Kodak picks RightNow to bolster b-to-b customer service

Kodak has selected RightNow Technologies as its business-to-business customer service and support platform, the companies announced May 6. Kodak hired RightNow after an RFP process, but the imaging company would not disclose any additional information about the search.

RightNow will aid Kodak on a company-wide initiative to broaden and standardize customer support globally, said Susan Cardot, worldwide director of marketing for Kodak service and support.

“We're in the process of bringing together some legacy systems, along with different company infrastructures and businesses internally, into one integrated service platform,” she said. “It is a multiyear project we started in the fourth quarter of last year.”

RightNow will also help Kodak respond to customers in more channels than it has traditionally, and to analyze those interactions,” said John Bustard, worldwide director of service technology at Kodak.

“We're still primarily telephone support, but we see the need to support chat and social media,” he said. “We need to be able to interpret and analyze as well, so the analytics side is important to us, as is the ability to survey our customers.”

Kodak reported a first quarter 2010 profit of $119 million, an improvement from Q1 2009's $360 million loss. Total sales were $1.9 billion for the period, up 31% from $1.5 billion in Q1 2009.