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The Canberra Institute of Technology Deploys RightNow to Enhance Student Support Services

Announcement posted by RightNow Technologies 20 May 2009

Sydney, Australia – (May 20, 2009) - RightNow Technologies (NASDAQ: RNOW) today announced that the Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT), a leading national provider of education services, has deployed RightNow’s on demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution.

Marketed as “CIT Ask Us”, the system supports staff, students and prospective students by providing easy online access to consistent and accurate information, regardless of their location and time zone. By providing this type of access to essential information, CIT is able to provide an enhanced student support service.

Ms Peta Graham, CIT’s CRM Project Manager, explains: “Although students were previously able to call, email or visit the student centre, the information we were able to provide was not always consistent or timely. The generic email address had no client service response-time standard, while our website only provided basic information. In addition, messages left on our answering service may not always have been responded to in the timeframe required by the student.”

CIT is the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) region's leading training organisation providing career opportunities and partnering with industry and individuals to develop a skilled community. The organisation offers more than 400 programmes to 22,000 local, national and international students. With such a vast curriculum and large student population, CIT required a tried and tested solution. It reviewed several solutions but chose RightNow based on the positive feedback it received from discussions with other higher education institutions in both Australia and overseas.

“Many of these tertiary institutions were RightNow users and had seen clear benefits to their organisation. In addition, we spoke with Canberra Connect, the provider of ACT government services and a RightNow user. Their response was so positive and confirmed the benefits of deploying RightNow. As a result, RightNow was selected,” says Graham.

The deployment is a multi-phase project. The first phase focused on building a hosted staff knowledge foundation which went live within weeks.

“We needed to get our employees on board early on from a cultural perspective and so a pilot was released internally. This enabled us to gain internal user feedback prior to rolling out RightNow to the student community,” says Graham.

In the second stage of deployment, CIT populated the knowledge foundation with items of interest to future students such as term dates, fees and enrolment times. Now in its final phase of deployment, current students also have access to the system.

With all three phases complete, all of CIT’s main audiences can interrogate the intelligent knowledge repository and gain immediate, accurate answers to their enquiry. Enhancements to the deployment are continuous.

Last month, capabilities to ‘Ask a Question’ of the knowledge foundation were added so that the current student population can securely request information pertaining to their own individual requirements and gain a tailored response.

In the future, CIT also plans to enhance knowledge items stored in the foundation by adding questions relating to student recognition of prior learning. This information will then enable our administrators to evaluate which courses a student needs to complete based on past experience in other educational institutions where courses may have been part completed.

There is also the potential in the long-term for RightNow to be deployed in the management of tracking student applications from the initial enquiry through to potential admission.

While active marketing of CIT Ask Us commences next month, CIT has already exceeded its objectives in terms of hits to the three sites. The staff site has received more than 27,000 hits, while the current student site has reached 700 hits and future students upwards of 5,500 hits.

“While students have given us resounding positive feedback in their ability to easily search and find information to common questions, our long-term objective is to assist students with more and more questions. In addition, we also want our staff to add information they collect from their involvement in industry.”

“RightNow is a key pillar in our plan to be a dynamic, responsive and leading-edge vocational education and training practice organisation. As part of this, RightNow enables students and staff to access relevant services which suit their requirement at their own individual moment of need,” adds Graham.

About RightNow Technologies
RightNow (NASDAQ: RNOW) delivers on demand CRM solutions that help consumer-centric organisations deliver great customer experiences. Approximately 1,900 corporations and government agencies worldwide depend on RightNow to better meet the needs of those they serve. RightNow is headquartered in Bozeman, Montana. For more information, please visit RightNow Technologies - http://www.rightnow.com/index.php?cex=1744

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