Item: Oracle Fusion Service
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Pros and Cons

The Knowledgebase searching capabilities were much better than the previous system we used. In addition to searching the body of the answer, it will also search the first several hundred unique words of the attachments.
The software is very flexible. Almost everything is customizable.
You can get very detailed reports concerning which answers and attachments are looked at, and by which customers, each month. This data is only kept for 30 days, but you can setup rules to automatically export the reports to files that can be emailed.
Customers can "subscribe" to get notified if a specific answer gets updated, or anything in a particular category is created or updated. When you update an answer, you can decide if you want to generate a notification to subscribed customers. For example, if you are just changing the grammar, you won't want a notification to go out.
You can easily add links to other answers within your answer. This prevents you from having to duplicate information in various related answers.

The Knowledgebase has a feature where it will suggest other related answers for you to look at. The problem is that there is no way to limit the suggestions to the category you are currently in. For instance, if the customer is looking at notebook computer answers, the system will suggest answers in a server or modem category. This caused a problem for us because when customers were looking at answers related to a current product, RightNow would recommend answers that were associated with legacy products we no longer sold and thus didn't want to advertise. Because we could not limit suggested answers to the same category, even after consulting with RightNow experts, we had to turn this feature off.
RightNow has a lot of great reports that show answer statistics -- how many times each answer has been viewed each day/week/month, etc (however you configure the report). However, they don't have a way to add an IP address range to ignore, or a company name to ignore, so that you can filter out internal company views. We wanted to know how many customers viewed answers vs seeing reports that lumped our support personnel statistics in with customer statistics.
RightNow doesn't automatically filter out SPAM IP addresses in their reports or access counts. We suddenly noticed that the numbers on our statistical reports had increased from previous months. When I explored the huge increase with RightNow, I found out that known spammers had been hitting our site. Rather than RightNow filtering out the IPs at a corporate level, each customer has to monitor for spamming hits and individually enter in the IP addresses into their configuration software to get them excluded. We were frustrated because this requirement/process was not communicated to us when we started using the software. Thus, we had a couple months of useless statistical data (RightNow was unable to go back and filter the spammer data from our reports. However, they did give us a credit on our monthly usage).
As an administrator of our Knowledgebase, I wanted to be notified whenever anybody edited an answer, vs just getting a notice when a new answer was created. RightNow support engineers told me this was not possible, so I had to manually scan reports a couple of times a month to see which answers changed. I wish there had been a way to get an automatic notification the same day an answer was changed so that I could review it in a timely manner.

Return on Investment

Our customer service was greatly increased once we switched to the RighNow Knowledgebase because it was easier for customers to find needed information. The ability to search attachments contributed to the search improvements.
Because each answer has an ID associated with it, we could tell a customer to just search for answer ###. In our old system, we had to tell customer to look for specific key words, and if they mis-typed something that would effect the search results.
The Knowledgebase comes with a mobile app. This made it easier for our support engineers to assist customers while they were away from the office.

Alternatives Considered

One of OLDI's partners, Rockwell Automation, uses RightNow for their Knowledgebase. Since the two companies share many of the same customers, it made sense to explore Rockwell Automation's solution.

What is the start-up process like? RightNow recommended that we work with a consultant to get our initial training and configuration advice to save money. Later we purchased a few hours with a RightNow expert concerning some of our configuration challenges. I wish we had worked with RightNow experts vs the consultants from the beginning as they were much more Knowledgable.

Users and Roles

5 - Support engineers created and edited answers, and referenced them when assisting customers.

Other employees (developers and IT) did the back-end customization and maintenance.

Support Headcount Required

2 - Most of the system can be customized by changing menu selections. Anybody with the ability to grasp the software capabilities, and work with RightNow support to determine which settings to change, can do this.

Some of the back-end things needed to be changed by a developer who could do coding.

