Oracle RightNow: the Cadillac of CRMs
Rating: 8 out of 10
January 06, 2014
MP
Vetted Review
Verified User
2 years of experience
- Handles and prioritizes emails, chats, and incidents well.
- Very extensive help documentation and support.
- Well-organized considering its complexity.
- Robust in handling different agent skill sets and permissions.
- Various aspects of service integrate well (e.g. knowledge base and incident handling).
- Frequent upgrades that are very thoroughly supported.
- Very robust and customizable analytics..
Cons
- I'd like to see agent skills switched to be agent-based rather than profile-based. (Supposedly this is coming in a future release). Under the current setup, agents are assigned to profiles in a many-to-one ratio. Each profile represents a combination of skills that the agent handles. This limits agent permissions to profiles... we can't just add "Skill X" or "Queue Y" to an agent without creating a unique profile for them. It would be much more scalable and agile to customize skills for each agent... that way, for instance, an agent could get trained on "Skill X" and then start getting emails from the "Skill X" queue while their untrained-for-X peers wouldn't.
- Better tutorials for absolute beginners. (The tutorials are there; but I mean tutorials for absolute first-timers.)
- Support is thorough, but for complicated issues it can sometimes take several rounds of back-and-forth.
- Analytics are robust, but not intuitive, and absolutely require training.
- RightNow does not currently have an easy way to integrate with some of the big WFM (workforce management) players in the space, without very extensive (and expensive) custom consulting work. Our phone vendor can do it for a few $k. But RightNow can't. This is an increasingly important trend and the lack of an API for this is a big weakness.
- It is essential for our large-scale customer service operation. It scales well based on load.
- Provides us with accurate metrics to measure employee productivity and customer satisfaction.
The decision was made well before my time but I know that eGain was one of the others evaluated.
For a more recent integration, we switched a newly-acquired site from Zendesk because we needed it to fit into our larger RightNow ecosystem.
For a more recent integration, we switched a newly-acquired site from Zendesk because we needed it to fit into our larger RightNow ecosystem.
500
Mainly customer service agents (including hundreds of seasonal agents). We also have product quality people looking at feedback, and analytics people examining statistics.
3
1) CRM administrator.
2) Analytics person.
3) It's REALLY helpful to have someone who can administer the portal and portal development.
2) Analytics person.
3) It's REALLY helpful to have someone who can administer the portal and portal development.
- Answering, routing, and prioritizing customer chats.
- Answering, routing, and prioritizing customer emails.
- Extensive knowledge base and help center capability.
- I've used Custom Objects to build a feature that tracks operational incidents (external to RightNow), and how they impact RightNow incidents.
- We are looking into sales/marketing features for the future.
Yes
It replaced Kana many years ago, when the nature of Kana's offering changed.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Reputation
- Vendor Reputation
- Implemented in-house
- Professional services company
We've had Helix Solutions (who specializes in RightNow) do some work before. Other aspects of it, we've done in-house.
Yes
We integrated based on function: chat separate from email, for instance. It was pretty straightforward.
- Every bit of it seemed to be more complex than anticipated, because of the interdependency of all the components. (Each part affected other parts.)
Yes
We are a large-scale operation and need quick response.
Yes
Some of the trickier inquiries take some time to resolve; but RightNow's system of escalation is very clear and easy to understand. They will keep working on an issue until it's resolved. I've never, ever had an inquiry or incident disappear.
Oracle is exceptional at escalating support to the proper party. Sometimes it can take some time for the really tricky inquiries; but their resolution rate is nearly 100%.
- Agent account setup.
- Business rules and routing.
- Mailbox setup can be tricky.
- Product/category setup and linking has some peculiarities that are essential to know.
- Customer Portal (all the customer-facing end-user pages) is really tricky and cumbersome and is the most difficult part of maintaining RightNow.
Yes, but I don't use it