I have written about RightNow several times as they keep coming up with interesting enhancements and use cases (see: RightNow Provides Web Social Monitoring and Analytics with Latest Release and More on the Obama Campaign’s Use of the Web with RightNow). I recently spoke with them again on their August 09 release. It has a couple of things I was interested in as they reflect two very different parts of my own work, past and present.

First, we discussed the new graphical workflow capabilities. This is workflow for contact center agents support, not general workflow applications. They have been building capability in this area for some time.  They have both guided assistance for agents and complete agent scripting.

Now they have added a graphical, easy-to-use business process designer that allows managers to quickly create new business process flows with drag and drop design functionality. You can link multiple scripts and workflows together to guide agents through complex customer interactions. You can also automate tasks in the background, such as updating contacts and incidents, to help keep interactions efficient. Here is a sample screen for the graphical workflow.

This is a very useful enhancement that ties together these contact center workflow capabilities by allowing the business managers to directly create them without IT support.  I shared that I am very confident in the ability of these contact center support systems to provide value based on my prior experience with old school versions in the 1990s and early 2000s. With one major telecom we were able to show that users of the system have better performance metrics on every indicator.  Now with these tools, I imagine the benefits will only increase. One of the big differences from the early tools, besides the increased functionality, is this ability to put the creation of new workflows in the hands of the business managers who best know what should be implemented.

Next, we discussed enhancements to Cloud Monitor.  As I mentioned in my last post, Cloud Monitor was introduced in their May 09 release. There are many web monitoring tools available and I am connected to two of them.  The difference here is that Cloud Monitor is connected to the RightNow platform to benefit from other capabilities within the overall platform and enhance the ability to make a comprehensive response to what is discovered through a variety of channels. For example, you can switch from Twitter to a live web chat when you need more than 140 characters.

Now they added three new capabilities to Cloud Monitor. The Key Contributors function allows companies to automatically identify social influencers on Twitter, those with frequent tweets and a broad base of followers. This feature helps companies identify advocates, as well as detractors. Then the SmartSense Trend provides insight into how customers feel about a company, brand or product. SmartSense Trend lets organizations look at comments on Twitter and sort by emotion, search terms, and time. It can be applied to the key contributors. Here is a sample screen from the Cloud Monitor Analytics with smartsense key contributors.

The third enhancement, Cloud Links Analytics, is focused on supporting marketing campaigns. It offers analysis of Cloud Links, the links to social network sites (like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Flickr) that can be included in personalized surveys and outbound emails. With Cloud Links Analytics, organizations can see the number of click-throughs and unique views for each individual link. It is like Google Analytics, except focused on the action within the RightNow system.  These three enhancements make great sense.

Last, we discussed now RightNow is using Twitter and its own tools to enhance its Twitter efforts.  Their business development people monitor their clients and prospects through Twitter and Cloud Monitor as a business intelligence activity. This enables to have more knowledgeable conversations and better time their out reach. Their own customer service people use the tools in a similar way as their customers, to understand the service needs of clients and offer help.  It is good to see them using their own tools. I saw recently saw that 20% of tweets are brand related, according to one study, so there is great opportunity here.