RightNow enables mobile customer service

RightNow Mobile lets businesses reach out to customers across any mobile device

Customer experience management firm RightNow Technologies has updated its on-demand software offering designed to enable businesses to extend customer support capabilities to the mobile channel.

The firm's May 2010 customer experience suite features RightNow Mobile, which lets businesses reach out to customers across any mobile device with an offering integrated tightly into their web, contact centre and social channels, said the firm.

The suite features three main elements: Web Self Service, Mobile Web Chat and Mobile Guided Assistance.

Web Self Service extends RightNow's proven heritage in the self-service space to the mobile channel, allowing end users to search for help, view and rate answers, see related questions, and submit an email inquiry from a mobile device.

Mobile Web Chat is an instant messaging function that allows customers to 'chat' in real time with customer support representatives from their mobiles.

Mobile Guided Assistance offers a more structured Q&A dialogue for customers designed to drive them down to a recommended answer to their problems.

RightNow product marketing director Andrew Hall explained that care had been taken to slim down and optimise all three services for the mobile channel, and to allow firms to brand the experience in their own way.

"We are different from other vendors which are focused on sales representatives or salesforce automation. We are helping the consumer," he said.

"Businesses are realising they need to have a mobile strategy to support customers in a broad sense, but also that it has to be tied into business processes and strategy."

RightNow Mobile is available as a native application, a mixed mode app which opens a browser that calls the mobile optimised RightNow pages, or directly via the mobile web.