RightNow Signs 100th Higher Education Customer

RightNow's 100th higher education customer is Australia's Edith Cowan University, which selected RightNow CRM' after an extensive evaluation of competing solutions. Key factors in ECU's decision included RightNow's industry-leading knowledge management capabilities, its use of a common customer knowledge repository across all communication channels, and its proven history of success in college and university environments. RightNow's on demand delivery model-which is enabling ECU to implement a sophisticated customer experience environment without the infrastructure costs, project delays, and ongoing IT management headaches associated with traditional CRM implementations-was another critical decision criteria.

"RightNow will empower us to communicate more effectively and efficiently with students, prospective students, parents, staff, and alumni via phone, web, email and chat channels, while at the same time giving us greater visibility into their needs and behaviors," said John Wood, ECU's deputy vice chancellor; students, advancement and international. "We believe this implementation will greatly strengthen our relationships across these diverse constituencies and substantially help us achieve our broader institutional goals."

The widespread adoption of RightNow by educational institutions is being driven by several specific, escalating challenges they now face. These challenges include growing competition for qualified students, the growing inclination of existing students to transfer to other schools if they believe their needs are not being adequately met, tighter operating budgets, and the need to serve an increasingly "wired" population via both online and traditional communication channels.

RightNow enables universities to meet these challenges by providing a full range of capabilities that are ideally suited for educational institutions-including:

• Actionable, real-time insight into prospects, enrolled students and alumni
• Streamlined design and execution of multi-stage student and alumni campaigns
• Fast, easy implementation of highly effective web self-service portals
• An intelligent agent desktop that greatly improves staff productivity across bursar, registration, IT, academic advising, athletics and other departments

At University of Houston, for example, RightNow has reduced call volume by 25 percent for the admissions office, freeing counselors to deal with students who have more complex problems. It also is enabling the University to provide fast, consistent and accurate answers to questions ranging from transfer policies to event schedules.

"RightNow has had a major impact on the quality-of-experience we are providing to all of our constituencies," Betty Roberts, the University's associate vice president of technology support services. "It has helped provide answers not only for potential students, but for all of our constituencies, including current students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends."

University of South Florida experienced similar results, improving services to students, staff and external clients via phone, email and the web while eliminating two full-time help desk positions-even as its student population grew 10 percent.

Other RightNow customers in the higher education market include: Colorado State University, Columbia University, Fordham University, Imperial College, New York University, North Carolina State University, Rice University, Tennessee State University, University of Illinois, University of Kentucky, University of Melbourne, University of Miami, University of Montana, University of New England, University of New Mexico, University of Oklahoma, University of Southern Queensland, University of Texas, and Washington State University. While the vast majority of these institutions have chosen on demand implementation, RightNow also offers the option of conventional on-premise deployment.

"Universities and colleges are under extraordinary pressure to develop and maintain high-touch relationships with a broader population of prospects, students, parents, alumni and internal staffs even as their budgets are being stretched to the breaking point," Greg Gianforte, RightNow's founder and CEO, said. "RightNow offers a uniquely powerful, field-proven solution for this market, and we remain committed to meeting its continually evolving functional requirements."