Telecom New Zealand Improves Customer Experience with RightNow Chat
Announcement posted by RightNow Technologies 28 Apr 2010
Chat Channel Boosts Online Sales and Service As Website Visits Increase
Wellington, 28 April 2010 - Telecom New Zealand has launched RightNow Chat, a communication channel that provides customers with a new, permanent sales touch point across the company’s website, www.telecom.co.nz.
In its fifth week live on the website, figures generated around this service have exceeded all expectations with an average sales conversion rate of 21 per cent. This compares favourably with 3.5 per cent for general voice channels.
The chat service is an expansion to Telecom’s existing contact centre channels provided by customer experience solutions provider, RightNow.
Chat for Service
RightNow Chat is an interactive online chat function that provides customers with the opportunity to connect directly in an “instant-messenger” type conversation with a service representative. These web-based enquiries, numbering hundreds of interactions each week, would previously have been handled by phone calls into the company’s contact centre.
Chat for Sales
Telecom.co.nz - http://www.telecom.co.nz - is a key touch point for Telecom customers to facilitate evaluation and consideration of products and services. Chat enables customers to ask any last minute questions and facilitates the purchasing process in a way that saves them time and effort.
The RightNow deployment follows a successful trial involving the introduction of live two-way chat functionality across the Telecom Broadband and Total Home sales and service areas of the Telecom NZ website between August and September 2009.
Chat also received significantly higher customer satisfaction scores when compared to voice-channels. Since launching the live Chat service, customers who have used the tool provided some highly positive feedback with an average service rating of 7.4 out of ten and anecdotal evidence that supports this positivity.
Russell Stephens, Head of Channel Planning and Operations, Telecom NZ says: “As New Zealand’s largest telco, Telecom has over 12 million interactions with customers every month. Chat is an important new contact channel for our customers and for us. Customers can now engage in real-time, two-way communication with our agents without having to pick up the phone or walk into a store.”
Visitors to the Telecom NZ website can initiate an immediate chat with a sales or service representative by clicking on the ‘chat’ tile located on various product pages. Each incoming Chat message is queued and assessed by the RightNow system, which then prioritises and directs the messages to the most appropriate available agent.
Telecom NZ has used RightNow Web Experience <http://www.rightnow.com/cx-suite-web-experience.php> since 2005 to provide customers with a rich, easy to use web self-service solution. It selected RightNow Chat due to its ease of customisation and use, and the speed with which it could be deployed. RightNow’s exclusive NZ partner, Datamail <http://www.datamail.co.nz/> , consulted on deployment best practices and has provided technical support throughout.
Mr. Stephens adds: “The results for Chat so far have been very positive. For example, customers who visited the Telecom Total Home webpage and used Chat were six or seven times more likely to purchase than through our standard voice channels.”
About Telecom New Zealand
Telecom is New Zealand's largest telecommunications service provider, and touches almost every New Zealander through the range of products and services it provides, and the work it does within its communities.
It employs almost 7,000 people in New Zealand and around 1,600 more in Australia and around the world. You can learn more about Telecom by visiting its online Corporate Review <http://corporatereview.telecom.co.nz/page/2/Home2009.html> .
About RightNow Technologies
RightNow is helping rid the world of bad experiences one consumer interaction at a time, seven million times a day. RightNow CX, the customer experience suite, helps organisations deliver exceptional customer experiences across the web, social networks and contact centres, all delivered via the cloud. With more than eight billion customer interactions delivered, RightNow is the customer experience fabric for nearly 2,000 organisations around the globe. To learn more about RightNow, go to www.rightnow.com
In its fifth week live on the website, figures generated around this service have exceeded all expectations with an average sales conversion rate of 21 per cent. This compares favourably with 3.5 per cent for general voice channels.
The chat service is an expansion to Telecom’s existing contact centre channels provided by customer experience solutions provider, RightNow.
Chat for Service
RightNow Chat is an interactive online chat function that provides customers with the opportunity to connect directly in an “instant-messenger” type conversation with a service representative. These web-based enquiries, numbering hundreds of interactions each week, would previously have been handled by phone calls into the company’s contact centre.
Chat for Sales
Telecom.co.nz - http://www.telecom.co.nz - is a key touch point for Telecom customers to facilitate evaluation and consideration of products and services. Chat enables customers to ask any last minute questions and facilitates the purchasing process in a way that saves them time and effort.
The RightNow deployment follows a successful trial involving the introduction of live two-way chat functionality across the Telecom Broadband and Total Home sales and service areas of the Telecom NZ website between August and September 2009.
Chat also received significantly higher customer satisfaction scores when compared to voice-channels. Since launching the live Chat service, customers who have used the tool provided some highly positive feedback with an average service rating of 7.4 out of ten and anecdotal evidence that supports this positivity.
Russell Stephens, Head of Channel Planning and Operations, Telecom NZ says: “As New Zealand’s largest telco, Telecom has over 12 million interactions with customers every month. Chat is an important new contact channel for our customers and for us. Customers can now engage in real-time, two-way communication with our agents without having to pick up the phone or walk into a store.”
Visitors to the Telecom NZ website can initiate an immediate chat with a sales or service representative by clicking on the ‘chat’ tile located on various product pages. Each incoming Chat message is queued and assessed by the RightNow system, which then prioritises and directs the messages to the most appropriate available agent.
Telecom NZ has used RightNow Web Experience <http://www.rightnow.com/cx-suite-web-experience.php> since 2005 to provide customers with a rich, easy to use web self-service solution. It selected RightNow Chat due to its ease of customisation and use, and the speed with which it could be deployed. RightNow’s exclusive NZ partner, Datamail <http://www.datamail.co.nz/> , consulted on deployment best practices and has provided technical support throughout.
Mr. Stephens adds: “The results for Chat so far have been very positive. For example, customers who visited the Telecom Total Home webpage and used Chat were six or seven times more likely to purchase than through our standard voice channels.”
About Telecom New Zealand
Telecom is New Zealand's largest telecommunications service provider, and touches almost every New Zealander through the range of products and services it provides, and the work it does within its communities.
It employs almost 7,000 people in New Zealand and around 1,600 more in Australia and around the world. You can learn more about Telecom by visiting its online Corporate Review <http://corporatereview.telecom.co.nz/page/2/Home2009.html> .
About RightNow Technologies
RightNow is helping rid the world of bad experiences one consumer interaction at a time, seven million times a day. RightNow CX, the customer experience suite, helps organisations deliver exceptional customer experiences across the web, social networks and contact centres, all delivered via the cloud. With more than eight billion customer interactions delivered, RightNow is the customer experience fabric for nearly 2,000 organisations around the globe. To learn more about RightNow, go to www.rightnow.com