RightNow Technologies for Flythomascook.com

On-demand CRM vendor RightNow Technologies. has scored again, announcing that Flythomascook.com has chosen the Bozeman, Mont.-based firm to assist in helping the online discount airline handle its reportedly growing customer base. Fly Thomas Cook is the latest in a number of discount airlines, all the rage in Europe at present.

The company is just about eighteen months old, but rapid growth is expected, according to Flythomascook.com director Tony Milsom. Thomas Cook is looking to the RightNow to provide, via online interface service the Knowledge Foundation, a “high degree of automation to customer service” and the RightNow voice recognition interface for handling common queries. The Thomas Cook signing is the latest in a string of interest-stirring developments over at RightNow Technologies.

With the Cook deal, RightNow Technologies representatives were compelling to announce that their firm had passed the 230-company mark in number of company which selected RightNow Marketing to streamline and automate execution of multi-stage campaigns; this number represents a 200 percent increase over the past twelve months. RightNow Marketing is a program designed for the design, execution and management of multi-stage campaigns.

As a component of RightNow CRM, the solution seeks to allow companies to more effectively target campaigns according to customer behavior, ensuring both campaign effectiveness and high quality of customer experience. And RightNow Marketing closed 2005 by taking SearchCRM.com’s Product of the Year award and by garnering a spot in Jupiter Research’s list of top email service providers.

Among the 200-plus RightNow Marketing clients are Alaska Air, Andrews Federal Credit Union, Banknorth Group, Bell Microproducts, Briggs Corporation, Cendant, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, Dow Chemical, Dun & Bradstreet, Friend Communications, Germany Pioneer, International Rectifier, Kodak, Merry Maids, Paddy Power, Sketchers, The Right Start, Thomas Cook, Victoria International, and Victoria University of New Zealand. In what appears to be something of an industry-media blitz, Monday saw the release of a third article of news from RightNow.

Over at TechRockies.com, RightNow Technologies marketing vice president Jason Mittelstaedt gave a little more insight into the strategic takeover of Salesnet, which raised eyebrows last month. RightNow will have much of its energy devoted to the blending of extant product and SalesNet goodies. Mittelstadt explains that the process is threefold. Summer 2006 will see an UI level integration between the two products, with RightNow SalesNet customers able to access the full RightNow suite and vice versa.

Phase two, to be completed by year’s end, is the integration of sales automation within RightNow. Finally, phase three, to be completed around June 2007, happens when core Salesnet features become the foundation for the new RightNow Sales release of 2007. Mittelstadt forecasts no change in the sunny weather for RightNow in the near future, as well. Calling the growth of on-demand “phenomenal,” Mittelstadt went on to say that “what drove our initial growth in on-demand was we were in a down economy.

The total cost of ownership benefit […] is what drove the initial growth spurt.” But times have changed: “The growth spurt we are seeing now, in a growth economy, is not cost reduction, but is the competitive advantage that on-demand brings to our clients.” That competitive advantage, says Mittlestadt, is the “adaptability of the solution.” Founded in 1997, RightNow Technologies itself is billed as the firm “leading the industry beyond CRM to high-impact customer experience management solutions.” RightNow boasts a clientele of more than 1,500 companies around the world.