Smart SaaS

Company: RightNow

Started: 1997

Located: Bozeman, Montana

Geography: Global

Market: On-Demand Customer Relationship Management

Products: RightNow CRM Suite RightNow Service RightNow Marketing RightNow Sales

Key Customers: Drugstore.com, TomTom and Electronic Arts

Website: RightNow

Blog: Voice of the Customer

Recent News:

• RightNow Ups the Ante on SaaS with Service Level Credits
• New Product Registration Capabilities in RightNow February ’09 Drives Top Notch Customer Care
• drugstore.com Customizes Online Shopping Experience with Beauty Chat
• Good Customer Care, Not Prices, Wins Loyalty of Credit Crunched Holidaymakers

I asked Greg Gianforte, RightNow Chief Executive Officer a few questions about his business and his view of the SaaS market in 2009.

Did you start out as a Software-as-a-Service company?

RightNow has been a pioneer of SaaS / On-Demand technology since our company inception in 1997. Our underlying services are built to dynamically scale our client’s customer service and support up or down as they need. Unlike other providers, our solution is built to deliver exceptional experiences to our customers across service, marketing and sales interactions.

Why do your customers buy from RightNow?

RightNow’s on demand hosted CRM business model delivers quick time-to-benefit and helps our clients reduce operating costs, improve customer experience, retention and advocacy, and maintain a competitive edge.

What do you see as the key trend emerging in the SaaS industry?

As Cloud Computing gains momentum, it will become even more vital for a SaaS company to stand behind its service commitments since they are responsible for system reliability and performance. Customers are expecting a high level of availability and providers are using their ability to deliver as a competitive advantage.

RightNow recently announced an ‘up-time’ commitment to our customers of 99.9%, forcing our team to take uptime seriously, and making sure the right level of attention is being paid to the issue.

No amount of “money back” will take the place of performance, but a company’s willingness to put real dollars at stake underscores the confidence they have and that their customers should have in their solution.

What is your outlook for 2009?

Times are tough, but projects are still getting done and forcing some tough decisions. The best companies are continuing to adopt CRM technologies because they have identified that CRM and superior customer experiences are the best ways to keep and expand a customer base in a weakened economic state. Customers don’t grow on trees and in tough economic times it is even harder to attract new ones.

Thank you to Greg Gianforte, Jason Mittelstaedt, Joseph Brown and Katie O’Connell for contributing to this profile.