RightNow Transforms International Rectifier’s “Conversations” With Its Customers Around The World
Goals
- Cost-efficiently deliver a superb customer experience on a global basis
- Quickly deliver technical and promotional information to customers
- Capture knowledge about customers to improve all areas of the business
Achievements
- Significantly improved communication to customers
- High-value insights enabled more focused audience message delivery
- Increased global seminar outreach to customer base
When International Rectifier (IR) first started using RightNow's CRM software solutions, it was just hoping to post helpful technical information on its website and manage incoming emails. Over time, however, the company has fully leveraged RightNow’s CRM software solutions and services to deliver a superior customer experience. With RightNow's call center services, IR has created a super-efficient, state-of-the-art customer care operation that effectively answers questions from customers world-wide, 24 hours a day via phone, email or the web. IR is also using RightNow's CRM software solutions to successfully promote new products and regional events—while capturing customer insights that help boost sales, make smarter marketing decisions and enhance product development.
IR selected RightNow's call center services to replace its existing call center software once it witnessed how a hosted, web-based solution could better unite its global team. “In today’s highly competitive business environment, we’re constantly looking for ways to improve the service we offer to our customers,” explains Steve Diethelm, director, ecommerce business systems at International Rectifier. “By delivering information when and where it’s needed, RightNow enables us to create a superlative customer experience across all communication channels—without the costs and management burdens associated with conventional enterprise software.”
One of the keys to IR’s exemplary customer experience is its global Technical Assistance Center (TAC). Using RightNow’s web-based on demand CRM software solutions, IR has linked staff in Los Angeles, London and Singapore into a single, common customer care environment. TAC staff in all three locations share the same knowledge about customers, products, technical issues and current incidents, so any action taken or information captured is immediately available to other team members. As a result, IR delivers high-quality, 24-hour-a-day support to customers around the world using a “follow-the-sun” strategy—eliminating the cost of running multiple shifts at any of its locations.
The call center services also ensure that the information IR provides its customers over the phone, via email and on the web is consistent, accurate and up-to-date—since the same knowledge base is used across all three channels.
RightNow’s industry-leading web self-service capabilities turned out to be particularly useful for IR as it began to offer its customers more services via the internet. These services now include online simulation tools that streamline customers’ design processes and expedite orders. If customers have a question about how to use the tools, they can quickly find the answer they need right on the site and keep working.
“RightNow makes it very easy for customers to locate any single piece of information on our website with just a few clicks of the mouse,” says Diethelm. “That significantly enhances the quality of their online experience, while saving us the cost of a phone call.”
Easier, Faster And Fully Targeted Promotion Of Products And Events
In addition to streamlining IR’s responsiveness to interactions initiated by its customers, RightNow's CRM software solutions are helping IR reach out to its customers with information that caters to their unique needs and interests. According to Diethelm, this targeting capability is also important for creating and maintaining a great customer experience over time: “If you send customers emails about products or events that aren’t relevant to them, they’ll start to get annoyed and will wind up tuning you out. On the other hand, if you demonstrate the ability to consistently take the initiative and provide them with useful news, they will perceive you as a more valuable business partner.”
RightNow's CRM software solutions have proven especially helpful in supporting IR’s initiative to offer its customers more regional technical seminars by streamlining many of the outreach and logistical tasks such as building a list of customers fitting the appropriate profile, applying opt-in/opt-out filters, managing responses and registrations, and following up with event details to attendees with point-and-click ease. “The logistics of event promotion used to be a limiting factor which, with the help of RightNow, has been completely removed,” says Diethelm.
Customer Insights Drive Improved Business Performance
RightNow’s reporting and analytics also play a key role in IR’s continuous improvement of both the quality of its customer experience and the cost-efficiency of delivering that experience. The visibility RightNow's call center services provide into the company’s incident management resolution, for example, allows management to pinpoint process bottlenecks and opportunities for improving staff performance.
Even IR product managers use the information from frontline customer interactions to make smarter decisions about the company’s products. In one case, the TAC was flooded with questions about a product as soon as it was announced. “When we showed upper management how much interest the announcement had generated among our customers, it provided tremendous validation for the product development team,” Diethelm recalls. “So the value RightNow provides really extends across our entire business.”
RightNow: A Company That Practices What It Preaches
According to Diethelm, the unique combination of power and ease-of-use that RightNow's CRM software solutions offer is superior to anything IR saw in its extensive evaluation of competing CRM products: “Other vendors don’t come close to matching the value RightNow delivers.”
Diethelm adds that RightNow’s own customer experience has been nothing short of impressive over the years. “RightNow’s people have always been extraordinarily helpful and responsive whenever we have a question or issue,” he says. “They have demonstrated a real, ongoing commitment to our success and have always gone the extra mile for us.”
International Rectifier Support Site | International Rectifier Homepage
About International Rectifier
International Rectifier (NYSE:IRF) is a world leader in power management technology. The company’s digital, analog and mixed signal ICs, advanced circuit devices, integrated power systems, and components enable high-performance computing and reduce energy waste from motors, the world’s single largest consumer of electricity. Leading manufacturers of computers, energy-efficient appliances, lighting, automobiles, satellites, aircraft and defense systems rely on IR’s power management benchmarks to power their next generation products.
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