travel.com.au has implemented RightNow Technologies’ customer relationship management (CRM) solutions for both of its websites - travel.com.au and lastminute.com.au.  The deployment is intended to manage the substantial growth in customer service inquiries across both sites, while meeting published service level agreements (SLAs) with its customers.

lastminute.com.au and travel.com.au receive up to 1,300 email enquiries a week, which are managed by a team of 11 travel consultants.  In addition, up to 4000 calls are handled each week by 18 telephone consultants who provide specialist advice on subjects as diverse as the best place to buy carpets in Marrakech or the latest, hip restaurant in Shanghai.

RightNow Service? will enable travel.com.au Ltd to proactively support customers by identifying customer enquiry trends and responding to customers within service level agreements. It will replace travel.com.au’s previous email management enquiry platform which had handicapped the organisation’s capacity to meet SLAs and provided only limited functionality in travel.com.au Ltd’s ability to track and escalate inbound enquiries to the most relevant consultant.

In addition, RightNow Service will enable travel.com.au Ltd to perform analytics on its established user feedback processes to ensure it is effectively serving customers and to continuously build upon customer loyalty.  RightNow Service will also provide a framework for travel.com.au and lastminute.com.au to customise responses and tailor future marketing promotions to target market segments based on traveller profiles.

Chris Meehan, General Manager for the Commercial division of travel.com.au Ltd said, “We are committed to providing a superior customer experience and developing innovation within our every day business practices, RightNow will enable us to do this by providing a more customised service and improved productivity within our customer service area.”

RightNow Service will also enable travel.com.au Ltd’s two websites to automate customer emails saving valuable customer service resource.

Mr Meehan continued, “We are confident that RightNow is capable of managing our diverse business needs. Being a company with two brands, we needed to be sure that one system could effectively manage information from both websites yet understand our individual business requirements.
       
“RightNow will enable us to offer our customers timelier, more accurate, web-based support which will free up our telephone travel experts for more sophisticated travel inquiries.  We expect our call abandonment rate to decrease and our customers to be better serviced both online and offline.

“The RightNow Service implementation has been very smooth and configuration went according plan.  The entire project took just three months to implement which was very pleasing and was made possible by the on-demand delivery model,” said Mr Meehan.

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