On-Demand Provider Releases Shine Live Help and Announces Shine 'Code Prix' Open Source Contribution Competition With Over $10,000 in Prizes
ROSEVILLE, Calif.--The march from proprietary to open source software continues with the launch of Shine Live Help, a GPL licensed application for website sales and support. iRadeon, the leading open source software as a service provider, released Shine Live Help to give businesses a free alternative to costly proprietary live help applications such as LivePerson and LiveHelper. Going one step further than its proprietary competition, Shine includes a special integration component for Sugar Open Source CRM, providing a powerful front and backend combination for web-based customer service.
“Businesses of all sizes are increasingly finding they must have a website presence that personally connects with customers and meets their needs in real time,” says Jeff Minich, vice president of strategy for iRadeon. “Offering live web help, backed by an integrated CRM application, is a key element of getting this experience right.”
Shine Live Help eliminates the barriers to entry for even the smallest businesses to deploy what have traditionally been considered enterprise class web customer service solutions. Both Shine and Sugar Open Source can be downloaded for free at Sourceforge.net and installed on a web server in minutes. Customers that don’t want to manage the software on their own server can also get Shine Live Help on demand, pre-integrated with Sugar Open Source CRM, from iRadeon for USD 60 per month for five users.
iRadeon has also deployed Shine on its own website, leveraging its existing Sugar Open Source data to improve customer service. “The combination of Shine and SugarCRM gives our sales and support staff a complete view of each returning web customer’s entire account history the moment a live help session is initiated,” says Jason Freed, operations manager for iRadeon.com. “Customers on our website feel like we know them and understand their issues better; it’s a much more friendly experience.”
In addition to extending Sugar Open Source CRM data to the live help experience, Shine also allows sales and support operators to create new CRM records like leads, cases, contacts, and accounts directly from the Shine operator interface. This allows users to capture valuable information, such as new sales leads or support cases, and easily manage it via CRM, reducing support case times, improving customer service quality, and increasing website sales.
As part of the Shine Live Help release, iRadeon is also launching the Shine ‘Code Prix’ open source code contribution competition with USD 10,000 in cash prizes. The ‘Code Prix’ competition will reward open source developers with cash rewards for innovative contributions to the Shine Live Help project. The competition will begin February 9th and ends March 11th. For more information on Shine Live Help and the ‘Code Prix’ competition, please visit http://www.iradeon.com/codeprix.html
About iRadeon (www.iradeon.com)
