BOZEMAN, Mont. – Two big credit unions on either side of the country are improving member service and their own operational brainpower with RightNow Technologies' automated knowledge base. Oregon-based First Tech Credit Union is using the Bozeman company's tools as a knowledge platform for member service reps in the $1.3 billion CU's call center, where it already is seeing savings of 250 hours a month in employee productivity, according to Wayne Young, First Tech's director of human resources and training. Meanwhile, Atlanta-based Delta Employees Credit Union is using RightNow's customer-service solutions in its call center, e-mail, Web and bricks-and-mortar channels, to provide members and staffers information without human intervention whenever possible. The $2.5 billion CU already has seen a reduction in member e-mails of 80% and is fielding approximately 5,000 fewer phone calls a month, particularly through the use of the Web as a self-service channel for members seeking a variety of information. Staff access to current, consistent answers for procedures and member support, and organization and tracking of walk-in traffic in branch lobbies also are benefits DECU has seen, according to Mary Olson, vice president of marketing and business development. “Without quoting the amount we invested in the RightNow Technologies product, I can tell you that after taking all expenses into consideration, including license purchase, annual support and training and the administrator's salary to focus on full-time development, our net ROI is over $90,000 in just 10 months,” Olson says. She adds: “In the previous 12-month period since we launched askDECU, there have been over 89,000 FAQs viewed, and only approximately 6,900 had to submit a question, an average of 575 per month. We were averaging 3,000 e-mails per month in the 12 months prior to placing askDECU on our site. What a huge savings.” Building a knowledge base as well as the bottom line also was the motivation at First Tech. “We saw an increasing need to capture the knowledge of the organization,” says Wayne Young, First Tech's director of human resources and training. “We were going through a growth stage and realized that we were placing new employees in situations where they would need to know a lot of information about all the products and services we offered. “At the same time, longer-term employees were taking on new opportunities, so there was a need to take their knowledge and make it more accessible to all employees.” The knowledge-management solution deployed by First Tech allows that to happen in a dynamic and responsive way, Young says. “We monitor the system through reports to see what is being accessed,” he says. “We also review the content on a regular basis to make sure the information is up to date and accurate. Our service reps are the ones asking the questions. Based on that, we are able to see the information they need, since they are driving the process.” Olson at DECU also says updating the information is an ongoing process. “Each FAQ has a field to schedule a review date, and we have experienced reps that review and publish any scheduled FAQs,” she says. “Also, as products and services change, our administrator can easily search the database for FAQs that include similar information, review them and make any editing changes needed. “We also were able to customize fields for supervisors to `sign off' on an FAQ, so we can easily track reviews and approvals.” Such flexibility was crucial to making the system work now and going forward, as the system becomes more educated, Olson says. “We needed a knowledge base that would grow with our membership and our products and services,” the DECU vice president says. “Maintaining fixed Web pages was not a feasible option for a full, real-time FAQ site. “The RightNow Web E-Service Center allows the member to use commonly used Web search tools, often finding their own answers, but easily submitting questions that the knowledge base can't answer,” Olson says. “When our reps answer the individual questions, our system has a simple process to review and publish the answer when appropriate, so when it is asked again in the future, it now is part of the database and the system will be able to answer it. The system grows daily as we continue to address issues that weren't originally written as FAQs when we launched.” Both credit unions use RightNow's solutions as an ASP, joining the 85% of the more than 1,000 clients who use the company's services through secured data centers in California and New Jersey, says RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte. He says about 40 of the company's clients are financial institutions, with the rest in fields as diverse as health care and security software. “Setting up an initial knowledge base only takes a few hours if clients already know what those frequently asked questions are,” Gianforte adds. “Because our knowledge base is a self-learning tool, it then becomes more powerful over time.” To facilitate that process, RightNow provides a knowledge base expert to get things under way and then each client has an administrator dedicated to managing the growing knowledge base, he says. That's how it went at DECU. “We hired an implementation specialist from RNT to be onsite at DECU. He worked with our support group for a few hours for the technical setup and personally trained representatives from our service areas through the week,” Olson says. “He also guided us on how to customize pages, create workflow rules and establish the lobby interface for immediate use in tracking walk-in member visits to our member service reps,” she says. Meanwhile, Young, the HR director at First Tech, says their deployment “took a couple months. We ran contests and games to get people to submit knowledge pieces so that when it was deployed, we would have some content already in the knowledge base. “Now we include it in new employee training as another tool that they can use to access information without having to go find someone to ask the question. Employees constantly use it to access information they need on a daily basis. “And in so doing, they are saving themselves and our members time.” -

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