Salesforce.com was named the winner of the customer case management category for the second year in a row. It received high scores for customer satisfaction, depth of functionality, and company direction. Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Oracle also scored well for their case management capabilities. Activision Blizzard overhauled its customer support to handle more support requests through its website using Salesforce Service Cloud, doubling its website traffic and support volume.

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REPUTATION FOR REPUTATION FOR REPUTATION FOR
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION DEPTH OF FUNCTIONALITY COMPANY DIRECTION TOP 3 VERTICALS
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
Microsoft Dynamics FINANCIAL SERVICES, PROFESSIONAL SERVICES, GOVERNMENT
Oracle FINANCIAL SERVICES, RETAIL, COMMUNICATIONS
Parature TECHNOLOGY AND SOFTWARE, EDUCATION, GAMING AND MEDIA
Salesforce.com FINANCIAL SERVICES, HIGH-TECH, RETAIL
Customer Case Management
THE MARKET and Oracle CRM OnDemand. Oracle Siebel has “exhaustive and mature
Customer case management has continued to evolve as more compa- case management capabilities with vertical support for case management
nies want—and need—comprehensive ways to manage their customer processes by industry,” says Kate Leggett, principal analyst at Forrester
support life cycles. “Certainly we’re seeing the arrival of mobile access Research.
to case management as a necessary-to-have as opposed to a nice-to- Parature was another strong performer. Though its customer satis-
have,” remarks Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research at Nucleus faction score dipped slightly, from 4.1 last year to 3.8, John Ragsdale,
Research. vice president of technology research at the Technology Services Indus-
In addition, vendors that seamlessly integrate social support capa- try Association, calls Parature an “increasingly sophisticated suite.” This
bilities, along with mobile, will offer the most productivity gains. If a year, it released Parature Social Monitor, a social media monitoring and
company has “poor” case management practices, the evidence is that response product available within Parature’s broader Customer Service
much more amplified and “more visible to the broader social commu- Suite. Parature says its multichannel platform allows agents to manage
nity,” Wettemann adds. Companies are expected to do it all—from phone, email, social, and Web customer correspondences all in one
managing traditional support channels, such as the telephone, to mon- place. Parature added mobile customer support capabilities with its
itoring customer communities—all while finding a way to bridge sup- Parature for Mobile product, making it “a very good acquisition target
port channels while keeping customer communications in context. for one of the bigger players, both because of the breadth of its customer
base and the development they’ve done around social and mobile,” Wet-
THE LEADERS temann says.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM came in as one of the most cost-effective so-
lutions, earning a 3.9 in the deployment cost criteria. Its score for com- THE WINNER
pany direction, 3.7, was among the highest, with analysts praising its Hats off to Salesforce.com, our category champion for the second year
“investment in usability.” According to Wettemann, “Having an intuitive straight. As Leggett puts it, Salesforce.com has “a [visionary] road map
user environment…integrated with email and other communication for all customer touchpoints.” The company’s customer satisfaction
channels is really important, [and Microsoft has taken] significant steps score increased from 3.9 to 4.1 this year, and it continued to dazzle an-
to increase the depth and breadth” of its case management functionality. alysts with its solution scope. Salesforce.com continued its streak of ac-
Eyes were on Oracle following its acquisition of cloud customer serv- quisitions this year, with a $70 million acquisition of GoInstant, a
ice provider RightNow Technologies last year, and this year, the acqui- cobrowsing solution that lets multiple users browse the Web together
sitions continued. Oracle’s snap-up of Collective Intellect will enable in customer support or e-commerce cases. Company direction re-
companies to monitor, analyze, and respond to consumer conversations mained steady at 4.4, the highest ranking in the category.
on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Oracle also released Oracle Salesforce.com announced its launch of Chatter Communities for Ser-
Knowledge 8.5 to bring enterprise data insights to online customer com- vice, bringing together Web self-service and peer-to-peer community
munities, and agent-assisted and Web self-service interactions. Answer- functionality amid a flurry of features and updates announced at this
Flow for Contact Centers in the Knowledge 8.5 product gives agents year’s Dreamforce conference. At year’s end, Salesforce.com was on tar-
automated guidance on issue resolution, and is integrated with Siebel get to reach $3 billion in revenue. —Kelly Liyakasa
One to Watch
Although SugarCRM did not score as high as some of the leaderboard contenders, it had a solid tally of 3.9 for cost, which cannot be ignored. As more companies
W need and want affordable and comprehensive ways to service their customers, SugarCRM has a fighting chance in the future. SugarCRM narrowly edged out
Pegasystems as our One to Watch this year, and earned a score of 3.7 for company direction because of its “good, solid road map,” as Leggett puts it. —K.L.
