Helix Business Solutions

Case Studies

RightNow® Case Study 1: An urgent need for a flexible inbound sales system as a result of the "Do Not Call" law

The Challenge - The federal "Do Not Call" bill had just passed and the company had to replace 800,000 annual outbound telemarketing sales with a new inbound direct mail strategy. This new sales channel would send out 60 million direct mail pieces but the company lacked a system to handle the resulting inbound calls.

The solution had to effectively manage an extraordinarily high volume of sales leads, efficiently allow the sales reps to price and help the customer, and seamlessly transfer the completed sale to the existing delivery system.

Our Strategy

The Helix team was able to accomplish all of this using the RightNow®CRM Suite™ as a foundation, custom complementary sales tools, and bi-directional integration with the company's backend system.

To ensure that a major initiative of this size would be successful a regional pilot was quickly developed and deployed with all levels of operations, sales, and IT closely involved. Communication among this cross-functional team was key and allowed them to adjust the solution to the evolving business requirements. The flexible, smart, and practical Helix development philosophy, combined with RightNow®'s SaaS (software as a Service) functionality, allowed this project to go from "idea to implementation" in less than five months.

The Result

This truly was a complete solution including business case initiation, system development, facility procurement and build out, as well as hands-on training at implementation. Some of the features of this solution included:

  • Custom sales scripting and knowledgebase integration
  • Business-unique shopping cart & pricing module
  • Integration with Google Earth Pro for property level measurements
  • Telecom infrastructure design and cutover management
  • Lead and sales management integration and reporting, and more.

After a successful pilot the system was rolled out to hundreds of sales agents in a variety of locations while significantly improving all KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). This solution was developed to support any sales model from a single agent location to a regional sales facility or a national call center. Due to the flexibility of the solution all three methods were ultimately deployed which allowed the business to evolve into their new inbound sales channel. This project exemplifies the Helix methodology of developing solutions that adapt to the business need with flexibility and scalability built in.

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RightNow® Case Study 2: A sales automation tool for 700+ users that had to be good, fast, and affordable

The Challenge - A $1B national commercial sales organization urgently needed to automate their outdated sales process with a robust, scalable system that could be implemented quickly and without interrupting their sales cycle.

The solution had to effectively manage an extraordinarily high volume of sales leads, efficiently allow the sales reps to price and help the customer, and seamlessly transfer the completed sale to the existing delivery system.

Our Strategy

The Helix team employed their Customer Easy™ methodology to propose a solution that considered all the client's systems and the best-in-class applications currently available in the market. This resulted in a partnership with RightNow® to produce a system that would provide a seamless transition for the sales department's 700+ users.

Customer Easy™ : Good, Fast, and Affordable
To do this, an easy-to-learn (consumable) user interface was critical to help the staff adapt to a new, more formal and standardized process. Intuitive design, a practical navigation that accommodated "tabbing" or "point-and-click", and clean, crisp workspaces were centerpiece concepts of the new system. The team moved from the concept phase to the pilot program in less than 120 days. The new system was fully deployed, with our support, in 200+ branch locations just two months later. The Helix team led over 30 on-site training sessions around the U.S. and personally hosted more than 50 instructional webinars. As a part of our full Software Development Lifecycle and Support service, Helix also provided hardware installation and application support.

The Result

The final application was feature-packed, centered on the RightNow® console-based Sales Module and included:

  • Tight integration with their legacy system including conversion of organization, contacts, and opportunities
  • Integrated shopping cart including bundled offers and tax/discount calculation
  • Templates for auto-generated contracts
  • Google Earth Pro integration
  • Approval routing with multiple methods of communication
  • Legacy customer on-boarding that eliminates 98% of the previous manual customer entry processes
  • Comprehensive sales and pipeline reporting and analytics, and more.

The project completely exemplified the value of a Customer Easy™ solution. This system was the most affordable option considered and yet it still resulted in a remarkable return-on investment. As importantly, the professionalism and process of the Helix-RightNow® team created goodwill with the client and excellent product acceptance from the users.

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RightNow® Case Study 3: Overhauling the web presence for a $1B national service firm

The Challenge - "Our national website is a mess and I've just promised the board that we will re-launch it at the beginning of the year!" announced the president of a $1B+ service company.

The president set a deadline of only 60 days to completely transform a static, outdated web presence into a feature-rich customer experience that would enhance the company's brand identity and increase potential sales.

Our Strategy

The Helix team immediately established a partnership with RightNow® to ensure that the new site exceeded expectations and was completed on time and within the budget.

We worked closely with the company's marketing team and a national advertising group to create a new look for the site and build in bold, new functionality, including: Ask a Question; FAQ; Search; Branch Locator; Submit a Lead; and My Stuff. Search optimization and content management were also required in order to fuel the external and internal search engines.

The project also required that the team deliver new, break- through service information. The redesign enabled existing customers to see all of their service and payment history including the full detail on any question, issue, or inquiry. This was a complex effort that required the integration of legacy data for more than two million active customers.

Managing No Call/No Contact lists is a critical function for service industry organizations as mishandled contacts can result in severe fines and damaged customer relations. The team designed and integrated a system that enabled prospects to easily state their communication preferences. This feature has enhanced the efforts of the marketing and sales departments with increased web leads and opportunities for more frequent customer contacts via integrated e-mail marketing efforts (such as sending weather and service alerts). The integrated resource library also proved to be a very valuable tool for clients.

The Result

The new site was considered a huge success that has provided the company with significantly more prospective clients and an effective way of converting those leads into valuable revenue. Additionally, the new functionality provided a valuable new self-service option that dramatically improved service options for existing customers.

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RightNow® Case Study 4: A Service Response System to increase stakeholder value

The Challenge - A large, national service company determined that its customer retention rate was unacceptable. According to their customer surveys, much dissatisfaction was due to the problem resolution process. The company mandated a major change to protect stakeholder value and goodwill.

Our Strategy

The Helix team investigated the root cause of the problem and found that the complaint resolution process was inconsistent across the company's branches and that the information management was inadequate. Although the company had a customer management system, most of the information regarding problems was stored in the personal files of its employees—so it was inaccessible and lost when employees left the company. Recognizing that this mishandled data resulted in an enormous loss to the company, the team performed an exhaustive search for a solution that could start capturing the data—and resultant increase in revenue—quickly. Several CRM programs were evaluated and compared to the cost of a custom solution. A new system was required to:

  • Route all customer calls to branch offices for tracking
  • Send incident information to account manager cell phones via text message
  • Automate issuance of "work orders" within ERP system
  • Be integrated with JD Edwards and legacy applications
  • Manage service response with various SLA processes based on client and incident-specific information
  • Have detailed and dashboard style reporting
  • Offer a complex business unit security model.

RightNow® solutions were selected for their robust features, quick time-to-benefit, scalability, and customization potential. The design team consisting of IT, representatives from various departments in the company, and the RightNow® team focused on developing a comprehensive data integration strategy that would facilitate an improved customer experience. Our team was able to easily customize the RightNow® solutions to support the complex B2B model and meet the goals of the design team.

The Result

The new system required that calls be centrally routed — a different process that was initially resisted by the company's sales agents. But when the new system was implemented, sales agents quickly received positive feedback from customers making repeat sales more likely. With the resources of our team and RightNow® the new Service Response System:

  • Was deployed quickly and cost-effectively
  • Resulted in an increase in customer satisfaction
  • Protects valuable customer data and provides more insight into opportunities for improvements.
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