RightNow Technologies (Company
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Studies), the world’s leading provider of hosted customer service and support solutions, today announced Fordham University has successfully implemented
RightNow’s award-winning technology to give students immediate answers to their most common administrative questions 24/7 via a web-based knowledge base. By
this deployment, the University has improved its ability to serve current and prospective students, while simultaneously it reduced the number of phone calls and emails
departmental staff has to answer on a daily basis.
Fordham’s RightNow-powered system brings together a wide range of information about admissions, registration, financial aid, student employment and other topics in a
centralized, easily searchable online knowledge base. Before deployment of this common information system, students would often search for answers by calling
various departments, emailing various addresses or browsing various areas of the University’s web site. Students can now look in one place for the administrative
information they need. Currently there are more than 330 answers online. During the month of October 2003 alone, these knowledge base answers were
viewed 21,355 times.
“RightNow provides a very powerful platform for authoring and publishing information in a way that is easy for untrained users to master,” Eugene Lingner, Senior Associate
Director of Technology for Fordham’s Enrollment Group, said. “Plus, RightNow has been extraordinarily helpful in maximizing our technology investment by coming to
us with creative ideas to increase the product usage and improve our service processes.”
Fordham also uses the RightNow solution to manage students’ email inquiries. Inquiries are now tracked and automatically routed based on workflow rules, improving
responsiveness and bringing a new level of accountability to the process. The same answers that students can find online are used to answer emails, ensuring that
students get consistent, accurate information regardless of the channel they use to seek their answers.
Fordham selected RightNow for its robust functionality, ease of use, and hosted delivery model—which enables Fordham to enjoy the full benefits of the technology without
having to purchase, install or maintain the software and associated hardware internally. Because RightNow hosts the system, the University was able to implement it
quickly and cost-effectively.
Fordham joins the growing number of universities across the world embracing RightNow as a strategic platform for improving the quality of student service and the efficiency
of administrative operations. Those universities include Azusa Pacific University, North Carolina State University, the University of Michigan, the University of Miami
and the University of South Florida.
“Despite their complex information management needs, universities often lack effective, centralized systems where students and other university members can quickly and
easily find answers to their everyday administrative questions,” Sean Forbes, vice president of Marketing and Business Development at RightNow, said. “RightNow
has rapidly and undeniably emerged as the solution-of-choice for addressing this problem for higher education institutions, making life easier for students and university
staffs all across the country.”
Fordham University’s RightNow-powered system can be viewed at http://www.fordham.edu/faq.html.
About Fordham University
Founded in 1841, Fordham is New York City’s Jesuit University. It has residential campuses in the Bronx, Manhattan and Tarrytown, and the Louis Calder Center Biological
Field Station in Armonk, N.Y.
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, New Jersey, London and Sydney, with an associated office in Tokyo. RightNows products
are available in 17 languages worldwide. For further information visit http://www.rightnow.com/.
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