Government Customers Save £3Million With RightNow by Transforming the Way they Serve their Customers.
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Slough, United Kingdom, March 23, 2006
RightNow® Technologies (NASDAQ: RNOW) today announced it saved its 45 UK public sector customers nearly £3 million last year by transforming the way they serve their customers.
In the period from January 2005 to January 2006, a total of 2.7 million online customer service interactions* were hosted by RightNow across all types of local authorities, as well as with central government where, for example, RightNow is deployed alongside the government secure intranet (GSI). These interactions significantly reduce call and email volumes because in the majority of cases customers are empowered to find solutions to their general enquiries online. This enhances the customer experience while positively impacting on more costly forms of communication.
"Typically the cost to handle an in-bound call or email costs £2.50 and £5.00 respectively," Steve Morrell, founder of ContactBabel and an expert on contact centres, said. "If you can drive information-seeking and repetitive enquiries to an effective web self-service resource then it’s possible to make significant savings, especially when you consider that web self-service is approximately one-tenth the cost of a call."
Based on these figures, and conservatively estimating that RightNow helps transform 15 percent of calls and 15 percent of emails into online customer service interactions, RightNow saved its public sector customers a total of £2,991,936 during the period. Dependent on how the organisation is run, these were either non-cashable or cashable efficiency gains as defined by The Gershon Report.
The Socitm ‘Building usage of council websites: summary of findings from website take-up service Issue 2’** estimated that in May 2005 11.4 million visitors landed on local government websites, that’s approximately 10 percent of the UK’s population. This is a clear indicator that the web is forming a strategic source of information for constituents and that it continues to gather pace as a significant customer service channel as more people seek guidance online.
Since its public sector practice was founded in 2001, RightNow has been helping its customers meet new and changing government objectives, particularly those relating to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister’s priority and mandatory outcomes and, more recently, transformational government. Specifically, RightNow’s technology is helping its public sector customers meet the following priorities:
R23 – Access to council services out-of-hours
R28 – Unique reference numbers on enquiries
R29 – Email response within one day
G03 – Consultation alerts
G22 – Customer take-up targets and measurement
E02 – Customer satisfaction with community information
All of RightNow’s public sector customers are on demand deployments, whereby RightNow hosts the application for them. This approach has been particularly popular with the public sector because it eliminates IT infrastructure and software ownership costs and allows them to pilot the software for 30-days before making a purchasing decision, basing the decision on results rather than ‘vendor say-so’. The fact that the solution can be purchased via term-based licensing removes upfront cost, further reducing risk, while the option to move to a perpetual licence, within an agreed timeframe, provides further payment flexibility.
"While public and private sector organisations are very different, in essence their challenges remain the same, it doesn’t matter whether you are trying to impact the bottom line or deliver against a government vision, the question remains ‘how do you better serve customers while running an efficient organisation?" Wayne Foncette, RightNow’s UK & Ireland vice president, said. "The fact is you have to use technology to deliver knowledge at the point of action. By doing this you don’t have to choose between the customer or cost, you are empowering customers to make informed decisions, while freeing up otherwise restricted resources that can be directed to other parts of the organisation."
*A customer service interaction is defined as a search for information in an online knowledge base, submission of questions via a web form or email, and/or interaction with a service agent through live chat or telephone.
**A copy of the key findings can be purchased here: Socitm
About ContactBabel
The CRM industry has suffered from a lack of clear, objective advice, and a surfeit of hype. Both end-users and solution providers can be confused by the mixed messages and overblown theories which contradict their own experiences. ContactBabel provides the tools, skills and analysis to allow CRM and multimedia contact centre providers to approach their markets objectively and profitably.
ContactBabel was founded by Steve Morrell in 2000 to provide a reliable source of research, analysis and business recommendations to CRM and contact centre solution providers, Steve was formerly head of Datamonitor’s global Next Generation Contact Technology division, and has written numerous reports on the future of the contact centre and CRM industries.
His views have been widely quoted in The Times, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes.com, and he has presented his vision of the future at many industry events. For more information visit: ContactBabel
About RightNow Technologies
RightNow (NASDAQ: RNOW) delivers the high-impact technology solutions and services organizations need to cost-efficiently deliver a consistently superior customer experience across their frontline service, sales and marketing touch-points. Approximately 1,800 corporations and government agencies worldwide depend on RightNow to achieve their strategic objectives and better meet the needs of those they serve. RightNow is headquartered in Bozeman, Montana. For more information, please visit http://www.rightnow.com/.
RightNow is a registered trademark of RightNow Technologies, Inc. NASDAQ is a registered trademark of the NASDAQ Stock Market.
Greg Gianforte