NETTING IT OUT

3Q2010 was an excellent quarter for customer service.

Customer growth was mixed, way up for two of our suppliers, down slightly for two others, and steady as compared with several previous quarters for the rest.

Financial performance was up for the quarter, reflecting customer growth and boosted by large deals and professional services revenue.

Product activity was heavy in 3Q2010. Eight of eleven suppliers announced or released new products and/or new product versions.

Company activity was heavy, too. Customer Service suppliers made acquisitions and established and strengthened partnerships. Most significantly, Oracle announced its intention to acquire ATG only a quarter after we resumed coverage of ATG.

We awarded two Customers.com Customer Service Stars for 3Q2010. eGain and Moxie Software earned their first for balanced performance across customer growth, products, financial performance, and company activity.

The first three quarters of 2010 have been very good. Customer service is positioned for a big finish in 4Q2010 and for another good year in 2011.

Spaces by Moxie

© 2010 Moxie Software, Inc.

Illustration 1. This illustration shows the unique and shared capabilities and of the Customer Engagement Spaces and Employee Engagement Spaces components of the Winter 2010 release of Spaces by Moxie.

QUARTERLY REPORTS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF CUSTOMER SERVICE

With this report, we continue our sixth year of quarterly updates on the suppliers and products in customer service. These updates focus on factors that are important in the evaluation, comparison, and selection of customer service products. More specifically, we examine these factors in our quarterly updates:

• Customer acquisition and overall customer growth
• Product activity
• Company activity including mergers and acquisitions, partnerships and alliances, and hiring
• Company financial performance

In our evaluations of quarterly performance, we want to see continuing customer growth, ongoing improvements in products, steady company viability, and good financial performance. We don’t want to change our evaluations based on a quarter’s news, but we do want to raise a red flag when that news deviates from a positive, multi-quarter trend, or to wave a green flag when that news is particularly good. When significant product and company events occur, we identify and highlight those that could have an impact on customer service products and technologies, suppliers, and the market landscape.

Customer Service Suppliers and Products

Here are the 11 customer service suppliers and products that we cover:

• Astute Solutions ePowerCenter and RealDialog
• ATG Self-Service, ATG Knowledge, ATG Commerce Service Center, ATG Optimization Services
• Attensity Group E-Service, Voice of Customer Suite, Social Media Suite
• Consona Corporation Consona CRM Knowledge Management
• eGain Service
• InQuira 8
• IntelliResponse Answer Suite
• KANA 10 Service Experience Management
• Moxie Software Spaces (formerly nGenera CIM)
• RightNow CX
• Salesforce.com Service Cloud

AN EXCELLENT 3Q2010 IN CUSTOMER SERVICE

Very Good Customer Growth in 3Q2010

Customer growth in 3Q2010 was mixed to the extent that we can’t make a general statement about it. Overall, customer growth was good to very good. Here are the details...