Oracle RightNow CX Service Cloud Roadmap @ Oracle OpenWorld 2013

One of the most popular sessions I attended this week was undoubtedly the RightNow Cloud Service Vision & Roadmap. After a recap of the last 12 months and latest August release (which you can read about in a previous blog post), Chris Patterson (Senior Director, Cloud Product Management) took the audience through the roadmap for 2014.

One of the most popular sessions I attended this week was undoubtedly the RightNow Cloud Service Vision & Roadmap. After a recap of the last 12 months and latest August release (which you can read about in a previous blog post here), Chris Patterson (Senior Director, Cloud Product Management) took the audience through the roadmap for 2014. And what an exciting year it promises to be in this space! Here are the highlights:

Web Customer Service

Virtual Assistant Here is your web "personal concierge" using natural language to understand the customer's intent and with the flexibility to personalise the user's experience based on answers and actions taken. Rules can also be configured based on things like the value of the product on the page being viewed - you might want to route customers looking at high value products straight through to a "live" agent.

Social Self Service Focus on blending of community and self-service.

Facebook Further significant enhancements of the existing Facebook app to bring through all the Customer Portal functionality. Additionally, the Virtual Assistant ("Ask Ella", dressed in appropriately casual attire!) will be brought to the Facebook app.

Point Of Need This will see extensions to the Syndication Framework, more widgets and many more enhancements.

Experience Routing This area will see simplified Queue Management and the rollout of Skills-based Assignment. Matching of the best skilled agent will be done using Product, Category and Language with strategic prioritisation. The rollout will be to the Chat channel first before other channels are added later.

Contact Center

<strongCollaboration Incident Collaboration will include an "expert locator" to suggest people the agent can contact and collaborate with. The Agent can prioritise their collaboration requests. The Oracle Social Network (OSN) is embedded in the Incident Management process.

Social Monitoring You can already escalate from the Social Relationship Management platform into the RightNow Service Cloud but this is to be extended.

Asset Based SLAs Asset registration will be allowed through both the Desktop and Customer Portal, while SLA's will be associated to individual assets belonging to a customer (rather than just directly to the Customer).

User Interface The Agent mobile app will be extended to the iPhone and Android devices, while more functionality and more UI controls in general will be added to the mobile apps. There will also be a facelift for the Smart Client bringing improved performance. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, there will be a new browser-based UI introduced, initially for infrequent users with a reduced scope of functionality, while gradually more functionality will be added over time.

Data Warehouse Here, Oracle are building integration with Oracle Business Intelligence in order to extend the Service Cloud's analytical capability.

Knowledge

Advanced Knowledge Oracle are working to build some the advanced capabilities from their Knowledge (InQuira) product into the Service Cloud (e.g. Advanced Search, NLP search and advanced authoring).

Policy Automation

Lifecycle Analytics In-memory policy analytics will be introduced with real-time "What-IF" scenarios.

As a closing thought, we've heard from a strong source here at OpenWorld that there has been a 200% uplift in R&D expenditure on RightNow since the Oracle acquisition and it is certainly at the heart of Oracle's CX focus. We look forward to the November release and the 2014 releases with great anticipation!

Keep up to date with what we learn at OpenWorld 2013 via this blog, or follow us on twitter!