Now in its third year, the Users Choice Awards — a collaboration between CUSTOMER Support Management and RealMarket — remains unique as the only best-in-class recognition of customer relationship products and services, judged by those most qualified to evaluate them: the users themselves. Solution users responded to a series of questions designed to measure three primary criteria: 1) the degree to which expectations were met; 2) the degree of satisfaction with the product or service; and 3) the degree to which the product or service made a positive impact.

Ten Gold Best in Class awards went to entrants that not only scored highest in their category, but had a significant number of votes (20 to 30 percent of the installed base), and faced competition from three or more products also meeting that criteria. Five Best in Class winners scored higher than the average of all Gold winners, but either did not face significant competition, or finished behind an even higher-scoring entrant in the same category.

The awards were made possible with the help of program partners STI Knowledge, the Call Center Network Group, the Customer Support Consortium, the Personalization Consortium, and the Help Desk Institute. Here — from the more than 8,000 votes cast for 132 nominated products in 32 categories — are the winners, as presented on August 1, 2001, at the ICCM/CRM Solutions Conference & Expo in Chicago.

ASSISTED SERVICE APPLICATIONS

Award:	Best in Class
Product:	eSupport
Company:	Control-F1
	http://www.control-f1.com/

Description: By allowing customers to access tech support by clicking on a web link, Control-F1's eSupport v.3 helps companies create a more satisfactory support experience, while reducing support call length and the overall cost of a help desk.

Of Note: Control-F1 is a repeat winner from 2000.

Users' Comments: “It has reduced response time and cost for our clients.” “We can make Control-F1 a selling point for our services, delivering services that previously required sending field engineers onsite.” “This product rocks!!!”

Award:	Best in Class
Product:	DesktopStreaming
Company:	Expertcity
	http://www.expertcity.com/

Description: DesktopStreaming provides an integrated application service that allows companies to create a live-support solution on the internet (or via intranets and extranets), putting support personnel in immediate, interactive communication with end users.

Of Note: Expertcity won last year with its Expertcity.com marketplace service.

Users' Comments: “A great assistant for remote diagnostics, this product has allowed us to troubleshoot customers' problems without going to customer sites.” “What makes this an outstanding product: ease and speed of installation (transparent to the client), session speed, non-intrusive aspects to the client's CPU resources, and overall operability.” “Helps us get closer to our customers; it puts us right in their homes, and gives them an extremely high level of satisfaction.”

CALL CENTER COMMUNICATIONS

Award:	Gold Best in Class
Product:	CosmoCall Universe
Company:	CosmoCom
	http://www.cosmocom.com/

Description: CosmoCall Universe — CosmoCom's unified, all-IP product — is a carrier-class system for service providers and large corporate users. It supports multimedia customer interactions via all channels — telephone and internet, live and message-based, fixed and wireless — in one high-capacity, high-availability, multi-tenant platform.

Of Note: This category had the most entries.

Users' Comments: “The application far exceeded our expectations, and the support team has been very helpful. Two thumbs up!” “It's impossibly expensive to run our business with a conventional PBX; with a six-month ROI on this product, we'll never go back!” “CosmoCom's technical resources, responsiveness, and overall customer service attitude are second to none.”

CALL MONITORING SOLUTIONS

Award:	Gold Best in Class
Product:	Click2Coach
Company:	Envision Telephony
	http://www.click2coach.com/

Description: Click2Coach gives supervisors a complete set of tools — training, quality monitoring and evaluation, plus eLearning for agents — allowing contact centers to develop and retain top-notch agents who provide superior customer service.

Of Note: Five entrants in this category achieved the minimum vote requirement.

Users' Comments: “The support provided by Envision is outstanding.” “Great product, great company to deal with.” “Click2Coach was one of the most seamless integrations of technology I've experienced. The company made no misrepresentations; the product is performing as promised.”

CONTACT MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS

Award:	Gold Best in Class
Product:	PowerCenter,
Company:	Astute Solutions
	http://www.astutesolutions.com/

Description: Astute's PowerCenter provides a solution for integrating multiple channels of customer communications, ensuring efficient, consistent, and service-level-appropriate handling of customer interactions. It is a state-of-the-art eCRM solution with a high degree of flexibility and functionality right out of the box, allowing for rapid tailoring to meet specific industry needs.

