RightNow unveils social media monitoring tools

Beverley Head
Thursday, 18 February 2010 11:30

Business IT - Technology

CRM specialist RightNow has unveiled the latest version of its customer relationship management suite targetted at engaging customers who are using the social web.

Hopefully the suite itself proves more effective than the name of the new product which sports the clumsy moniker 'RightNow CX February 10'.

The new suite of tools is intended to allow companies to monitor social networks for commentary about their products and services including monitoring RSS feeds. The tool also allows organisations to create a knowledge base that their customers are then invited to comment on or link to. It's also possible to link company generated content to user generated content and show them side by side on an organisation's website.

According to John Kembel, vice president of RightNow's Social Experience Center of Excellence, who will visit Australia next week  'By engaging with consumers in the social web and connecting it to the overall customer experience, companies can turn consumers into loyal and vocal advocates.'

He added; 'It's important to understand the potential of social networking and the customer experience as well as how these technologies can be harnessed to deliver on corporate objectives. B2C companies in consumer goods, retail, life science, healthcare, and high tech, in particular, must treat social networking as more than a short-term phenomenon and develop plans to integrate this new channel into its CRM'”or, if you prefer, customer experience'”strategy.'

In a former life Kembel established HiveLive a company that developed social network tools to allow organisations to build, and tap communities of interest.  RightNow bought HiveLive last year.

He is also a consulting associate professor and strategy board member for the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University and believes that all organisations are coming to the realisation that they 'need to do something,' about social networking.

Kembel describes most current corporate web sites as billboards which telegraph information, whereas social media offers enterprises a front porch onto which customers can be invited and from where a community can be built and tapped for insights.