RightNow's CSA – a game changer?

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RightNow’s CSA announcement from last week could be a game changer for SaaS and on-premise providers alike. The above video sets out my thinking behind last week’s Customer Service Agreement (CSA) announcement by the company. At the time, I wrote a short analysis over at ZDNet. The above video is a presentation put into the video format. I did it this way because Mac’s Keynote allows me to record an audio commentary to go with the slides. In turn that meant I could use my standard video intro/outro to top and tail the presentation.

While I was assembling the pieces. I realized that I could usefully split out the audio portion and so I’ve also done that and uploaded as a podcast. The link for that is below:

[display_podcast]

I have also uploaded the presentation to Slideshare as per below. (There’s a formatting error on one page that arose when I ‘translated it’ from Keynote to PPT. ugh!)

So now you have a choice:

1. Watch the presentation complete with my commentary
2. Pick up the podcast and listen at your leisure
3. Flip through the slideware and then decide whether it is worth either watching the video version or listening to the podcast.

The key to understanding RightNow’s CSA is to recognize they are breaking the mould for what it means to deliver SaaS applications. Readers who are used to seeing SMB offerings may be bemused because RightNow has borrowed from the SMB world for things like service credits if there is an outage and offering a ‘try before you buy’ option. It is important to realize that in the enterprise world, much of what happens with SaaS pricing, negotiation and contracting bears a remarkable similarity to the on-premise world. There is plenty of lock-in by way of long term contracts, immediate payment before benefit is assessed and so on.

RightNow is being truly innovative by making each of its six CSA ‘legs’ transparently interdependent. Each has a logical place in the scheme of things but they all work together such that the power relationship between vendor and buyer is more even. Risk, which has traditionally been with the buyer shifts towards the vendor.

All of these are good things that serve to make it easier to do business with RightNow. Whether others follow remains to be seen. In the SMB world, I’d like to see vendors being more formal in their approach to service. It is still the case that many are sloppy. RightNow is demonstrating that you can establish stakes in the ground without creating friction between vendor and customer. Rather I sense that the company is setting out a position that many others will follow because it serves to allay many fears that buyers express.

Colleagues have almost universally expressed approval for RightNow’s position. The question now is whether others will follow suit. A more detailed and helpful read comes from fellow Enterprise Advocate, Frank Scavo who provides links to further analysis.

Apart from the content quality which I hope is up to snuff, I’d really like to hear what you think about this multi-modal method of developing content. Does having the podcast choice help? Do you want additional show notes to accompany the podcast?

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Tagged as: Business, cloud applications, Cloud computing, Cloud Computing/SaaS, computing, csa, customer relationship, information technology management, podcast, presentation, pricing, rightnow, rightnow technologies, Software as a service, video, video formatting