Of Note: All six entrants in this category met the minimum requirements to compete for an award.

Users' Comments: “PowerCenter has allowed our company to make significant strides in customer relations. It's a wonderful product.” “The Astute staff acts not as a vendor, but as true business partners — something you don't often find in today's business environment!” “PowerCenter is the only software program I've used that continues to surpass my expectations. I am constantly discovering new features (and, best of all, finding them on my own).” “Astute support has been terrific. Questions were handled promptly and accurately.”

CUST. INTERACTION MGMT. SOLUTIONS/ENTERPRISE

Award:	Gold Best in Class
Product:	Siebel Call Center
Company:	Siebel Systems
	http://www.siebel.com/

Description: Siebel Call Center allows organizations to transform their call centers into next-generation multichannel contact centers. It enables agents to manage, synchronize, and coordinate service, support, and sales interactions across a broad range of communication channels (including phone, web, e-mail, fax, text-based chat, and VoIP).

Of Note: Siebel is a repeat winner from 2000.

Users' Comments: “Great product; should be used by every company that wants to expand and grow its business.” “Siebel has made customer support and call tracking simple and fast.” “Clearly, the marketplace follows Siebel's vision.”

CUST. INTERACTION MGMT. SOLUTIONS/MID-MARKET

Award:	Gold Best in Class
Product:	GoldMine FrontOffice 2000
Company:	FrontRange Solutions
	http://www.frontrange.com/

Description: Cost-effective, yet powerful tool for small to midsize businesses. Components include GoldMine Sales and Marketing for creation of powerful and targeted marketing programs; GoldMine Service and Support for instant response to customer needs, and quick problem resolution; and GoldMine Everywhere Server, allowing users of GoldMine FrontOffice 2000 to access customers, calendars, and sales, service, or marketing information in real time, from any remote location.

Of Note: A repeat winner from 2000.

Users' Comments: “After implementing GoldMine, we saw our overall sales increase 500 percent in one year!” “It shortened our sales cycles, and gave us better management intelligence and reporting.”

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION MEASUREMENT SOLUTIONS

Award:	Best in Class
Product:	Enterprise Customer Experience Management
Company:	CustomerSat.com
	http://www.customersat.com/

Description: CustomerSat provides enterprise solutions for measuring and managing the customer experience. Its hosted technology solutions allow companies to collect, evaluate, and act on real-time customer feedback from every interaction point. With eCEM's CRMConnect and WEBConnect deployed in the service center environment, companies automatically connect with customers immediately after a service call, and measure the effectiveness of online support offerings.

Of Note: One of only two three-time UCA winners.

Users' Comments: “Great real-time feedback in quantitative form, that can be used to adjust content of our user groups to better meet customer needs and expectations.” “Without the real-time alerts, we would have lost many customers. It gave us a big ROI!” “The best customer-oriented service around; I wouldn't want to do business with anyone else.” “CustomerSat partnered with us to focus our team's attention on customer's interests, keeping us ahead of our competition.”

Award:	Best in Class
Product:	Satmetrix
Company:	Satmetrix Systems
	http://www.satmetrix.com/

Description: Satmetrix Systems is a leading provider of real-time customer experience management solutions that enable companies to increase business success through better and more profitable customer understanding and response. A hosted technology platform powered by Satmetrix helps organizations anticipate customer needs and create experiences that build loyalty over time.

Of Note: Satmetrix won in 1999 under its former name, CustomerCast.

Users' Comments: “Satmetrix is by far the best vendor we have ever worked with.” “An invaluable tool for measuring our customers' satisfaction. Best features: the real-time reporting site; e-mail triggers; and the ability to help us quickly identify either weaknesses, or places where we've over-invested our resources.” “With every transaction, it demonstrates to our customers that we are truly concerned about their satisfaction.”

FIELD SERVICE SOLUTIONS

Award:	Gold Best in Class
Product:	TelAlert Urgent Msgng. System
Company:	Telamon
	http://www.telamon.com/

Description: TelAlert Urgent Messaging System is the automated solution for sending critical messages from back-office systems to mobile workers. Remote users are able to receive and respond via mobile phones, PDAs, IVR, and interactive pagers. TelAlert UMS meets communication challenges associated with enterprise management, customer service and help desk operations.