Business Processes Supported

Customer support -- provide answers to common questions about our products, so that customers could search the Knowlebase vs opening a ticket with support
Assisting support engineers -- often our engineers would search the Knowledgebase when assisting customers
Promoting products -- OLDI's website lines to product brochures and instructional videos that are included in the Knowledgebase
Storing firmware/software updates -- when OLDI updates software or firmware, the updates are included in Knowledgebase answers so that customers can easily access them. A link to the answer can be easily sent to a customer.

Innovative Uses

Product brochures used to be stored both on the company website and in the Knowledgebase. Now, the company's website simply links to the appropriate Knowledgebase answer.

Future Planned Uses

In the future they might explore implementing the Chat capability.

Likelihood to Renew

Although RightNow is extremely flexible, the flexibility comes with a price. It is often not intuitive which settings you need to change (and under which menus these setting are buried) to enable the system to do what you want. Also, sometimes the system can do things you need, but you don't initially realize it. When RightNow sells a system to a new customer, I think it should come with X hours of consulting time with a RightNow expert. The customer should be able to consult with this expert over the next year to get advice concerning how to configure the system to achieve desired needs. Often RightNow Support would just answer "no" when I asked if I could do something, but then I would find another way to achieve my goals after talking with other companies using RightNow.

Products Replaced

Yes - We replaced our old Knowledgebase because it's searching capabilities were limited.

Key Differentiators

Product Features
Product Usability
Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
Third-party Reviews

The software worked!! Before switching to RightNow we had tried to switch to a different Knowledgebase. However, it had so many bugs that we could not consistently create a simple Knowledgebase answer with URLS, some bolding, and some bullets. Thus, we had to abandon the project. Before committing to RightNow's Knowledgebase, RightNow gave us a "sandbox" to play in so that we could verify the software worked as expected.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

If we had initially insisted on "trying before buying" we would not have wasted time with the first vendor we selected (and then abandoned).

Implementation Rating

Work with a RightNow expert during the implementation. Explain features that would you like to have. Often, somebody who really knows the system can show you what you need to do to achieve the desired results. Where a RightNow support engineer or a consultant might say "the system can't do that," a RightNow application engineer will listen to what you need, and often come up with an alternate path to achieve it.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Change Management Lessons

Change management was minimal

Implementation Issues

The company RightNow recommended we hire to provide us training and setup advice was not very knowledgable. After I leaned the product I realized that much of the advice they gave us was incorrect. Also, there were many things they should have told us to do that they didn't. For example, they knew that searching attachments was important to us, but they didn't tell us that this searching was not automatic. There was a hidden checkbox we had to check for each attachment we wanted searched. It was time-consuming to go back and check the boxes after-the-fact (once we realized our attachments weren't being searched).
If I were to do it again, I would pay the extra money to hire RightNow consultants vs an external company during the implementation.

Support Rating

Unless your site is down, and the ticket is thus marked critical, it takes 24 WORKING hours to get an initial response, which equals 3 days. If I had a window of time to work on a configuration issue, it was frustrating to have to table my work for 3 or more days while waiting for a response. I had not expected the "24 hour" SLA to mean "24 working hours."

Once we finally connected with RightNow staff, they were very knowledgeable

Oracle Fusion Service Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed Support understands my problem	Slow Resolution Difficult to get immediate help Support doesn't seem to care Slow Initial Response

Premium Support

No - Did not know it was an option

Bug Resolution

Exceptional Examples of Oracle Fusion Service Support

Although it was a cumbersome process, we were finally able to purchase several hours of time with a RightNow application engineer. HE WAS EXCELLENT and showed me ways to achieve things we needed that support had told me I could not do. For instance, since we could not filter out our company employees from the report statistics, he showed me how to implement ClickStreams reports, and this helped solve our needs. Prior to this, we had no knowledge of this option. The consultant we worked with during our initial setup had not mentioned it. Neither had RightNow support, but to support's credit, they were just answering the specific questions I was asking.

Review of the RightNow Knowledgebase

Software Version

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with RightNow