University of Miami Deploys RightNow Support Solution to Improve Services and Lower Administrative Costs  (email this article)

RightNow Technologies (Company Profile, Past Stories, Case Studies), the world’s leading provider of hosted customer service and support solutions, today announced the University of Miami is deploying RightNow’s solutions to improve the quality of services it delivers to its constituencies and to reduce administrative costs.

RightNow will provide students and university employees with an easy-to-use, centralized online knowledge base where they can find immediate answers to their questions about the university’s policies and procedures.  RightNow will also provide advanced management for the university’s growing volume of email inquiries.

Without precise knowledge of exactly which university office is responsible for a question about a policy or procedure, students and faculty often have to visit several departments before finding the correct information.  By creating a common, centralized online information repository, the university’s RightNow-based system will eliminate these searches and make relevant answers available 24/7 via the web.  Another goal is also to eliminate a significant number of phone and email inquiries, reducing administrative workloads and allowing administration staff to focus on more critical tasks.

“RightNow is allowing us to fully leverage the web as a channel for delivering timely, accurate information to our various constituencies,” Bob Dale, director for continuous improvement at the University of Miami, said.  “The creation of an institutional knowledge base will also improve the efficiency and accuracy of the answers we provide to incoming email and phone inquiries as well.”

The university selected RightNow because of its robust features, competitive price and excellent track record of customer satisfaction.  RightNow has developed expertise among higher learning institutions, and the University of Miami joins a list of more than 50 university customers worldwide, including Monash University, University of New South Wales, University of Houston, University of Michigan and University of South Florida.

“Universities typically have information scattered across a wide range of functional units from the registrar’s office to the bursar’s office to an academic department, causing enormous barriers to university members searching for procedural information,” Sean Forbes, vice president of marketing and business development at RightNow, said.  “RightNow provides a powerful solution for bringing all this information together online where students and others can easily find information they need without undermining the integrity of the information managed by each department.”

About University of Miami
The University of Miami is the largest private research university in the southeastern United States. Nearly 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students from every state and more than 114 nations around the world call UM home during the academic semesters. The University has grown from its main location in the City of Coral Gables to the Medical campus located in Downtown Miami, the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science on Virginia Key, the John J. Koubek Center in Little Havana, the James L. Knight Center in Downtown Miami, and the South and Richmond campuses in southwest Miami-Dade county. With more than 9,400 full- and part-time faculty and staff, UM is among the top private employers in Miami-Dade County.


About RightNow Technologies
RightNow Technologies is the leading customer service and support solutions company that radically and rapidly improves the effectiveness of service and support operations with easy-to-implement/easy-to-use technology, replicable best practices drawn from the industry's broadest base of successful implementations, and engagement terms that create accountability for delivering quantifiable results.

RightNow has delivered these benefits to more than 1,000 customers worldwide such as: Air New Zealand, Ben & Jerry's, Briggs and Stratton, British Airways, Cisco, Dolby Laboratories, Inc., Electronic Arts, Pioneer, Raymarine, Remington, Sanyo, Specialized Bicycles, and more than 150 public sector clients including the Social Security Administration and the State of Florida.

Founded in 1997, RightNow has offices in Bozeman, Dallas, San Mateo, London, and Sydney, with an associated office in Tokyo.  RightNow's products are available in 17 languages worldwide.  For further information visit http://www.rightnow.com/.