This article is reprinted from the March 2013 issue of CRM magazine, published by Information Today, Inc. Used with permission. All rights reserved. Individuals may download,
store, and print a single copy. All commercial uses including making printed copies for distribution in bulk at trade shows or in marketing campaigns and all commercial reprints
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REPUTATION FOR REPUTATION FOR REPUTATION FOR
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION DEPTH OF FUNCTIONALITY COMPANY DIRECTION TOP 3 VERTICALS
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
Moxie Software FINANCIAL SERVICES, HIGH-TECH, MANUFACTURING AND RETAIL
InQuira (Oracle) RETAIL, TELECOMMUNICATIONS, FINANCIAL SERVICES
Oracle RightNow RETAIL, HIGH-TECH, FINANCIAL SERVICES
Salesforce.com FINANCIAL SERVICES, HIGH-TECH, MANUFACTURING AND RETAIL
Web Support
THE MARKET collaborations on a single platform. “Our suite makes it easier for or-
In the age of the empowered consumer, contact centers face increas- ganizations to find and deliver the right answer to customers through
ing pressure to assist customers from a multitude of channels. “Cus- their channel of choice,” according to a company statement.
tomers want answers and solutions wherever they are…and on Oracle RightNow held on to its strong 4.0 depth of functionality score
whatever device they use, such as desktops, laptops, and mobile,” and received a slight increase in its company direction score over last
comments Mitch Kramer, senior vice president of the Patricia Sey- year, moving from a 3.0 to 3.5. Compared to its competitors, however,
bold Group. “Also, customers never want to tell their story more than RightNow’s offerings are limited, says Ovum senior analyst Aphrodite
once, so Web support must capture it and use it as customers cross Brinsmead. “RightNow has a good range of products, but its tools for
devices and channels.” Vendors have responded by offering products, knowledge management or Web chat are not as fully featured as those
which, to varying degrees, allow companies to support their cus- provided by specialist players InQuira and LivePerson,” Brinsmead re-
tomers on multiple channels through one platform. As Web support marks. While Oracle continues to integrate RightNow into its other of-
continues to evolve, Kramer adds, we can expect to see mobile sup- ferings and further strengthen it, customer satisfaction has taken a hit
port and voice-enabled virtual agents playing a more prominent role as reflected in its score, which slipped from a 4.0 to 3.8. According to
in this space. Forrester principal analyst Kate Leggett, RightNow has a “robust set of
Web support capabilities,” but “customer communication has suffered
THE LEADERS since the acquisition.”
Another recent Oracle acquisition, InQuira, landed on the leaderboard
after being last year’s one to watch. Rebranded as Oracle Knowledge THE WINNER
Management, the company received a respectable 3.5 in customer sat- Claiming the top spot for the second year in a row, Salesforce.com also
isfaction, a 3.3 in depth of functionality, and a 3.0 in company direc- grabbed the highest score in company direction, with a 4.3. The com-
tion. Although InQuira is strong in certain areas, its offerings need to pany, according to Leggett, “beefed up its offering with recent acquisi-
be expanded or integrated with other solutions to provide full Web tions such as GoInstant for cobrowsing” and has “one of the most
support, analysts say. InQuira has a “best-in-breed knowledge manage- aggressive and visionary road maps.” In addition, Salesforce scored well
ment” system, Leggett notes, but “it lacks customer-facing capability.” once again in customer satisfaction and depth of functionality, receiv-
Kramer agrees, noting that “InQuira has an excellent search engine and ing a 3.7 and 3.6, respectively. “Salesforce.com has a comprehensive so-
knowledge management system, but they are standalone products.” lution,” Kramer says. “The Web support works very tightly with its
Moxie Software maintained its hold on the leaderboard with a 3.7 contact center support…giving you a thorough interface to do
in company direction and a 3.8 for both customer satisfaction and searches, capture cases, and more.” Among its product enhancements
depth of functionality. The company, according to Leggett, has a “solid this past year, Salesforce.com extended its Service Cloud with Chatter
road map that blends customer and employee engagement solutions.” Communities for Service, enabling customers to tap
One such solution is Spaces by Moxie, launched last spring, which lets into a private social community of industry peers and company ex-
organizations combine their customer communications with employee perts. —Judith Aquino
One to Watch
LivePerson fell short of the leaderboard, but it’s not without potential. According to Leslie Ament, senior vice president and senior analyst at Hypatia Research
Group, LivePerson’s multichannel engagement software, which includes LP Chat, LP Email, LP Voice, and LP Knowledgebase, LP Insights, and LP Marketer, is
W
noteworthy because it allows companies to support customers using comprehensive customer data gathered from various channels. “Larger enterprises seeking a
comprehensive solution should consider short-listing this vendor,” Ament says. —J.A.
