NETTING IT OUT

2Q2013 was a mixed quarter for customer service.

Customer growth was mixed. Clarabridge, eGain, IntelliResponse, and Salesforce.com all had improved customer growth quarters in both acquisition and repeat business. Our other suppliers were flat or down.

Financial performance reflected the mixed customer growth. Notably, Salesforce.com had quarterly revenues of almost $1 billion!

Product activity was mixed. IntelliResponse, Moxie, and Salesforce.com introduced brand new products. Clarabridge, KANA, and Oracle introduced major new product versions. Attensity, Creative Virtual, eGain, NextIT, and Nuance made no product announcements.

Company activity was mixed, too, although there were a few significant events. Salesforce.com acquired another company. IntelliResponse received a patent. Attensity, Clarabridge, Oracle, and Salesforce.com established new partnerships. Three of our suppliers had no significant company activity.

Clarabridge, IntelliResponse, and Salesforce.com earned Customer Service Stars for 2Q2013 with excellent and balanced performance across customer growth, financial performance, products, and company activity.

Voice of the Customer (VoC)/customer social-service applications monitor and analyze customer conversations on internal channels as well as on the social web. They’re critical customer service applications and they’re hot. Attensity and Clarabridge are VoC suppliers. IntelliResponse and Moxie introduced new VoC/customer social-service apps this quarter.

VOICES Theme Bubbles

© 2013 IntelliResponse Systems, Inc.

1. This illustration shows the credit card themes over the last month – largest bubbles show the most important themes.

QUARTERLY REPORTS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF CUSTOMER SERVICE SUPPLIERS AND THEIR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

With this report, we continue our tenth 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, in Table A, are the customer service suppliers and products that we currently cover: (download PDF to see the table)

Calendar and Fiscal Quarters

Note that these quarterly reports accommodate the fiscal years of suppliers that don’t run on the calendar year—IntelliResponse and Salesforce.com both have fiscal quarters that end a month later than calendar quarters. We wait for them every quarter.

A Mixed 2Q2013

Customer service had a mixed quarter in 2Q2013 across customer growth, financial performance, products, and company activity. Here’s what we mean…(more)

(Download the PDF to read the entire Quarterly Review.)