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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Interesting article, hopefully this might give some people
here some ideas about cool asterisk apps to develop.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Cheers,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Dean<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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<h2><b><font size=2 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.5pt;
font-family:Arial;color:black'>Voice being heard in CRM<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></h2>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>By Barney Beal, News
Editor<br>
28 Jun 2005 | SearchCRM.com <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:Arial;color:black'>With the acquisition of Convergent Voice and
the release of eight new voice applications, RightNow Technologies has become
the first CRM suite provider to make a concerted push into the voice arena. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:Arial;color:black'>"Speech is no longer an interesting
technology," said Joseph Brown, vice president of Voice Solutions for
the Bozeman, Mont.-based company. "It<st1:PersonName w:st="on">'</st1:PersonName>s
starting to move from early the adopter stage to an early majority
market." <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:Arial;color:black'>Brown, the former CEO of Edify, was brought in
to RightNow to help lead the company<st1:PersonName w:st="on">'</st1:PersonName>s
foray into the voice technology market. He is joined by David Lanning, the
president and CEO of Convergent Voice, which RightNow has been working with
to develop self-service voice applications since 2002. RightNow recently
completed the acquisition of the Rochester, N.Y.-based company<st1:PersonName
w:st="on">'</st1:PersonName>s intellectual property, core development team, accounts
receivable and contract rights. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. It is
RightNow<st1:PersonName w:st="on">'</st1:PersonName>s first acquisition. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:Arial;color:black'>RightNow is making eight new voice
applications available around its Service module including voice access to
the knowledge base, a voice incident management system, location finder,
order status, repair tracking, refund status, password reset and customer
survey tool. In the future, the company will roll out voice applications tied
to the Sales and Marketing modules as well, Brown said. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:Arial;color:black'>"We<st1:PersonName w:st="on">'</st1:PersonName>re
piggy backing and focusing on our strength," Brown said. "Our CRM
environment, our best practices -- we are voice enabling those CRM solutions
now. What the voice vendors don<st1:PersonName w:st="on">'</st1:PersonName>t
have is the strength or infrastructure of CRM software. We don<st1:PersonName
w:st="on">'</st1:PersonName>t say we sell Web self-service or voice
self-service--we sell self-service." <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:Arial;color:black'>Despite the emergence of the online channel,
voice interactions still account for 60 to 90% of all interactions a company
has with customers, according to RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:Arial;color:black'>"We<st1:PersonName w:st="on">'</st1:PersonName>re
creating the ability for consumers to do anything they did on the Web on the
phone," Brown said. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:Arial;color:black'>The strength of RightNow<st1:PersonName w:st="on">'</st1:PersonName>s
offering is that it<st1:PersonName w:st="on">'</st1:PersonName>s based on the
company<st1:PersonName w:st="on">'</st1:PersonName>s existing knowledge base
technology, said Art Schoeller, senior analyst at the Boston-based Yankee
Group. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:Arial;color:black'>"I think RightNow is being reasonably
conservative about this," he said. "Here<st1:PersonName w:st="on">'</st1:PersonName>s
a way they can extend their knowledge base into the voice channel. They<st1:PersonName
w:st="on">'</st1:PersonName>re further down the road than building a speech
recognition or [Interactive Voice Response] from the ground up." <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:Arial;color:black'>Schoeller doesn<st1:PersonName w:st="on">'</st1:PersonName>t
expect RightNow to compete for customers who are looking for stand alone
voice applications, but he does see the benefit for customers who have
already started down RightNow<st1:PersonName w:st="on">'</st1:PersonName>s
knowledge base approach to CRM. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:Arial;color:black'>RightNow is offering the voice applications as
hosted tools. Pricing comes in at $25,000 for the knowledge base and $15,000
for the application, plus a per minute charge based on volume. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:Arial;color:black'>It is the start up costs that have delayed the
adoption of voice technology and RightNow is alleviating that by providing an
on-demand alternative, Brown said. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:Arial;color:black'>According to Schoeller, RightNow<st1:PersonName
w:st="on">'</st1:PersonName>s voice push should give it a leg up on the other
CRM suite vendors who may not consider it as important. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:Arial;color:black'>"Voice is still tough enough that when
people look at it and see what it takes to do productively, [CRM suite
vendors] realize there are better revenue areas to chase," he said. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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