Earlier today I released an analysis note for my customers based on the recent announcement from Moxie Software that it has consolidated their internal collaboration and customer service solutions into one. The following were the key points:
Moxie was one of the remaining independent eService vendors (together with eGain, FuzeDigital, FuzeDigital, KANA, Parature, RightNow, and Sword Ciboodle) that needed a distinguishing feature to find their niche market; all vendors in the market are reaching the point of specialization where they establish their niche and live happily ever after in it – it is part of the maturation in the market.
There are three proof points to show this is the right move for them (but I have one concern).
The birth of the collaborative enterprise: ever since we began to talk about the concept of converging social CRM and enterprise 2.0 into what we early on we called social business we maintained that the idea was to reach a level of “hybrid” collaboration between organizations and customers aimed at reaching higher levels of value for both.
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Customer Service is the right place to start: I have long maintained that for vendors that have complex customer interactions (what we tend to call business-to-consumer interactions) customer service is the place to be. This is where most of the transactions take place. In my many years of doing research in CRM I have found out that between 50% and 90% of interactions for these vendors happen through (or at least get started) Customer Service departments.
Communities are more than just social channels: The value of a Facebook like or Twitter follower can be discussed (and “calculated”) forever, but it pales in comparison to the value that feedback, knowledge-sharing, and collaboration bring to an organization. To leverage this power properly an organization must have the ideal infrastructure to support communities to engender data, knowledge, and feedback.
Full disclosure, I have worked with Moxie for the past years advising them on the product direction and strategy as well as market positioning – this is to say that I agree with the proof points since it is what we worked on for that time. However, I do retain one concern about this move: market perception.
Moxie has been perceived as a dual-solution provider: Partly due to the market confusion as to what they delivered but also because it was easy for their competitors to cast them as something they were not (i.e. if they were in a collaboration deal their competitors could cast them as a customer service vendor and vice versa).
I see this as a good move for them, I am watching the progress as the market evolves.
What do you think? Is this another evolution point for Social Business? Is this a good move? Would love to hear your thoughts…
Disclaimers: Moxie is an active client (they were also as nGenera); I am working with them on this launch. eGain, KANA, and Sword Ciboodle are active clients. FuzeDigital is an inactive client. Parature and RightNow (as well as Oracle, who recently acquired RightNow) were never clients.