This article is reprinted from the March 2013 issue of CRM magazine, published by Information Today, Inc. Used with permission. All rights reserved. Individuals may download,
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marketing site and then clicked on “Support,” he would have to go
Game Developer through the trouble of logging back in.
As a result, the company overhauled its Web site, enhanced its self-
Answers the Social Call service experience online, and integrated the primary Activision gamer
database with its Web site to have easy access to gamer profiles. “We
ACTIVISION GAINS CUSTOMER INSIGHT wanted to know who [our customers] were the moment they clicked
on Support,” Marcell maintains. “We wanted to know the challenges
AND FLEXIBILITY WITH SALESFORCE.COM they were facing and lead them down a path where they could find
the answers they need, check on their cases, or chat with an agent.”
Since deploying Service Cloud, Marcell says Activision’s Web site
traffic numbers have doubled. Of all of its support channels, the Web
site now accounts for 80 percent of customer service traffic, whereas
the telephone used to make up that share. After deploying Service
SECOND ONLY TO NINTENDO in the worldwide video game pub- Cloud, Activision handled more than 509,000 customer cases online
lishing and interactive entertainment sectors, Activision Blizzard is in 2012, and saw its Web volume reach 2.6 million unique visitors with
ratcheting up the competition. 13 million page views.
The $4.7 billion company, which has millions of gamers as customers, Activision integrated social media customer service platform Radian6
has built its gaming empire thanks to several popular products, such as into its support mix, and is expanding the integration to tie social customer
Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, and, most recently, Diablo III and World of War- support issues back to Service Cloud to keep customer service cases in con-
craft: Mists of Pandaria. The video game developer creates entertainment text. Marcell says that Service Cloud has been paramount to improving
for online, console, handheld, and mobile devices. Activision’s many agent performance, and gamers are getting support in the language they
gamers stay connected to their games and each other through social net- speak. “Now that there are options, customers are going to the self-serv-
works and mobile applications, inspiring the company to update its serv- ice channel,” she says.“A lot of our gamers either prefer social or the Web.”
ice model. Internally, Activision support agents began using Salesforce.com’s
Just one year ago, Activision Blizzard still managed its call center in enterprise collaboration tool Chatter as a way to team up on support
what Melanie Marcell, the company’s senior manager of Web strategy issues. In the past, agents would rely only on static, knowledge-based
and support solutions, calls “a very traditional model.” With very little articles in a database, but now, when customer support issues are
Web site support, gamers were, essentially, forced to rely on telephone identified, they are shared collaboratively and then “shared with
support. And, Marcell adds, “what that meant for the company was a development studios, which is fed into the product development
very big bill at the end of the year.” But beyond the general cost per call, cycle,” Marcell remarks.
the company also knew that forcing such digitally savvy consumers to With Activision’s customer support solutions more fine-tuned for
wait in telephone queues could easily disenfranchise them. its customer base, the company is eyeing ways to deepen its commu-
Activision began to explore solutions that would give it the flexibil- nity footprint. Online platform Call of Duty Elite was launched with
ity it needed to service its gamers in the channel of their choice. Last both free and paid subscription features. The community platform
March, the company selected Salesforce.com Service Cloud and was allows gamers to “join competitive clans or social groups, track and
able to roll out the product globally and across three of its contact cen- share thousands of stats with friends, create custom leaderboards, and
ters within 90 days. But Activision didn’t stop there. In the past, the upload and share videos of their greatest Call of Duty game play
company had been plagued with lack of connectivity between its mul- moments with friends,” said Robert Schmid, Activision’s chief infor-
tiple sites. For instance, if a customer accessed Activision through a mation officer, in a statement. —Kelly Liyakasa
BY IMPLEMENTING SALESFORCE.COM SERVICE CLOUD, “We wanted to know the
RADIAN6, AND CHATTER, ACTIVISION HAS:
• Handled 509,000-plus customer cases;
challenges [our customers
were] facing and lead them
• Doubled its Web site traffic;
down a path where they could
• Grown Web support to 80 percent of its support channel distribution;
find the answers they need,
• Seen Web volume reach 2.6 million unique visitors with 13 million page views; and
check on their cases, or chat
Key
Results
K
• Increased collaboration among customer service agents, managers, and product with an agent.” —MELANIE MARCELL
development teams.
