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EGain Communications, a vendor of multi-channel customer service and knowledge management software, today marked the 10-year anniversary of EGain OnDemand, the hosted version of its EGain Service software suite.

 

EGain officials say the company has been selling its set of deployment options for customer service software, including on-premise, on-demand, and managed service, since 1998.

 

EGain OnDemand, which company officials refer to as “the industry’s first-ever hosted enterprise applications software,” is based on “the Power of One,” they say, “the concept of one unified platform for multichannel customer interaction and knowledge management.”

 

EGain OnDemand customers over the last decade include financial services, retail, communications, consumer goods, technology, healthcare, media and consumer services.

 

Many of these are clients took a hybrid approach to deployment, starting with one approach and migrating to the other, according to the company.

 

“As CRM SaaS (News - Alert) products have gained more acceptance and usage, buyers are starting to consider using SaaS in more creative ways,” writes William Band, vice president and principal analyst and Pete Marston, analyst for Forrester (News - Alert) Research, in a report called “Best Practices: The Smart Way To Implement CRM SaaS Solutions.”

 

Rather than thinking about SaaS products and on-premise CRM products as “mutually exclusive,” Band and Marston say, users are “starting to implement hybrid deployments: implementing an on-premise product for large user populations with complex business processes and supplementing with a SaaS product to fill the needs of remote or specialized business units.”

 

“On-demand customer service products can accelerate the time to customer service and business benefits, while reducing the need for specialized help,” said Johan Jacobs, research director at Gartner (News - Alert).

 

Headquartered in Mountain View, California, eGain has an operating presence in 18 countries and serves more than 800 enterprise customers

 

Earlier this month, EGain announced that Creditsafe is implementing on-demand versions of eGain SelfService and eGain Chat to offer its customers a Web self-service portal and live assistance through chat and online collaboration.

 

This will enable Creditsafe to provide “an enhanced customer experience, improve agent efficiencies and increase customer loyalty, while also reducing service costs and building revenue,” Creditsafe officials say.

 

Creditsafe conducts business over the telephone and delivers services online. With more than 25,000 customers in the United Kingdom, the volume of incoming calls puts pressure on call center agents who are also responsible for subscription renewals, cross-selling and tele-sales.