RightNow Toolkit Helps Federal Government Agencies Comply with April 27 Presidential Executive Order

RESTON, Va.--([ BUSINESS WIRE ])--[ RightNow ] (Nasdaq: RNOW), a leading provider of secure cloud solutions for the federal government, has spent more than ten years helping over 170 government agencies deliver exceptional citizen experiences. Today, RightNow can assist government agencies in meeting President Obamaa�s newest Executive Order released on April 27, [ Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service ]. To aid in federal agency compliance, RightNow has developed a Compliance Toolkit that includes three new toolsa"Customer Service Roadmap, Best Practice Cookbook and 8 Step Guidea"all designed to improve citizen service. RightNow has also appointed a Compliance Program Manager, who will facilitate a series of RightNow hosted workshops, and is available for one-on-one meetings, to provide hands-on guidance to federal managers to drive execution activities.

"8 Step Guide to Superior Customer Experiences."

aRightNow is fully supportive of President Obamaa�s new Executive Order to streamline service delivery and improve the customer experience. Wea�ve met with General Services Administration, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and several other agencies about these topics, and we understand the service imperative that the Federal government faces. As such, RightNow is perfectly positioned to help agencies comply. This mandate outlines several key citizen service imperatives, which many of RightNowa�s government customers, and those that they serve, have been benefiting from for over 10 years. We are pleased to see the Administrationa�s strong commitment to enhancing the citizen experience, which we believe is at the heart of all good service delivery.a

Kevin Paschuck, Vice President, Public Sector, RightNow

The Right Tools for Government Customer Service Reform

To aid Federal government agencies in meeting the requirements of this new Executive Order, RightNow has appointed Django DeGree as Compliance Program Manager. He will work one-on-one with agencies to implement the new Compliance Toolkit and to help design citizen experience programs that meet the mandate.

RightNow is uniquely positioned to guide Federal government agencies toward compliance. As such, RightNow is offering a series of FREE workshops open to Federal government employees. Beginning in May, these aCountdown to Compliancea workshops will run every other Thursday morning from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. (ET) in RightNowa�s Reston Office. To contact the Program Manager, request a copy of the toolkit, or register for the workshops, please email [ django.degree@rightnow.com ].

The Compliance Toolkit will provide Federal managers with immediately actionable tactics to begin working toward compliance. This toolkit includes the following:

Public Sector Customer Service Roadmap. RightNow focuses exclusively on improving the customer experience, and the company has logged thousands of hours helping commercial-sector companies and government agencies develop customer service roadmaps that meet each organizationa�s unique requirements. To address the specific requirements for the Federal government in the just released Executive Order, RightNow has designed a Public Sector Customer Service Roadmap template to help agencies accurately determine precise citizen service pain points and to quickly identify and implement the right solutions.

180-Day Best Practice Cookbook. Great customer service requires a strategy that is woven into the fabric of the organization and that places the customera�s needs first. Notably, President Obamaa�s Executive Order requires that each agency develop, within 180 days, a Customer Service Plan in consultation with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This plan must address how agencies will provide streamlined and improved customer service. RightNowa�s new 180-Day Best Practice Cookbook is designed to help Federal agencies do just this, by developing a customer service approach, outlining the intended benefits and establishing an implementation timeline that meets the mandate.

The 8 Step Guide for Government Customer Service Reform. RightNow clients benefit from the experience of thousands of RightNow CX implementations, in both the public and the private sector. RightNowa�s proven eight-step process is described in thea8 Step Guide to Superior Customer Experiences.aIn fact, several steps in the guide directly address key components of President Obamaa�s executive order. They include:

[ Empower Customers ]: By empowering customers to self-serve at their convenience, through the communication channel of choice, agencies can fulfill the executive order requirement to streamline agency processes, reduce costs and accelerate service delivery, while reducing the need for customer calls and inquiries.
[ Offer Multi-Channel Choice ]: Provide customers with interaction options across many channels and use a common knowledge foundation to provide consistency and efficiency. In direct agreement, the executive order stipulates that agencies must improve the customer experience by adopting proven best practices and coordinating those services across channels.
[ Listen To Your Customers ]: Learn what customers are thinking and act on it. RightNow CX provides a built-in survey tool that provides timely, relevant feedback from customers at the time of the interaction. This simple solution precisely meets the Executive Order point to establish mechanisms to solicit customer feedback on government services and to use that feedback to make service improvements.
[ Design Seamless Customer Experiences ]: To provide great customer experiences, customer issues need to transition smoothly among departments, functions and people. RightNow CX offers a single knowledgebase that is shared across departments. When combined with the right workflow to access it, the knowledgebase provides everyone with a 360 view of the customer.This capability addresses another component of President Obamaa�s order to identify ways to use innovative technologies to accomplish customer service activities that lower costs, decrease service delivery times and improve the customer experience.
[ Measure and Improve Continuously ]: A great customer experience demands that agencies evaluate, baseline, identify and adapt to customers. Again, the Presidenta�s order clearly establishes this as a functional goal to set clear customer service standards and expectations, including, where appropriate, performance goals for customer service.

For the full guide, visit [ http://www.rightnow.com/strategy-eight-steps.php ].

Improving Government Services with Private Sector Best Practices

President Obamaa�s plan to improve Federal government customer service outlines the need for agencies to apply private sector best practices in the delivery of timely, efficient and lower cost citizen services. Notably, on April 15, RightNow CX was named a Leader by Gartner, Inc. in the a[ Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers ]a report. A characteristic of a Magic Quadrant leader is that clients look to the vendor for clues as to how to innovate in customer service. For this reason, RightNow is well suited to provide best practice guidance to Federal government agencies.

As stated in the Executive Order, aSuch best practices include increasingly popular lower-cost, self-service options accessed by the Internet or mobile phone and improved processes that deliver services faster and more responsively, reducing the overall need for customer inquiries and complaints.a

RightNow provides these capabilities, giving government the power to address this requirement of the Executive Order specifically. RightNow solutions include a fully integrated multi-channel contact center platform that identifies, segments and route callers to the right resource quickly and efficiently. RightNow also enables agencies to deliver 24X7 access to information and subject matter experts, empowering citizens to research and resolve issues online with or without agent assistance. RightNow supports seamless interactions across channels including web self-service, mobile, chat, email, and phone.

To learn more about how RightNow is leading the charge to implement customer service solutions for the Federal government, read Kevin Paschucka�s latest blog post [ here ].

About RightNow Technologies

RightNow is helping rid the world of bad experiences one interaction at a time, eight million times a day. A leader in bringing the Cloud delivery model to government, RightNow has successfully served the US government for more than ten years. RightNow CX, the customer experience suite, helps agencies deliver exceptional customer experiences across the web, social networks and contact centers, all delivered via the secure government cloud. With RightNow, agencies are able to drive citizen engagement, reduce the cost of operations and increase information transparency within the secure government cloud.

Over 170 government agencies including nearly every U.S. cabinet level agency, Army, Marines, Air Force, members of the Intelligence Community, and DoD, rely on RightNowa�s cloud based solutions to answer the call for better citizen servicea"providing the right information, at the right time, seamlessly across multiple channels. With more than ten billion customer interactions delivered, RightNow is the customer experience fabric for nearly 2000 organizations around the globe. To learn more about RightNow, go to [ www.rightnow.com ].

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RightNow Toolkit Helps Federal Government Agencies Comply with April 27 Presidential Executive Order