NETTING IT OUT

For the quarter, customer growth was mixed. Only Moxie Software and Salesforce.com delivered improvement both in numbers of new and repeat customers. Financial performance was very good just about across the board as large deals and professional services revenue made up for slower customer acquisition. Product activity was light in the quarter. Attensity Group, Consona CRM, and RightNow made major announcements and introductions. Company activity was also light. Attensity Group and Salesforce.com were the busiest suppliers.

For the year, customer growth improved significantly over 2009. Acquisition was mixed. Repeat business improved. Attensity Group, Consona CRM, eGain, and Salesforce.com all improved both in new and repeat customers. Very good to excellent financial performance resulted and several suppliers set revenue records. All of our suppliers were active in products, introducing new offerings and major new versions. Company activity was at a high level. Every supplier made significant acquisitions or established strategic partnerships.

Attensity Group, Moxie Software, and Salesforce.com earned Customers.com Customer Service Stars for 4Q2010. Their performance was excellent and balanced across customer growth, financial performance, products, and company activity.

For the first time, we’ve award Customers.com Customer Service Stars for the year for outstanding, improved, and balanced performance for the four quarters of 2010 as compared with the four quarters of 2009. Attensity Group and Salesforce.com earned Customers.com Customer Service Star for 2010.

Social-service, assisted-service, and cloud computing continue as the hot trends in customer service. We see social-service and assisted-service in new products, acquisitions, and partnerships. All of our suppliers support cloud computing, and more and more of their customers are selecting cloud computing deployment.

(Click on image to enlarge.)

© 2011 Patricia Seybold Group Inc.

Table A. We present customer growth for 4Q2010 and for the first three quarters of 2010 in this table.

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

With this report, we complete 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 10 customer service suppliers and products that we cover:

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

You’ll notice that ATG and its ATG Self-Service, ATG Knowledge, ATG Commerce Service Center, ATG Optimization Services products are missing from the list. Last quarter’s acquisition of ATG by Oracle has clouded ATG’s future in customer service. We’ve halted our coverage until the acquisition completes and Oracle articulates a positive strategy for these products.

A GOOD 4Q2010 AND AN EXCELLENT 2010 IN CUSTOMER SERVICE

Overall customer service performance was good for the quarter and excellent for the year...