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doesn’t have to ask for the information again when she picks up the
Salesforce Service case file.
“Service Cloud is the big piece that fell into place so that our social
Cloud Hits the media cases flow in the same way as phone or email does,” Hawley says.
“Our time per case is down. It’s very low now.”
Right Note For Yamaha, the average response time for customer posts on social
media sites like Twitter is about one-fifth of the average email response
time. The company frequently grabs, responds to, and closes social cases
YAMAHA IS MASTERING CUSTOMER SERVICE within an hour of the original posting.
WITH SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION Social media interactions, Hawley adds, “are now a pretty big chunk
of our channel split…and will soon surpass email.”
Social cases have increased from 10 a week to more than 10 a day,
and the number continues to grow.
YAMAHA OF AMERICA has always had an ear for music, but for most The same system has also helped Yamaha with its marketing efforts.
of its existence, when it came to customer data, it lacked an eye The company has benefited from improved tracking and management
for detail. of customer information and activities associated with sales calls, trade
For Yamaha, a provider of musical instruments and audio and video shows, and cross-channel marketing initiatives. And customer service
equipment, everything was locked in disparate and outdated applica- scores have increased because marketers can “look at marketing data
tions, systems, and databases. to see how to better serve our customers,” Hawley points out.
Then in July 2011 it rolled out the Salesforce.com Service Cloud and The company has seen customer satisfaction with its Web site alone
Sales Cloud applications to consolidate customer data across its sales, increase by 7 percent. Hawley says that gain is tied directly to new cus-
marketing, credit, operations, and artist relations divisions, as well as tomer connectivity through social media.
service and support. Now communications are integrated across all Previously, Yamaha was getting 20 positive comments through social
departments, enabling employees to address customer concerns in a media per month, according to Hawley. Now they’re getting hundreds.
timely manner. The company can also better manage customer profile Yamaha recognized that customers expect companies to know them
data, Web behavior, surveys, marketing campaigns, and contracting. and remember their histories. Consolidated customer profiles stored in
“Wow! Look at all this information that we can now do stuff with,” Salesforce help keep track of customers and their social and nonsocial
says Jeff Hawley, director of the customer experience group at Yamaha interactions.“They all feed into Salesforce, whether they go through the
of America. “There’s a whole new treasure trove of previously latent phone, are sent through email, or post to one of our social media han-
data.” dles,” Hawley says.
Yamaha worked with Salesforce.com partner WisdomNet to create Yamaha is also working to bring a frequently asked questions
a security model and customized applications for a wide range of user knowledge base and user forum online. The expectation is that this
requirements. It also worked with Deloitte Consulting to bring online capability will lead to a lot more one-and-done self-service cases,
a customized integration between Salesforce, Facebook, and Twitter, where customers post questions and find answers on their own with-
essentially adding a social component to its contact center and out company intervention.
customer service processes. Now, if someone tweets about a problem Rob Rose, a principal at Deloitte Consulting, commends Yamaha for
with an instrument, the software can find it, convert it into a case, and transforming its customer support processes and taking advantage of
route it to the appropriate person or department for a response. The Salesforce to deliver customer support via social media channels.
applications can match the social media posts with information in the “This new system and approach has really changed our entire view
customer database and pull that into the case record so that the agent of social service,” Hawley says, “and it’s just the start.” —Leonard Klie
SINCE ADOPTING THE SALESFORCE.COM SERVICE
CLOUD SOLUTION, YAMAHA OF AMERICA HAS
“There’s a whole new
BEEN ABLE TO: treasure trove of previously
• Increase the number of cases handled via social media from latent data.” —JEFF HAWLEY
10 a week to 10 a day;
• Increase customer satisfaction with its Web site by 7 percent; and
Key
Results
K
• Increase positive social customer service Web feedback from
20 comments a month to hundreds a month.
This article is reprinted from the March 2013 issue of CRM magazine, published by Information Today, Inc. Used with permission. All rights reserved. Individuals may download,
store, and print a single copy. All commercial uses including making printed copies for distribution in bulk at trade shows or in marketing campaigns and all commercial reprints
require additional permission from the publisher. www. infotoday.com