RightNow Customer thetrainline.com Wins EMEA Award for CRM Excellence
Maidenhead, U.K., March 25, 2009
RightNow customer, thetrainline.com, the leading independent retailer of train tickets online, has won the CRM Excellence Award 2009 for Europe, Middle East and Africa, which was determined by attendees at the Gartner CRM Summit (1). Shortlisted alongside two other finalists, thetrainline.com presented details of its customer care strategy at the Gartner Customer Relationship Management Summit in London earlier this month and was selected by the audience as having the most effective customer initiative.
Delegates at the conference learned how thetrainline.com had focused attention on a CRM vision that would make it effortless for customers to do business with them. With that goal in mind, the company sought to capture the voice of its customers so it could directly understand what issues may prevent them from using thetrainline.com, as well as gain insight into their requirements when booking rail tickets online or on the phone.
thetrainline.com then used this insight to review and improve its practices and processes across the frontlines of its business. Where necessary, it made changes to the products and services offered via its website and to its processes when handling multi-channel customer enquiries. The changes resulted in positive increases across its key performance indicators, including gains in Net Promoter and Customer Satisfaction scores, customer registrations and customer repeat spend.
Commenting on winning the award, Bill Hopkins, Operations Director, thetrainline.com, said: “We are absolutely delighted to have won such an esteemed accolade. The entire organisation, from the CEO to contact centre agents answering customer calls, collaborated on the project. Everyone was tied financially and emotionally to making our transformation into a customer-centric organisation a success. In my opinion, the award is testament to everyone’s hard work and focus on putting the customer first.”
thetrainline.com uses RightNow to build a single view of customer interactions that its 280 contact agents can use to provide a fast and efficient service to customers when handling enquiries across phone, email, web and chat channels. The company also uses RightNow’s survey tool to gather customer feedback – helping it to continuously improve the quality of customer experiences it delivers.
Jason Mittelstaedt, Chief Marketing Officer at RightNow Technologies, congratulated thetrainline.com on winning the award: “It’s great to see a British company being recognised for placing its customers at the centre of everything it does. Actually asking customers for feedback can be a leap into the unknown, acting on what you learn can be an even greater challenge, but thetrainline.com has set the benchmark for UK businesses wanting to become more consumer-centric. I’m proud to say that thetrainline.com joins other household brands that have worked with us and had their achievements recognised through industry awards.”
The Gartner CRM Excellence Awards are designed to highlight world-class CRM initiatives and share successes, challenges and insights.
(1) The identification of an award winner at a Gartner event is not an endorsement by Gartner of any vendor, product or service.
About thetrainline.com
thetrainline is the leading independent retailer of train tickets online, selling tickets for all train companies on all national routes in Great Britain, with access to over 293 million fare and journey combinations.
Since 1999 thetrainline.com has sold to 3.3 m travellers, making over 14m transactions, with over 8.4 million registered users. Its easy to use website and innovative fare finder tools help rail travelers buy the right ticket at the best price.
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 1,900 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 www.rightnow.com.
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Greg Gianforte