Challenge

• NJ TRANSIT, the nation’s largest statewide public transportation system, wanted to increase the productivity and effectiveness of its customer service operations
• A provider of bus, rail, and light rail services, the agency needed a robust customer service system to capture feedback on 900,000 daily trips on 247 bus routes, 26 bus stations, 11 commuter rail lines, and 3 light rail lines
• The existing system didn’t track all required information and was only available to a limited number of employees
• The agency wanted to let all employees responsible for customer service and support access the new solution and allow riders to directly enter information in it
• Because NJ TRANSIT operates 24/7 and requires a 360-degree view of customer information, it focused on evaluating always-available, low-maintenance cloud computing solutions

Solution

• Selected the Service Cloud and the Force.com cloud platform because of its powerful customization capabilities; anytime, anywhere access; and minimal IT requirements
• Rolled out the new system to 150+ customer service employees and, through Service Cloud email and linkage to the corporate Web site, to 3,000+ potential employees and riders in three states over a 5-month period
• To address the complexities of supporting 250 million passengers per year, NJ TRANSIT customized the platform to handle different aspects of its business, creating applications to manage executive correspondence and undercover investigations, for example
• Implemented a direct interface from its Web site, so that when a customer files a report, it is automatically turned into a support case in Salesforce
• Integrated with a data warehouse, employee information, an email management system, and a data quality solution using the Web services API
• Rolled out Force.com workflow capabilities in 1 week to streamline and improve the operations of its customer service staff; workflow rules route incoming customer questions to the appropriate subject matter expert
• SalesForce.com Premier Support helps ensure 24/7 uptime for the agency’s customer-service system
• Using Force.com sites technology, created Web sites that customers use to make Group Trip reservations online

Results

• Delivering faster and more complete responses to constituents while adhering to performance standards and measures 24/7
• Improved handling of customer inquiries by 500 percent in 2 years—without increasing staff
• The agency also increased productivity by 31 percent during the same 2-year period
• Decreased the average response time for customer inquiries by more than 35 percent during the same 2-year period with Force.com workflow
• Reduced the time spent handling free-form email by letting customers ask questions and submit issues through an online “Contact Us” Web form; the online form captures approximately 50 percent of all customer feedback
• Doubled the number of cases the agency handles with no additional staffing, thanks to the system’s streamlined communication and enhanced issue-tracking capabilities
• The agency now has 100 percent visibility into all submitted issues as well as resolution activities previously performed solely with emails and phone calls
• The agency was recognized as a technology leader when it won a 2008 InfoWorld 100 award for its Force.com-based customer service platform
• The agency was spotlighted by the Federal Chief Information Officer in a 2010 report on cloud computing in the public sector