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RightNow Technologies (Nasdaq: RNOW) has added new capabilities to its voice application, which it first introduced in June 2005 when it acquired Convergent Voice, a voice automation vendor. In this major upgrade, the firm has enhanced the application's inbound functions and has begun developing outbound features, as well.
Future releases will further build out the outbound channel, according to David Vap, RightNow's vice president of product management.
"We will continue to more tightly integrate voice with the CRM application," he told CRM Buyer.
'A Smart Move'
Building out this functionality is a smart move for RightNow, Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of Nucleus Research, told CRM Buyer.
"As the on-demand CRM marketplace becomes more competitive, RightNow and other players will need to continue to innovate to attract and retain customers. Adding voice integration and survey is a natural next step for RightNow, given its history in the Web self-service space and the strength of its knowledge base approach," she stated.
RightNow has announced three new voice applications in this release: Web Click-To-Call Back, Voice Caller Information Delivery and Voice Outbound Survey.
Over and Over
The Voice Caller Information Delivery application provides customer 
service reps with a customer's appropriate information before that customer is routed through to the agent. Having to repeat information to a second or third rep as the call gets routed has become the symbol of everything that customers hate about self-service applications. RightNow addresses this task by creating a voice application prior to the call's transfer, explained Tim Johnson, product line manager for RightNow.
The automatic numbering identification is modified to include the new incident number and the context of the call is stored in incident fields, he told CRM Buyer.
When the call is received by the agent, he can either manually enter caller identification -- the incident number -- or it can be automatically pushed via the telephony vendors available soft phone.
Click-To-Call
The Click-To-Call Back application gives customers visiting a Web site the option to request that a representative contact them by phone. They can provide a call back number, request specific times for calls, submit questions and describe problems using the application. Customers are then informed when to expect a call.
The application then forwards the customer information to the appropriate contact center agent. Once the callback is requested, a new incident is created in the RightNow system and an external event is initiated sending the request to the dialer system.
Outbound Survey
The Voice Outbound Survey Solution lets companies create questionnaires and solicit feedback from customers about recent interactions. It can also be configured to trigger actions, such as a callback if a customer wants to drop a service or has a complaint.
In earlier applications, the RightNow Voice Survey application was only engaged when an inbound call or call transfer came through. In this release, it has been enhanced to include an outbound dialing capability. Now, a list of numbers can be automatically dialed.
Talkback: 
