CRM - November 2007 - (Page 16)

ON THE SCENE Gianforte Talks CRM The industry rebel—and founder and chief executive officer of RightNow Technologies—sits down for a chat ightNow Technologies held its ninth annual user conference in Colorado Springs, Colo., in late August. During that 2007 RightNow Summit, CRM magazine Associate Editor Coreen Bailor chatted with Greg Gianforte, chief executive officer and founder of RightNow and the author of a forthcoming book, Eight to Great: 8 Steps to Delivering an Exceptional Customer Experience, which had not yet been released at press time. (Gianforte is also the latest inductee into the CRM Hall of Fame. See “The Lone Wolf,” September 2007, page 27.) What follows is a portion of their conversation. CRM: It’s becoming increasingly clear that negative customer experiences are having an even bigger impact on a company’s ability to strengthen customer loyalty. What are your a camera 10 years ago, you would have gone to a specialty phothoughts on this? Gianforte: It goes back to the root of most bad customer tography shop, you probably would’ve spent $2,000, and if you experiences—a lack of knowledge. Get that knowledge foun- had a question you would go back to the shop. Today, you go online, you pay $200, and you have no expecdation in place. CRM: How are Web 2.0 types of technologies changing the tation that Wal-Mart, Target, or Amazon[.com] is going to answer your question; you go back to [the camera manufaccustomer experience? Gianforte: It used to be that companies could control the turer] directly. All organizations, even ones that have traditionmessage. But the reality today is that the Internet has empow- ally been B2B, have to develop some form of direct-to-consumer strategy—if not for distribution, then at ered consumers so that they can share least for service and support. information. Within every organization “All organizations, even ones that have CRM: You’ve been creating verticalthere is going to be a community traditionally been B2B, have to develop specific versions of your solution. What amongst its customers, but the question some form of direct-to-consumer is your vertical strategy? is what role the company has in facilitatGianforte: As we continue to push ing, and then participating in, that com- strategy—if not for distribution, then at into large enterprises, vertical solutions munity—because it’s going to exist. least for service and support.” become extremely important because A company that embraces the community and facilitates it should use some of the things that one size does not fit all when you’re talking about customer Paul Gillin [former editor-in-chief of Computerworld and experience. The vertical solutions we started with are public founding editor-in-chief of TechTarget] outlined during his sector, education, telecommunications, and retail. Those keynote: Never try to deceive, be completely open and honest, industries have lots of customers that they have to service, and be humble, tolerate criticism. These are the sorts of things that we had between 100 and 200 existing clients in each of those don’t come easily to companies. But when you focus on them, verticals. It was a combination not necessarily just based on our opportunity in the marketplace, but also based on our you’re going to build higher loyalty and trust. CRM: What’s your take on the current state of the CRM ability to serve those verticals. That’s the strategy we’re pursuing—we’re looking at vertimarket? Gianforte: The imperative we see emerging is really around cals where the direct-to-consumer element is critical and customer experience. In a very real sense, distribution chan- where we have domain expertise to bring to market a differnels have collapsed. For example, if you went out and bought entiated offering. 16 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | NOVEMBER 2007 www.destinationCRM.com R http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - November 2007

CRM - November 2007 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity Have You Caught It? The Mother of Enterprise Information Market Focus: Technology: The Simple Truth about Complex Manufacturing Q&A: Gianforte Talks CRM Required Reading Predicting Profitability Checking the Pulse of the Contact Center Cast a Narrow Net Modern Times, Modern Methods Primos Hunting Calls Snares Efficiency Nailing It Down Moving in on Mortgage Delinquencies RDS Delivery Delivers on Service Secret of My Success Re:Tooling The Tipping Point Pint of View

CRM - November 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.