happy to see the company's residence in the social network, where he uses to hang out. He also wants to get individual approach (so the new customer system should collect personal customer information from social sources).

Today customer before buying likes to read reviews about the company and the product, discuss it with his friends in social networks (so the new customer system should monitor the social web for such discussions to enable employees respond  to them). Finally, the customer wants the company to listen to his ideas and feedback (so the new customer system should provide tools for collecting and processing customer feedback).

If the customer system helps to satisfy all these customer needs - his "experience" will be OK.

RightNow CX Cloud Platform



As we see, the Internet has created quite a lot of new opportunities (tasks) for customer software. Realizing this, RightNow decided not to implement all these features in their CRM (sorry, CX) system. Instead, they created a cloud platform CX Cloud Platform, that allows companies and independent developers to create their own CX applications. This platform provides tools for creating web-apps, integrating them with social networks and contact centers. Of course, the center of this platform is SaaS solution RightNow CX, i.e. it's supposed that most developers will create add-ons for this system.

See also: Top 10 Online CRM software