Resort to CRM Maintaining the same size of customer service staff while transaction volume triples is quite a challenge, especially when much of the business depends on direct contact with individual consumers. With the proper technology, ResortCom succeeded in doing just that. ResortCom International of San Diego, California, provides services to companies that develop and own resort properties. Services include managing time-share payments, loans, and handling credit-card transactions. Time-share corporations build resort sites throughout the world for individuals who wish to use them for vacations. For example, a family may buy a week’s stay at a site, or select a week at one of several sites the company manages. The contract is usually for many years. In addition, property owners sell customers ancillary services, such as car rentals and recreational activities. Prompt, courteous service is extremely important in this industry. Instead of dealing directly with sales and billing, many of these corporations hire the services of companies like ResortCom to bill customers and answer their questions. Property owners outsource this work to ResortCom because the firm specializes in maximizing the revenue (often called yield) and the owners do not have to invest in information technology to handle sales, billing, and collection. ResortCom serves more than one million traveling customers. Every year, between October and January, ResortCom mails about 100,000 bills to customers— actually, customers of its clients. Hundreds of customers respond with questions about the bills, and many contest them. Most of these responses are via e-mail. Since the number of ResortCom clients has increased, so has the number of these e-mail messages. For example, in the first week of January 2006 it received 450 e-mail messages. In the same week of 2007, the number was 750. Some of the issues raised can be resolved immediately by the call center, but many must be forwarded to another department. Many such messages were treated after too long a time or were simply lost in the shuffle. By 2004, ResortCom consolidated two phone call centers. It still had to resolve the e-mail problem. The company’s vice president of operations looked for a proper CRM software package. While browsing the Web he noticed the site of RightNow Technologies and tried the online demo. He liked the manner in which the system tracked customer inquiries from origination to resolution. As in other industries, communication with customers is done in several channels: mail, telephone, fax, and e-mail. RightNow’s CRM software provides a complete multi-channel contact center. Regardless of how customers contact ResortCom, their communication is channeled to a central database. Each entry receives an incident code, including scanned mail and electronically saved faxes. Not only members of the call center staff have access to the incident center information, but all members of the firm, including units often referred to as “back-office.” (Back-office staff are those who are not in direct contact with customers.) If a customer disputes a credit-card charge, the call center staff communicate the incident to the finance office The call center personnel can check at any time to see if the finance office finished researching the dispute. The system automatically sends a periodic reminder to the finance office—or any other unit responsible for researching an incident—until the incident is resolved. The CRM system ensures that nobody in the organization “drops the ball” as incidents are transmitted from one unit to another. It enhances accountability. This accountability gives each unit an incentive to resolve matters faster, and therefore the service cycle has been shortened. Now, customer issues are resolved 75 percent faster without additional staff. Every action that has taken place in the resolution process is recorded, and managers can follow the process from beginning to end. ResortCom’s internal e-mail decreased by 30 percent; instead of e-mailing other employees for status, managers access the CRM system directly. 113 Chapter 3 Business Functions and Supply Chains 113Another benefit of using the CRM system is reducing paper by 90 percent. Since so much of the information is now saved electronically, there is no need to create or maintain paper documents. The scanned images of paper mail and fax are attached to incident records. In time, thanks to cumulative information about individual customers, that relationship with each customer becomes more intimate. The CRM system maintains data that makes it amenable to further analysis. ResortCom can use RightNow marketing tools to gain insight into customers’ needs and preferences. This helps ResortCom to launch effective target marketing campaigns. The company has made several presentations to their clients, the resort site owners, to demonstrate how efficient and effective the CRM system is. They demonstrate how customer loyalty increased, and how the CRM enables ResortCom to up-sell and cross-sell. (Up-selling is moving customers to purchase more expensive services. Crossselling is selling additional services.) The demonstrated success of using the CRM system encourages the site owners to continue doing business with ResortCom. Source: (www.rightnow.com), 2007; Watson, B.P., “Getting Out of the In-Box,” Baseline, March 8, 2007. Thinking About the Case

1. What were the challenges ResortCom faced before adoption of the CRM system?

2. Compared to the situation before the system was implemented, what are the benefits RightNow afforded ResortCom?

3. How did the company reduce the amount of paper used by 90 percent?

4. In addition to using fewer paper documents, what are the advantages of using electronic records?