Company: Remington Arms
Annual Return: 1,052%
Project: Remington, America’s oldest gun maker, saw its customer service operation overwhelmed as more of its customers connected to the company via the Internet. The company began receiving almost 2,000 e-mails a week—and had only one part-time person handling questions. First, Remington redesigned its Web site to provide better answers to customer questions—and head off the e-mail deluge. For the incoming e-mail Remington did receive, answers were automatically routed to the person best able to answer the question. For generic questions, Remington’s staff could use canned responses from its Web site as reference material. To save money, Remington’s customer service system was hosted by RightNow Technologies, with both the gun maker’s employees and customers seeking and finding answers via the Web. Remington also uses RightNow to track responses to customers.
Benefits: The volume of e-mail was cut by more than half, to 700 a week, and phone call volume fell 30% to 4,300 calls a week. Meanwhile, Remington now answers about 100,000 questions each month with fewer than 5% of customers needing an additional e-mail or phone response.
