Canberra institute deploys RightNow CRM

Peter Dinham
Thursday, 21 May 2009 14:54

IT Industry - Deals

The Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT) has deployed a CRM solution from vendor, RightNow, which the institute says will enhance student support services.

CIT’s CRM project manager, Peta Graham, says the CRM system – CIT Ask Us – will support staff, students and prospective students by providing “easy online access to consistent and accurate information, regardless of their location and time zone.

“By providing this type of access to essential information, CIT is able to provide an enhanced student support service. Although students were previously able to call, email or visit the student centre, the information we were able to provide was not always consistent or timely. The generic email address had no client service response-time standard, while our website only provided basic information.  In addition, messages left on our answering service may not always have been responded to in the timeframe required by the student.”

Graham says CIT, as the ACT region's leading training organisation, offers more than 400 programmes to 22,000 local, national and international students.

“With such a vast curriculum and large student population, CIT required a tried and tested solution. It reviewed several solutions but chose RightNow based on the positive feedback it received from discussions with other higher education institutions in both Australia and overseas.

“Many of these tertiary institutions were RightNow users and had seen clear benefits to their organisation. In addition, we spoke with Canberra Connect, the provider of ACT government services and a RightNow user. Their response was so positive and confirmed the benefits of deploying RightNow.” 
 
According to Graham, while active marketing of CIT Ask Us commences next month, CIT has already exceeded its objectives in terms of hits to the three sites. 

“The staff site has received more than 27,000 hits, while the current student site has reached 700 hits and future students upwards of 5,500 hits.

 “While students have given us resounding positive feedback in their ability to easily search and find information to common questions, our long-term objective is to assist students with more and more questions.  In addition, we also want our staff to add information they collect from their involvement in industry.”