RightNow – On Demand CRM Software

RightNow Helps Zoomerang Drive New Revenue, Increase Customer Satisfaction

Goals

• Improve customer satisfaction as business soars
• Stem rising tide of emails and track phone incidents
• Offload routine inquiries to enable proactive service and sales opportunities

Achievements

• Customer satisfaction levels up over 10 percent in one quarter
• Emails down from 1,800 to 1,000 weekly despite 25 percent increase in customers
• Clear insight supports business decisions that grew one product's annual revenue by 500 percent
• Supported reaching customer satisfaction goal of 95 percent

With revenues for its flagship product growing 60 percent in one year, MarketTools Inc, a Mill-Valley, CA-based full service market research firm, knew it had better implement a comprehensive web-based service solution quickly. As a full-service market research firm, MarketTools knows the value of customer satisfaction, and chose RightNow to help it meet its service level agreements (SLA) during rapid growth. Revenues for Zoomerang, the firm's online market survey tool, have soared, creating increased customer service demands. Zoomerang is used by clients such as DuPont, Johnson and Johnson and the United Way to survey and gain market insight into target audiences, including customers or constituents.

"Our firm is focused on customer satisfaction first and foremost," said Dana Meade, general manager and vice president of Zoomerang. "Just prior to implementing RightNow, we were exceeding our SLA goal of 24 hours by an average of three hours. Within one month of going live, we were reaching our SLAs. We're now at 20 hours and seeing that number continue to fall."

The greatest testament to RightNow's on demand CRM software solution value is that Zoomerang's customer satisfaction ratings specifically for support rose from 77 percent to their target of 85 percent in the first quarter following go-live. This also contributed to an increase in overall Zoomerang customer satisfaction which boosted that number to the company's goal of 95 percent, said Meade.

"RightNow quickly and tangibly improved our customer satisfaction scores," said Meade. "High customer satisfaction scores have proved to our senior management that RightNow was the right decision."

Greater efficiencies enabled by RightNow's knowledge base and business rules have allowed Zoomerang to maintain its support headcount despite Zoomerang's revenues growing 60 percent. Though the firm is just now looking to hire another support person, Meade estimates that deferring this headcount roughly a year saved them $80,000 in fully-burdened HR costs.

Revenues For List Business Soar 500 Percent

Closed incident surveys and the jump in customer satisfaction validated RightNow's on demand CRM software solution to MarketTools™ decision makers, and supported Meade's case to defer hiring another support person in favor of moving an experienced support person into a dedicated sales role. This person focuses on selling access to demographically and behaviorally targeted survey respondents called zSample, to assist professionals wishing to conduct a Zoomerang market survey to reach the right people. The payoff of a dedicated zSample salesperson: 500 percent revenue growth in one year. Moreover, Zoomerang's customer support people are better able to proactively drive sales opportunities to zSample because many of the routine, repetitive service questions are being handled by the RightNow knowledge base.

Meade and her team evaluated other solutions but found them lacking in the key areas of knowledge base and incident management. And with years of experience and good customer references behind it, the RightNow on demand CRM software solution was much more proven, she added.

At the time of initial go-live, Zoomerang was receiving about 1,800 emails and 250 phone calls a week. Today, emails are down to 1,000 a week despite their subscriber base growing by 25 percent, said Meade. Though phone calls have increased to 350 a week, this is due in part to increased business. "Before RightNow, we had no real way to measure phone calls, so the 'before' number of 250 is an estimate," she said.

RightNow's on demand CRM software solution enabled greater insight into Zoomerang customers and their support needs. Prior to RightNow, the support staff had no tracking system for incoming phone calls. Being able to open an incident in RightNow for each phone encounter proved to Zoomerang that it needed to invest in call center technology. The firm currently uses a third party call center application but opens incidents and tracks calls in RightNow.

"We're growing very quickly and are still able to increase customer satisfaction with RightNow," noted Meade. "Being that Zoomerang is an online tool, the kind of customer that uses it is comfortable online—so they like searching a knowledge base for answers themselves. And when they do call in, they like to have a 'high touch' encounter. Due to the offloading of many routine inquiries, we now have the time on the phone to tell people about our different offerings, such as the opportunity to buy their target lists from us."

Zoomerang uses the RightNow knowledge base to facilitate sales, as they are able to route requests to purchase survey names from the web to the zSample salesperson.

Zoomerang marketing associate Chelsea Bucoy loves that she can log into RightNow and gain insight into customers issues in real-time. Zoomerang's support team also checks recent incidents before calling a customer so they don't get blindsided. And if Bucoy, who is also responsible for Zoomerang's web site, sees a lot of incidents on a particular issue, she can add an answer or link pages to the knowledge base, saving the time and labor of building a web page.

"If we had to get an HTML programmer to do new web pages on our support site instead of just linking a page to the knowledge base or adding an answer, it would take at least five days," said Bucoy. "With RightNow, we can add an Answer or link a page easily."

RightNow's on demand CRM software solution has been so cost effective it has allowed Zoomerang to offer improved customer support to users of its free version, according to Kristen Aucoin, customer service manager. Customer profiling in RightNow allows Zoomerang to segment its user base and cost efficiently offer preferred service to paid customers and still address questions from its free user base. Prior to RightNow, the only way Zoomerang's customer service team could differentiate users was by giving paid members one email address and free members another one that went to support. Now, Zoomerang can easily see a customer's business status when an incident is logged.

When Aucoin was considering the job at Zoomerang, the firm's use of RightNow helped sell the company to her. "When I saw that Zoomerang was using RightNow, I thought 'this is a company that takes service seriously,'" said Aucoin.

Did the fact that Aucoin had experience implementing and using RightNow at a previous company enhance her position as a candidate? "Absolutely," said Meade, her boss.

Zoomerang opted for RightNow's hosted delivery model to offload any IT or system administrative overhead, which Meade says has further increased her own productivity and that of her staff.

"We love hosting. There's minimal need for system management on our part," said Meade. "The increased productivity has allowed us to touch our customers in a more proactive way."

RightNow has helped Aucoin debrief and train her staff. Canned responses within RightNow enable a quick turnaround of many service requests and the insight gained by easily viewing all customer interactions helps her coach the support team. "RightNow is a great example of effective technology in action," concluded Aucoin.

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About MarketTools (Zoomerang)

ZoomerangTM is an online survey tool that allows users to create customized surveys and analyze the critical feedback necessary to make important business decisions. It is simple to use and is typically employed by marketing or human resources professionals to assess the impact of various business initiatives or to test the response to a planned initiative. A product of MarketTools, Inc., a privately-held full-service research firm based in Mill Valley, California, Zoomerang (www.zoomerang.com) has customers in more than 200 countries since its launch in 1999.