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RightNow: A Salesforce Alternative



RightNow: A Salesforce Alternative

RightNow is a company that knows how to do the job right.  With their focus on the customer experience as opposed to just the account management features, they consistently rank very high in customer satisfaction.  In fact, Gartner has just recently put them into the “Magic Quadrant” of web customer service.  According to the report from September of 2010, RightNow is a visionary leader and brings a comprehensive suite of web customer service products while having the greatest ability to execute on their vision.  This combination of abilities makes RightNow a formidable competitor to any company that works in the cloud.  Their CRM product called Engage has shown the ability to go toe-to-toe with Salesforce.com, and even beat the CRM market leader.

RightNow has many Similarities as a Salesforce Alternative



Some of the similarities are with the basic features regarding contact management, account management, and sales life cycle plans.  Each of these modules works in a similar fashion to Salesforce.  It puts all your contacts and accounts in one place and allows you to have mobile access to everything you need to get in touch with customers and potential customers.  As a Salesforce alternative, it also allows you to create marketing campaigns and push them out to customers.  For the field sales reps, both software programs have sales lifecycle processes so you can track opportunities from beginning to end.  Finally, any Salesforce alternative must have proper analytics to help your company understand all the data that is being generated.  RightNow does have these, and can help ensure you make quality decisions.

What RightNow does Better as a Salesforce Alternative



If you are going to be a Salesforce alternative, you have to do some things better than Salesforce or you will never get ahead.  RightNow has made a name for itself with the customer experience feel to the software.  They have succeeded at integrating the web service experience around resolving issues, researching products, purchasing products and more.  With a social experience that gives your customers more influence over their brands, and thereby more loyalty and with a top notch contact center to keep the customer experience simple and comfortable,  your employees and your customers will have a better experience and be more satisfied.  This is the essence of what makes RightNow better as a Salesforce alternative.

Why Pull the Trigger on RightNow as a Salesforce Alternative



Salesforce is the market leader with CRM software cloud computing.  With more than 50% of the market, there are significant reasons to choose Salesforce.  RightNow is much smaller and if a large customer base is important, perhaps RightNow isn’t the best option for you.  However, if higher productivity and lower costs are important to you RightNow is a great option.  RightNow helps you focus on your customer and making their experience better, and allowing your agents to experience an easier method of facilitating that customer experience.

Benefits of Using RightNow as a Salesforce Alternative



Despite the fact that there are fewer people currently using RightNow, those that are have found tremendous benefits.  These customers have been able to drive satisfaction above 95 percent.  Response times to inquiries have been reduced by as much as percent.  The estimated return on investment has gone as high as 3,000 percent.  These numbers are very hard to ignore.  If you want to really push your team to the next level, consider RightNow as a Salesforce alternative, and you won’t be disappointed. For more information on these solutions, check out our RightNow Review and our Salesforce.com Review.