Customers.com Technologies

1Q2013 Customer Service Update—Starting Our 10th Year Tracking Customer Service Each Quarter

We bring you our Quarterly Customer Service Update for the first quarter of 2013. With it, we begin our tenth year of covering the leading customer service suppliers and their products. We’ve been told this report series is the longest running continuous research of its kind, that there’s nothing else like it. More important than longevity is that you loyal readers tell us that these reports always contain high-value information, information that makes it easier for you to do your jobs. We appreciate the feedback and hope that you’ll continue to provide it. It’s critical to keeping the reports fresh and relevant.

We made three changes to our roster of suppliers this quarter. We added Clarabridge and Creative Virtual. Clarabridge is a Reston, VA-based supplier of Voice of the Customer software. We published our evaluation of Clarabridge Analyze, Clarabridge Collaborate, and Clarabridge Engage on March 28. It’s a strong offering from a solid company. Creative Virtual is a London, UK and Stamford, CT-based supplier of virtual agent software. The company is one of the pioneers in virtual agent technology and currently one of its four leading suppliers. (We cover the other three, too—IntelliResponse, Next IT, and Nuance.) We published our evaluation of Creative Virtual V-Person on September 20, 2012. It’s an attractive, widely used offering. We dropped Aptean.

How Is Customer Service Technology Changing?

How Did Customer Service Technology Fare in 2012?

With this 4Q2012 Customer Service Update Report, we complete our ninth year of quarterly updates on the suppliers and products in customer service. Yes, we’ve been writing these reports since 2004, focusing on factors that are important in the evaluation, comparison, and selection of customer service products: customers, products, and company activity, staffing, and financial performance.

This quarter the suppliers and products are:

- Aptean Knova
- Attensity Analyze and Attensity Respond
- eGain Service
- IntelliResponse Virtual Agent (VA)
- KANA Enterprise, KANA Experience Analytics
- Moxie Spaces
- Next IT ActiveAgent
- Nuance/VirtuOz Intelligent Virtual Agent
- Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service
- Salesforce.com Service Cloud, Knowledge, Marketing Cloud (Radian6)

Briefly, customer service came back strong in 4Q2012 to post a very good quarter driven by customer growth. We’re relieved and encouraged. Fourth quarters are typically good quarters for software suppliers, as their customers complete strategic projects and spend down expiring budgets. But, at the end of 2011, we were concerned. There had been a string of six consecutive mixed quarters, and it raised concerns about the state and the future of customer service software. One quarter certainly does not make a trend, but we’re encouraged. The suppliers we track have introduced or will soon introduce strong new products and major new product versions that will help their customers deliver better customer service.

Next IT’s Active Agent: Cross-Channel Virtual Assistant

Virtual assisted-service products should be part of the customer service portfolio for every business. They fit nicely between web self-service built on search and knowledgebases and chat or contact centers. In fact, they integrate with knowledge management and chat.

This week’s report is our evaluation of ActiveAgent, the virtual assisted-service offering of Next IT, a privately held ISV based in Spokane, WA. It’s the third in our research series on virtual agent products. These products use natural language processing (NLP) technology to determine the intent of customers’ questions and to deliver a single answer in response. Yes, that’s right, a single answer. Contrast them with search, which delivers hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of answers and leaves it to customers to figure out the best one(s). ActiveAgent integrates with ActiveChat, Next IT’s chat offering, and has an API that Next IT’s consultants use for integration with other chat apps.