RightNow Helps State University Extension Programs Across the U.S. Fulfill Their Public Service Missions (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 successful deployment of RightNow’s solutions by several state universities in support of their mission-based cooperative extension programs.  Colorado State University, Iowa State University and University of Kentucky are taking advantage of RightNow’s web self-service and knowledge base solutions to provide comprehensive, accurate answers to constituents’ most important questions via Web, email and phone, efficiently and cost effectively.

These extension programs—funded cooperatively by federal state, and county governments—are designed to allow local citizens to benefit from the research and expertise of land-grant universities.

Colorado State University uses RightNow’s web self-service solution to power AnswerLink.info—a web information resource that enables Colorado residents to obtain answers to common questions about home, garden, health, pets and more.  If the information the resident seeks isn’t available on the site, the RightNow solution allows the resident to submit the question to CSU Cooperative Extension program experts.  
After the resident’s question is answered, the question-answer pair can then be added to the AnswerLink.info’s knowledge base for future use.

Because of the self-learning nature of RightNow’s knowledge base technology, the solution becomes more effective with increased constituent usage.  In the first year the RightNow solution was in place, CSU grew its knowledge base items from 1,000 to more than 4,000 and is now able to satisfy 95 percent of the inquiries it receives without involving a human assistance.

“RightNow has empowered us to deliver better service at lower cost to residents throughout the state, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Wendy Douglass, marketing director for Colorado State Cooperative Extension, said.  “More than that, RightNow is helping us build stronger relationships with our state’s residents by allowing us to better meet their daily educational requests and empower them to make greater use of the information resource we offer.”

Iowa State University uses RightNow for its www.foodsafetyanswers.org site, which provides consumers and food industry professionals with up-to-date information from universities, government agencies, corporations and food industry associations.  The solution allows more than 100 volunteer experts from state and local health departments, the federal government, academia and the industry to collaborate and provide answers to food safety questions.  At the University of Kentucky, RightNow has been deployed in support of the Equine Extension program to answer questions about horse health and nutrition.  The site, www.horsequest.info, draws on expertise from all thirteen Southern Region land-grant universities.   

Extension programs benefit considerably from RightNow’s hosted delivery model.  By taking advantage of the hosting option, the programs realize the business benefits of RightNow’s software without the upfront costs of hardware and databases and the long-term costs of server administration and software management.  

“State university extension programs make a substantive contribution to the quality of people’s lives and the economies of the industries they serve,” Sean Forbes, vice president of Marketing and Business Development at RightNow, said.  “We are delighted to see so many of them embracing our technology in the furtherance of their respective missions—and achieving such tangible results.”