RightNow Helps Pioneer Drastically Reduce Email Volumes While Increasing Contact Center Efficiencies
Goals
- To increase efficiency without growing staff head count
- Need to improve service levels
- High level of brochure requests needed to be managed
Achievements
- Email response times decreased 30 percent
- 95.6 percent of customers find what they need on web site
- 65 percent fewer incoming emails
As a genuine world leader in audio/video entertainment, Pioneer has spent almost 70 years growing a customer base around the globe. Since its founder, Nozomu Matsumoto first developed the A-8 dynamic speaker in Japan in 1937, the company has established sales headquarters globally.
Its range of more than 250 products, including car and visual entertainment; PC, business and display; Hi-Fi; DJ equipment and DVD products have proved universally popular. Living up to its name, Pioneer also hit the headlines by introducing numerous 'firsts', including the world's first GPS car navigation system, component car stereo, DVD/LD/CD player and XGA plasma display.
However, with the company's tremendous success and ever-increasing numbers of customers, it became clear the hosted CRM solution for dealing with customer enquiries was in need of a technological revolution to match the reputation of the products.
Pioneer founded its Slough-based customer relations team in 1989 as a one-stop solution for the entire company to provide support for consumers on sales, marketing and service enquiries. In addition, the five-strong team took responsibility for administration of the firm's Car Audio Theft Scheme and was fast becoming over-stretched.
As Colin Bartlett, general manager, service for all Pioneer's consumer divisions explains: "The number of sales Pioneer continued to generate meant we were unable to cope with the volume of customer enquiries. With increased incoming and outgoing calls, response times and repetitive emails, we felt we were not exceeding expectations of service and recognized the need to change the situation."
The growth of the internet and the development of Pioneer's own website provided the foundation for the solution, RightNow. The predominant feature of RightNow is a proprietary, self-learning knowledge base of answers, which customers access quickly, immediately finding what they are looking for.
Users can easily escalate to email if the exact answers are not available. Emails are automatically routed to the most appropriate person so replies are sent quickly and the answer added to the knowledge base, making it easier for customers to find answers to similar queries in the future.
Bartlett continues: "We needed a solution to free up our highly-trained customer services staff to deal with more complex problems. At the time, they were inundated with emails and most of them were repetitive, mundane requests, such as for spare parts or replacements for lost manuals. We simply had to improve our response times."
An Intelligent Hosted CRM Solution
On Pioneer's criteria for a hosted CRM solution, Bartlett says: "Rather than outsourcing, we sought an intelligent email system to deal effectively with these routine enquiries so our operators could dedicate more time to end-users' technical queries via all mediums, such as fax, phone and letter in addition to email. If our customers could find the answer they needed straight away on our website, it would reduce the number of enquiries warranting intervention from us."
RightNow was one of a number of solutions Pioneer considered. It was impressed by the way the RightNow knowledge base allowed content to be customer-driven and the simple user interface.
"One of the reasons we selected RightNow was the fact that it would scale up as and when we decided to develop new levels of service. For example, as well as supporting our customer contact level, it could be extended to our planned password-protected levels for dealers and specialized service centers."
This password-protected service level will provide dealers information on products, purchase histories, credit limits and product information, with RightNow holding information on repairs, servicing and technical specifications.
In addition, RightNow's hosted CRM solution powers an interactive search function and has automated Pioneer's brochure request system, which previously spanned six sites. It now stores all brochures as PDFs in a single location in the knowledge base so customers can download them when required.
With the knowledge base available 24 hours a day, Pioneer has recorded 96.5 percent of sessions do not lead to email as customers help themselves to information from the website, whenever it is convenient to them.
"We saw the benefits from day one," says Bartlett. "RightNow completed the installation well ahead of schedule and it went live on the evening of the fourth day. The next morning, even with just ten answers in the knowledge base, there was a marked decrease in emails and we now receive 65 percent less than we did."
A further benefit of the hosted CRM solution is it continues to become more efficient. The knowledge base now lists more than 200 question and answer pairs and is completely expandable so new questions are added to the site as they come up.
Customers also have the opportunity to check the progress of their requests in RightNow's 'My History' section. Here, they find the status of their enquiries, modify Answer notifications, update their personal profiles and even access restricted information on product features.
The massive reduction in emails means comparable savings of labor costs, especially considering an alternative of recruiting more highly-qualified staff to the customer relations team. Further potential for return on investment is provided by the fact that RightNow hosts the system, which saves Pioneer considerable administration costs.
Another benefit is the consistent email statistics RightNow's hosted CRM solution provides. Pioneer receives feedback on its response times, resolution rates, the type of contact made (such as requests, complaints, praise, etc), efficiency reports and volume of contacts dealt with allowing them to closely monitor customer satisfaction.
So far this feedback is positive. "In addition to the reduction in emails, we're delighted we've cut our average response time from around three days to just 24 working hours," says Bartlett. "RightNow's system makes our work so much easier and more efficient and we plan to roll it out across our entire dealer network. Moreover, it is instrumental in delivering the level of service our customers expect and deserve."
Pioneer Support Site | Pioneer Homepage
About Pioneer GB Limited
Manufacturer of car electronics (stereos, speakers, navigation systems), which are sold to retailers and automobile manufacturers. Pioneer also makes video equipment (projection TVs, DVD players, and laser karaoke systems) and audio products (stereo receivers, amplifiers, CD players, speakers systems, and the like). It also produces audiovisual software (DVDs, laser discs, CD-ROMs).
Greg Gianforte