Of Note: Telamon is a repeat winner from 2000.

Users' Comments: “The product is amazing: easy to install, configure, and use.” “It's very easy to integrate, and sets up quickly; great support enabled us to deploy TelAlert within a very short time period.” “TelAlert is extremely scalable, and very modular; this was critical in meeting our customer challenges. TelAlert's two-way alert paging has saved our engineers hundreds of hours of painstakingly logging into and updating web-interface sites; it's prevented thousands of dollars in wasted people-hours.”

HELP DESK/SERVICE DESK

Award:	Gold Best in Class
Product:	HEAT
Company:	FrontRange Solutions
	http://www.frontrange.com/

Description: The HEAT division of FrontRange Solutions offers a comprehensive line of service and support software, including the Simply Powerful HEAT help desk solution. HEAT is committed to providing its customers with excellent, responsive service products that are easy to implement, simple to use, and highly customizable.

Of Note: HEAT is the other three-time UCA winner.

Users' Comments: “HEAT customized very easily. Although we could have used it out-of-the-box with only minor customization, it was no problem to make it look the way we wanted.” “I have not found a call-logging software that is better.” “Great product! Great company! Great technical support!” “HEAT 6.01 is awesome!!!”

LEARNING SOLUTIONS

Award:	Best in Class
Product:	Sherpa Learning
Company:	Rapid Performance Systems
	http://www.gorapid.com/

Description: Sherpa Learning provides training and performance support for CRM applications. This hosted web-based learning infrastructure delivers compelling, media-rich training over the internet. It provides interactive simulations, hands-on practice, content searching, bookmarks, and frame-by-frame user control — all in a format that works over low-bandwidth connections. Sherpa includes a comprehensive Learning Management System to track and report user progress.

Of Note: Scored the highest of all products.

Users' Comments: “Incredible development tool for CRM applications.” “This is the most easy-to-use, comprehensive solution I have seen, to date.” “The fast video presentations and the interactive videos make learning easy and fun — much better than just reading some online documentation.”

ONLINE SUPPORT SERVICES

Award:	Gold Best in Class
Product:	Online Tech Support
Company:	Tech24
	http://www.tech24.com/

Description: Tech24 provides real-time, online technical support, 24/7/365, via technical chat; also provides four-hour e-mail response resolution from professional techs. All techs are MS-certified, with additional industry certifications. End users can “watch and learn” through the desktop collaboration tool as techs fix a problem.

Of Note: Second-highest average score overall.

Users' Comments: “Great professional and courteous technical reps; fast response and amazing tools; excellent, overall.” “Tech24 made it possible for our company to continue to trade, even during breakdowns.” “It's absolutely great! Helps me as well as my ‘self-help’ customers.”

SALES TOOLS

Award:	Gold Best in Class
Product:	ProposalMaster
Company:	Sant Corporation
	http://www.santcorp.com/

Description: ProposalMaster creates complete proposals, letter proposals, and sales letters in a matter of minutes. It's a “smart” system that asks a few questions about the opportunity and the prospect, then creates a client-centered, professional proposal in Microsoft Word — instantly.

Of Note: A repeat winner from 2000.

Users' Comments: “Proposal development time has been reduced by 80 percent, and prospects confirm that the proposals are very focused on situation and need.” “It's been a Godsend!” “Great software! Tripled our business; saves us time and money.” “We increased our win ratios 75 percent.”

SELF SERVICE SOLUTIONS

Award:	Gold Best in Class
Product:	RightNow Web
Company:	RightNow Technologies
	http://www.rightnow.com/

Description: RightNow Web is RightNow's flagship web customer service suite. The product is a complete web customer service platform featuring e-mail management, self-service, live chat, customer feedback surveys, and integration support for legacy applications.

Of Note: Hotly contested category; high average score for the five contenders.

Users' Comments: “Easy to deploy, gave immediate results, and both customers and internal employees like it.” “It has greatly reduced the number of calls coming into our help desk lines, as well as repeat problems.” “Phenomenal solution with quick implementation and ROI. Great company; excellent vision.” “Very efficient and easy to use; RightNow's customer service is outstanding.”