University College at Texas Tech University Uses RightNow to Gain a Competitive Edge in Student Engagement
RightNow Powers Social and Mobile Customer Experience Solutions for Texas Tech
RESTON, Va. (October 21, 2011) – University College at Texas Tech University uses RightNow CX, the customer experience suite, to power exceptional student experiences. RightNow (NASDAQ: RNOW) helps higher education organizations, such as University College, to actively implement programs that engage students via the channels they prefer.
Today, learning institutions face a daunting challenge: overcome budget and operational constraints while driving recruitment, improving retention and engaging alumni. To address this challenge, many public, private and online learning institutions are working to establish a meaningful presence in student’s existing online communities.
According to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, e-mail is set to become yesterday’s technology.
- Social media and mobile technology is fast replacing e-mail as the preferred method of communication for students.
- Facebook boasts more than 800 million active users spending more than 3 billion hours per month on the site.
- Over 100 million people access Facebook everyday via a mobile device.
For higher education, Facebook has emerged as an essential component of the student experience strategy. Integration with online student hubs is a vital part of the recruitment and retention process. Higher education institutions can no longer risk the repercussions of providing mediocre student experiences and must engage students in an environment that yields instant access to information.
“In today’s world, parents, students and administrators are accustomed to communicating and shopping online. With the amount of time students spend on Facebook, Twitter and mobile devices, it is critical for educational institutions to take advantage of these communication tools to meet student needs and recruit potential students. If they don’t, universities will lose candidates to a school that does.”
Kevin Paschuck, vice president, public sector, RightNow
University College at Texas Tech University Uses RightNow CX for Facebook to Learn from Students
Using RightNow CX for Facebook, University College at Texas Tech University extended its customer experience strategy to the world’s largest social network, giving students an additional option for interacting with the institution, directly from a customer service tab on University College’s Facebook page.
- Students browse suggested topics and perform keyword searches on content in both the knowledge base and community, to find answers without leaving Facebook.
- Students can help each other through threaded discussions. Best answers are marked for future reference, while unanswered questions escalate to the agent desktop for further assistance.
- If a student requires the need to ask a private question, the inquiry goes directly to the College’s contact center agent for follow-up either by e-mail or via Facebook.
“There was an opportunity to extend our reach, streamline efforts and maximize our student service footprint. We realized that we had to partner with a company that could design and implement a system to give us the ability to service students with a truly integrated multi-channel contact center strategy, and RightNow provided the solution.”
Michele Moskos, enrollment services director, University College at Texas Tech University
Enhancing the Student Experience with RightNow Mobile
University College at Texas Tech University overhauled its student service system to provide mobile capabilities and to adapt to today’s student populations using RightNow Mobile. Now, prospective and current students can access college application information, program overviews and course requirements from any mobile device. Whether from a desktop, laptop or mobile device, students can tap into a common knowledge base, powered by RightNow.
This allowed University College to streamline processes, decrease expenses, and automate and manage student recruitment, retention and graduation activities. These customer-centric efforts resulted in an initial 99.1 percent web self-service rate and a 19 percent decrease in call center activity, concurrently reducing costs and freeing agents to manage priority tasks.
About RightNow
RightNow is helping rid the world of bad experiences one consumer interaction at a time, eight million times a day. RightNow CX, the customer experience suite, helps organizations deliver exceptional customer experiences across the web, social networks and contact centers, all delivered via the cloud. With more than ten billion customer interactions delivered, RightNow is the customer experience fabric for nearly 2,000 organizations around the globe. To learn more about RightNow, go to www.rightnow.com.
RightNow is a registered trademark of RightNow Technologies, Inc. NASDAQ is a registered trademark of The NASDAQ Stock Market LLC.
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Source: RightNow