Faro Ensures Quality Of Products, Business Processes And Customer Experience With Unique Application Of RightNow’s On Demand CRM Technology
Goals
- Ease maintenance of ISO certification
- Unify worldwide problem identification and resolution
- Ensure availability of answers to both customers and internal staff
Achievements
- Tracking of quality issues anywhere in the world radically simplified
- Complete incident records speed problem resolution and enhance technical support
- Knowledge delivered at the point-of-need via phone, email and the web in five languages
- Contact center headcount remained flat while the business grew 30 percent
Precision is the key to success in computer-aided measurement. That’s why ISO certification is so important to market leader Faro Technologies. Its customers need to know that all of Faro’s business processes—from product design and manufacturing to order fulfillment and shipping—are as defect-free as possible, so that they can rely on Faro to fulfill their demanding measurement requirements. These customers also need fast, reliable technical support, since they are using highly technical products in conditions that are often challenging and unique.
Thanks to RightNow's CRM technology, Faro can achieve both its ISO quality objectives and its technical support objectives with greater ease and efficiency than ever. And it can do so seamlessly across all of its far-flung global operations.
“RightNow provides a powerful incident management solution for tracking and resolving all of our quality issues worldwide,” declares Faro’s senior total quality engineer, Tim Willingham. “It allows us to efficiently and reliably address the root-cause of problems that arise anywhere in our business, so that we can provide our customers with a competitively superior experience from their pre-sales inquiries through post-sales support.”
A Global On Demand ISO Compliance Environment
Faro’s ISO compliance spans all business processes that impact the delivery of a product to the customer. So whether there is a typo in a catalog or a defect in a product, the company has to track the problem to its root cause and fix it so it doesn’t happen again.
Prior to implementing RightNow's CRM technology to support its ISO efforts, Faro tracked its Quality Problem Reports (QPRs) with Excel spreadsheets. There were a lot of limitations to this approach. First, it was difficult to share these spreadsheets across the business. It was also easy to lose data if someone made a mistake or a system froze. There was no way to automate notification of appropriate process participants, and it was difficult to get insight into broader trends or emerging patterns in the types of problems Faro was encountering.
With RightNow's incident management solution, everything changed. Incidents anywhere in the world can now be immediately entered into a single global system, after which they can be easily tracked through to resolution by any authorized manager. Managers can automatically receive alerts when QPRs are first entered, when actions are taken on those QPRs, and/or when a given amount of time passes without any action being taken. Faro can also run reports that highlight at a glance which processes or products are generating the most problems.
RightNow also makes it easy to attach any type of file to a QPR—including emails, scanned paperwork, photos and video clips. Picture attachments have proven to be particularly useful for resolving issues. In some cases, pictures allow Faro managers to spot problems with products in the field—such as when several units shipped with their wiring harnesses on backwards. In other cases, they enable technicians to see that the issue lies with the customer—such as when a product is installed incorrectly.
RightNow also provides the documentation Faro needs when it has to bring up a quality issue to one of its suppliers. Again, the use of photos and other supporting materials helps facilitate the resolution of these issues.
“With RightNow, we can stay on top of every incident that arises, from the most trivial to the most serious, until it is fully and permanently resolved,” explains Willingham. “So we can aggressively and continuously improve every business process that impacts the customer experience.”
Accurate Answers, Anytime And Anywhere
Faro also uses RightNow for its more typical on demand CRM application as a customer service-and-support system. The system makes it easy for Faro to collect information from subject-matter experts across the company and maintain it in a knowledge base—where it can easily be found by both customers and internal staff members alike via keyword search, natural language queries, or a dynamically maintained “Top 20” list. This allows everyone to find answers to their questions 24 hours a day via the web. The knowledge base is also used by Faro’s support staff to ensure that the answers they give over the phone and by email are accurate and consistent.
The knowledge base is maintained in five languages, so all of Faro’s customers and its entire worldwide staff can get the information they need in a way they can understand.
In addition to improving Faro’s overall customer experience, RightNow’s web self-service capabilities have resulted in greater contact center efficiencies. While Faro’s business has grown at about a 30 percent clip annually, its contact center headcount has remained flat.
Faro has also linked its QPR and customer service systems so they can feed off of each other. So, for example, if a technical issue is discovered on a product, the company can quickly post a relevant knowledge item on its support site. Conversely, if a customer reports a problem to Faro via the customer service web form, it can be immediately entered into the QPR system to determine if remedial action is required to address the problem’s root cause.
“With RightNow, we can be very responsive to our customers—regardless of how they get in touch with us,” says Faro’s director of customer service, Brad Lloyd. “That responsiveness is an important competitive advantage and helps keep our customers loyal over the long term.”
Lloyd adds that RightNow itself has been a very responsive partner throughout its relationship with Faro. “RightNow definitely practices what it preaches when it comes to an excellent customer experience, and their hosting has been extremely reliable over the years,” Lloyd says. “The on demand delivery model is a great way to gain the advantages of a solution like RightNow’s—without having to deal with any of the ownership hassles and costs that usually come with an internal software implementation.”
Faro Technologies Support Site | Faro Technologies Homepage
About Faro Technologies
With more than 10,800 installations and 4,900 customers globally, Faro Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: FARO) and its international subsidiaries design, develop, and market software and portable, computerized measurement devices. The company’s products allow manufacturers to perform 3-D inspections of parts and assemblies on the shop floor. This helps eliminate manufacturing errors, and thereby increases productivity and profitability for a variety of industries in Faro’s worldwide customer base. Faro Technologies is ISO-9001:2000 certified and is accredited for the ISO-17025 Calibration Laboratory Standard.
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