Children’s charity Compassion cut nearly £300,000 costs in one year and increased donations, thanks to RightNow’s Cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) solution.
Compassion is helping more than one million children in developing countries break free from poverty by finding supporters to sponsor them. It does more than simply distribute money to those in need; the Christian charity encourages direct communication through letters and emails between sponsor and child and manages all this correspondence.
The hunt for a CRM solution began about three and a half years ago, when the charity realised that although its existing database was fine for handling the financial transactions with its supporters, it was doing little to track communication with them. Richard Atterton, chief operating officer at Compassion explains:
Traditional on-premise software was quickly rejected in favour of cloud-based solution, partly because of the extra burden it would place on the small IT team to manage the implementation and manage the software in-house. Without having to make extra investment in technology and support, more funds could also be directed at helping children. Atterton comments:
It took just a few weeks to get the initial system working. The bulk of that time was spent working on converting the data from its home in the legacy system to the RightNow CX environment.
But, the key challenge was change management. Atterton recognised early on that people needed to see clear gains quickly to buy into the idea of using the system.
Today, the RightNow system now does more than just manage supporters’ monthly payments. Rather than clog the call centre with questions, supporters can now find their own answers using the online help. All Interactions, including letters, email and phone calls are recorded and monitored through the contact centre. When a supporter rings up, service staff can easily call up the history of that supporter, enabling them to be better informed about the caller and quickly identify and resolve their needs.
This wealth of supporter information has created more personalised communication, which has led to increased retention rates of supporters, worth about £140,000 annually. According to Atterton:
Since the initial deployment, Compassion has embedded RightNow into its Facebook presence. This means that supporters on Facebook can have their queries answered there and then without ever having to leave Facebook. Atterton says:
Keeping costs low is essential for any business, but especially so for a charity. The less spent on overheads, the more money that goes to the people they are trying to help. Automating the process has enabled the company to make considerable savings in staff costs. Atterton notes:
The move to a cloud CRM system has meant savings on post. Instead of sending out mailings with a Freepost envelope for people to return, the company now uses RightNow to communicate. Using the Cloud approach has also dramatically cut the costs of opening new operations. Pre-cloud, it could cost around £80,000 on technology alone to open a branch in a new country. Today, costs are closer to £10,000.
RightNow has also played a key role in driving a 13% rise in supporter numbers and in bucking the recession with a 30% increase in donations. In total, one year after launch, Compassion estimated savings of £290,000 and has continued to make savings in its second year.
Compassion is hoping to continue improving donations while keeping costs low with RightNow’s help. Atterton sums up:
