Between its own business units, white-label branded sites, and third-party sites powered by Travelocity, the company has more than 40 customer-facing travel sites. The RightNow contact center solution supports Travelocity across its global brands with multi-channel support to provide superior care however customers communicate with the company—via phone, email, or web. RightNow’s agent desktop solution supports more than 250 global concurrent users, working in 9 languages, across the globe.

The RightNow solution dynamically changes based on the actions taken by the agent and on information known about a customer and product. The workspace then delivers instant access to relevant workspace context, at the right time and place. Travelocity agents are confident they are always providing the most accurate information to the customer, which increases agent productivity and helps drive customer satisfaction.

RightNow email management empowers the company’s dedicated email agents to review and respond, if necessary, to the 100,000 emails received each month, ensuring every customer issue is answered completely and quickly. Travelocity’s first-contact resolution is an impressive 90% for emails and with RightNow SmartAssistant, the company is attaining a 10% email deflection rate.

Customers can also access information around the clock through web self-service with the RightNow knowledge foundation. Travelocity’s site visitors view 400,000+ answers each month and the intuitive knowledge foundation automatically organizes the content so that the answers viewed most often appear first, helping customers find what they need quickly and easily.

Because of the volatility of the travel business, delivering accurate, up-to-date knowledge is crucial. RightNow enables the company to update the knowledge foundation’s 4,000+ answers at a moment’s notice and then distribute the updates across all the sites, rather than requiring that updates be done site by site. “With RightNow, we can provide accurate, up-to-date knowledge wherever it is needed, across all our brands,” says Jeff Hudson, Systems Delivery and Product Manager for Travelocity.

For example, Travelocity content writers post “travel alert” bulletins to update travelers on everything from weather problems to natural disasters to political concerns without additional IT resources. During the Gulf oil spill, for instance, Travelocity sites had over 30,000 hits on the spill-related content alone. Updates are performed by a content writer in only minutes. Before RightNow, updates were cumbersome and could only be posted during specific times of day which severely limited the timeliness of the information. Now, when Travelocity experiences heavy phone call volume, content writers can immediately post suggestions for travelers to help them get answers quickly and cut down on phone volume and hold times.

The company has also introduced RightNow Chat to their lastminute.com brand for use in Italian and Spanish and is looking to roll out chat to specific brands within North America. Travelocity is also just weeks away from launching a mobile application, utilizing the RightNow knowledge foundation and mobile self-service.

When Travelocity engaged RightNow, it wanted a solution that would enable it to grow the business globally, while reducing technical and IT overhead. “Our legacy system was sometimes down a couple times a week and when that happened, we lost valuable time,” reports Hudson. The lost time was especially crucial for the Travelocity businesses with very short response requirements.

Travelocity relies on customer FAQ feedback to gauge customer satisfaction for answers. With customer feedback, Travelocity can be certain the knowledge base includes answers to best match what customers are asking. Additionally, automated reports are forwarded to administrators who work with content writers to update the site when needed. RightNow’s dynamic reporting capability helps Travelocity measure its success and identify trends that help drive business decisions. Agent-relevant reporting is also automatically generated and sent to supervisors and managers to be used for further agent development.

RightNow’s unique cloud delivery model has helped Travelocity avoid the capital and operational costs associated with software ownership and development while still providing ready scalability, full visibility into its hosting environment, and total control over system upgrades. With RightNow, administrators can easily and quickly deploy a new customer-facing site. “RightNow not only gives us the tools we need and flexibility in using them, it’s also been key for delivering the necessary dependability and support so that we can focus on growing our business rather than on IT,” adds Hudson.

Travelocity is a leading provider of consumer-direct travel services for the leisure and business traveler. It markets and distributes travel-related products and services directly to individuals through Travelocity and its various brand websites and contact centers, and websites owned by its supplier and distribution partners. Travelocity is owned by Sabre Holdings Corporation, a world leader in travel commerce.