With new technology, Raymarine slashes backlog of customer support e-mail

After implementing a new online customer service system, boating products company Raymarine Ltd.’s Raymarine.com cut the time it took to process its backlogged customer service e-mail messages to two days from six. “Without a system in place for handling incoming e-mail, we were overwhelmed,” says Jim Hands, web site production manager. “We’d get 300 messages a week from our customers, and sometimes it took as long as a week to get back to them. Keeping track of all the messages was a nightmare.”

Raymarine, which designs and manufacturers boating equipment, sells through a dealer network as well as directly to consumers on Raymarine.com, where it maintains online customer service features for all of its customers.

By implementing the RightNow eService Center from RightNow Technologies Inc., Raymarine was able to develop workflow rules to automatically distribute customer service e-mail to customer service reps. This replaced an earlier system through which all incoming customer service e-mail waited in an Outlook inbox until someone on the customer service staff doled it out manually. “Then you sort of hoped people took care of them as quickly as possible,” Hands says.

While speeding up the processing of e-mail, Raymarine also kept a lid on the growth of e-mailed customer service inquiries by increasing and better organizing the amount of self-help content available to customers through features such as Frequently Asked Questions. The improved self-help feature enabled Raymarine to trim its frontline customer service staff by 25% and reallocate it to working on dealer relations.