Goals

• Fully leverage the internet as a customer service channel
• Reduce operational costs to address budget deficit of nearly $3 billion
• Bring email response times down from a peak of 15 days
• Increase constituent use of online resources 

Achievements

• Broad range of accurate answers available to customers 24 hours a day
• Call volume reduced
• Email response times reduced by 80-95%
• Analytics tools provide managers with valuable feedback about customer service issues

"Our relationship with RightNow has turned out to be about a lot more than just buying software, RightNow has proven its ability to work closely with our headquarters team and each of our individual subsidiaries to drive continuous improvements in customer service practices and processes.”

- Douglas Sussman, Director of Community Affairs, MTA

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is comprised of five independent business units, and each took a distinctive approach to answering questions and managing knowledge. MTA had created a 4,500-page website, but had yet to exploit the full potential. Call volume remained high, even though much of the information callers were seeking was on the website. No email address was posted, because a deluge of inquiries would have been unmanageable. MTA also found it critical that public input be actively incorporated into budget-cut decision making, but did not have an effective forum.

First, RightNow professional services representatives helped build cross-organizational consensus throughout the MTA's diverse groups. Almost immediately, the knowledge base solution drew 10,000 customer visits per month, and a subsequent re-design of the site drove traffic up to around 30,000 visits per month. A specially-designed webform was created to yield easy to tabulate feedback from the public. Nearly 4,000 public comments were received within 12 weeks of creation. Next, email routing was customized to each unit, and represented an 80-95 percent improvement over response times prior to the RightNow customer experience management solution implementation. 

Metropolitan Transportation Authority Support Site | Metropolitan Transportation Authority Homepage

About Metropolitan Transportation Authority

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) serves the needs of millions of users in the New York City area through five wholly-owned, but operationally independent subsidiaries: NYC Transit (which operates the city’s subways and buses), the Long Island Railroad, and Metro North (respectively the first and second largest commuter rail services in the Western Hemisphere), Long Island Bus and its Bridges and Tunnels. About eight million people a day use the MTA’s resources.