EGain Communications, a vendor of customer service and knowledge management products, has announced that the company was named a leader in interaction-centric customer service software products in the October 2008 report “The Forrester (News - Alert) Wave: Customer Service Software Solutions, Q4 2008.”

 

The company received the highest score in the category of “current offering,” as well as in the sub-categories of “customer service,” “architecture and platform,” “cost,” “product strategy” and “employees” in interaction-centric customer service management software.

 

The vendor was among the companies Forrester invited to participate in this report evaluating customer service management vendors across approximately 180 criteria.

 

Frankly it’s good to see this vendor having something positive to point to. Last month, TMC reported that eGain saw net loss on a GAAP basis for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2008 was $1.9 million, or $(0.12) per share, compared to a net loss on a GAAP basis of $2.9 million, or $(0.19) per share, for the comparable year-ago quarter.

 

The vendor’s total revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2008 was $6.7 million, an increase of 24 percent from the comparable year-ago quarter. License revenue was $721,000, an increase of 124 percent from the comparable year-ago quarter.

 

Looking for the silver lining there the red ink was worse in 2007, as net loss on a GAAP basis for the fiscal year 2008 was $4.1 million, or $(0.27) per share compared to a net loss on a GAAP basis of $7.7 million, or $(0.50) per share for the prior year.

 

And this is a vendor who in June marked the 10-year anniversary of eGain OnDemand, the hosted version of its eGain Service software suite. You don’t want to see them fail.

 

In the Forrester report, on a scale of 0-5, in the interaction-centric products evaluation, eGain score d 4.65 in “current offering.” EGain also received a “customer service” product capability score of 4.70, architecture and platform mark of 4.74, product strategy score of 5.00, cost score of 4.66, and employees rating of 4.00.

 

In addition, the company received a score of 4.60 in the “strategy” category, and received the top score in several key sub-categories in “current offering,” such as knowledgebase (5.0), business process and workflow tools (4.4), Web 2.0 tools and applications (5.0), and deployment options (5.0).

 

“EGain is an application best suited for large multichannel contact centers that require a scalable product and complete suite of customer service and contact center software that sits on top of a common architecture and infrastructure,” wrote Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, Ph. D., Senior Analyst at Forrester.