RightNow – On Demand CRM Software

RightNow's On Demand CRM Solutions Help Packeteer Sustain Rapid Global Business Growth

Goals

• Deliver top-notch 24/7 technical support services to a rapidly growing customer base with optimum cost-efficiency
• Ensure customer loyalty and retention by proactively making certain users get maximum business value from company's technology
• Gain maximum visibility into service-related issues across all communication channels

Achievements

• Superb technical support provided worldwide via phone, email and the web
• Flat headcount despite 25 percent growth in Service and Support business
• Robust on demand CRM functionality deployed without adding to IT costs or workloads

Packeteer knows it takes more than great products to sustain profitable business growth on a global basis. To succeed in the highly competitive high-tech sector, you also have to be able to create strong relationships with corporate customers around the world. That means more than just delivering great technical support 24 hours a day. It also means taking proactive steps to ensure your customers are satisfied and get maximum business value from the solutions you've sold them.

With the help of RightNow's on demand CRM solutions, Packeteer has successfully achieved these objectives. RightNow allows Packeteer to fully leverage a worldwide tech support team to provide accurate answers to customers' questions by phone, email and on the web any time of the day or night. RightNow also automates key follow-up tasks so no customer falls through the cracks. And, by providing rich reporting capabilities, RightNow empowers managers to quickly pinpoint opportunities for further improving the Packeteer customer experience.

Initially, Packeteer relied on a homegrown CRM tool built on Filemaker Pro, and Packeteer's IT staff had created applications for trouble-ticketing, return merchandise authorization (RMA) and other customer service functions.

But those tools simply weren't robust enough for the requirements of a globally expanding market leader. "To deliver the level of service our customers needed on an international scale, we had to upgrade our technology environment," recalls Sonya Andreae, Packeteer's director of Customer Operations. "So we began looking at options that would grow with us."

Packeteer's evaluation process was extensive. The capabilities and costs of leading solutions were compared and contrasted—and in the end, Packeteer selected RightNow's on demand CRM solutions. "RightNow's ability to improve the quality and responsiveness of customer support across all of our communication channels was extremely compelling," says Andreae. "Its pure web-based architecture also made it an attractive platform for deployment across all of our international locations."

Those locations include the Netherlands, Canada, Japan, Australia and Hong Kong, as well as corporate headquarters in Cupertino, California. When a Packeteer customer calls with a question, the incident can be routed to whichever office is open at that time. Packeteer can thus offer 24/7 telephone assistance without running a full three-shift rotation at any of its locations. Email workloads can also be shifted across all locations, allowing workloads to be distributed evenly around the world and ensuring that each incident is handled by the first available technician. And its RightNow knowledge base ensures that every answer customers get is consistently accurate and up-to-date regardless of whom they speak to or which channel—phone, email or web—they use to get it.

Best of all, RightNow's hosted delivery model allows Packeteer to operate its multiple overseas offices under this "follow the sun" model without requiring it to build and maintain a lot of costly global IT infrastructure.

"RightNow allows us to situate technical services regionally, while still enabling us to function globally," states Andreae. "That's critical for a company like ours that is competing in international markets."

Automation And Insight

In addition to enabling Packeteer to quickly respond to customers' questions, RightNow also enables the company to be proactive in ensuring customer satisfaction. For example, if Packeteer doesn't hear from a customer within 45 days of their purchase, a RightNow business rule automatically notifies an engineer to see if there is a problem. "We don't want customers to go for months without getting a return on their investment," says Andreae. "So it's important for us to take the initiative and help them get their implementation going if it's stalled."

Packeteer also uses RightNow's "notify on change" functionality to proactively alert customers about critical security issues. In addition to optimizing application performance and network efficiency, Packeteer's technology can also help customers combat a variety of network attacks. When the company gets information about a new type of attack—and determines how its solutions can be of use in neutralizing that attack—it simply updates a special knowledge item in its RightNow knowledge base. Customers who have "subscribed" to that knowledge item are thereby automatically sent a notification about the attack and countermeasure.

"True CRM involves more than just waiting passively for your customers to provide you with an opportunity to satisfy them," notes Andreae. "With RightNow's on demand CRM solutions, we can put in place policies and processes that show the customer we are genuinely committed to their success."

Packeteer also takes full advantage of the data captured in its RightNow on demand CRM soluitions both to optimize customer service performance and to ensure that other areas of the business are responsive to its customers' needs. In fact, to extract maximum business intelligence from that data, Packeteer had RightNow write an ODBC connection to the Brio reporting tools it already had in place.

Using both native RightNow reports and the Brio tool, Packeteer can quickly see if specific issues are causing customer grief. These reports also help identify which customers may need additional training. They also allow managers to uncover bottlenecks in support processes and/or shortcomings in individual support engineers. Customized reports are distributed to managers, directors and VPs across the company. This ensures that all business decisions are based on the feedback captured from customers via all communication channels.

"With RightNow, we can respond more quickly and intelligently to our customers' needs," says Andreae. "We definitely know right away when something is bothering them, so we can fix the problem and confirm that our fix was effective."

By effectively leveraging its worldwide technical staff, by heading off problems before they multiply, and by capitalizing on the other high-value capabilities RightNow's on demand CRM solutions provide, Packeteer is doing more than just delivering great service. It's also managing to keep headcount flat despite a 25 percent growth in its service and support business over the last 12 months.

"RightNow has made us extremely efficient," says Andreae. "The hard ROI we've reaped from that increased efficiency alone would be worth its cost, even without the improved quality and customer satisfaction."

Andreae has also been impressed with the way RightNow has provided its own technical support services to Packeteer. "RightNow's tech support team is responsive, professional and very smart," she says. "The 24/7 support they provide is important for us, since we're running a 24/7 operation ourselves. They've definitely proven themselves to be a great partner in our effort to deliver world-class service."

Packeteer Support Site | Packeteer Homepage

About Packeteer

Founded in 1996, Packeteer, Inc., (NASDAQ: PKTR) is the global market leader in Application Traffic Management for wide area networks. Deployed at more than 7,000 companies in 50 countries, Packeteer solutions empower IT organizations with patented network visibility, control, and acceleration capabilities delivered through a family of intelligent, scalable appliances. Packeteer solutions are sold through a global network of resellers, distributors and system integrators, and are backed by a 24/7 global service and support organization.