British Airways has increased
traffic to its Internet booking pages by approximately 3,500 hits per week
following a series of best practice recommendations and implementations with
RightNow(R) Technologies.  A further 60 percent reduction in inbound email
traffic has also been achieved, while the percentage of customers resolving
their enquiries online has risen to 99 percent.During a software upgrade on: www.ba.com, RightNow provided BA with several best practice recommendations.  These included adding a ‘book now’ button to the customer service and support area of the web site so that customers can easily navigate through to the booking facility.  This was advisable because customers often have a query they need to resolve before making a booking.
Also added was a ‘manage my booking’ button enabling customers to quickly and
simply tailor their bookings by requesting special meals or seat changes.
  The inbound email reduction has been possible by implementing RightNow’s
SmartAssistant(TM), a function that reads a customer’s question before they
submit it and proactively pushes additional answers to the customer.  RightNow
also provided best practice guidance as well.
  “The returns from implementing the SmartAssistant best practice have been
astonishing,” Nick Doran, Head of Global Direct Operations at BA, said.  “It’s
exceeded expectations and now our future goal is to have every inbound email
come in via the Smart Assistant tool.”
  http://www.ba.com enjoys over 1.2 million unique visitors per week so it’s
imperative that information can be found quickly.  A third RightNow best
practice suggestion was to have the ‘Search BA’ entry point to the customer
service and support section on the home page, and each subsequent page
navigated.  From here customers can now experience an integrated search that
searches the RightNow knowledge base of answers, the entire ba.com site and
http://www.baholidays.com, heightening the probability of the customer finding the
answer to their inquiry.  This approach has doubled the number of site
searches.
  “When we began our relationship with RightNow back in 2001, we achieved
strong returns on investment,” Doran said.  “So we weren’t expecting such
significant gains from the best practices.  The click through from the ‘book
now’ button and the reduction in email has been beyond anything we
anticipated.  The success is testament to the RightNow team’s commitment to
helping us maximize our investment and capitalize on what the software can
do.”
  “Competition is fierce within the airline industry, so a strong customer
service proposition is mission critical,” Sean Forbes, vice president of
Marketing and Business Development at RightNow Technologies, said.  “BA’s
decision to build on their already successful relationship with us, and to
implement our tried and tested best practices has proven that customer service
is not a static, one time deployment but something that changes and develops
over time and which can always be improved upon.”
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