R. L. Polk & Co. Significantly Improves Customer Satisfaction Levels and Cuts Customer-Reported Issues by 21 Percent with Salesforce for Service and Support

“The most important benefit of Salesforce has been the significant increase in the customer satisfaction level. According to our annual customer survey, Polk’s customer satisfaction level continues to trend upwards, with a jump of 7.5 percent from 2005 and 2006 in the area of issue resolution. And we’ve cut customer-reported issues by 21 percent and reduced time-to-close an issue by 64 percent.”


Challenge
  • R.L.Polk & Co., which provides market data analysis and planning services for automotive clients, lacked visibility into sales opportunities and customer issues
  • A decentralized approach to managing customer data resulted in a fragmented view of the customer
  • The company needed a centralized system to more efficiently log, track, and resolve customer issues generated from multichannel customer interactions
  • Polk also lacked the organizational processes to effectively implement proactive customer support and had difficulty meeting internal service level agreement (SLA) goals

Solution
  • Polk deployed Salesforce for SFA in 2000 and for service and support in 2004 to gain full visibility across sales and customer support operations
  • The company used Force.com Builder to create two custom applications: Corrective Action Report (CAR), for analyzing the causes of a customer issue, and Preventive Action Report (PAR), for developing processes to prevent customer issues from reoccurring
  • Polk set up escalation rules and workflows to streamline internal communication to efficiently resolve customer issues

Results
  • Customer satisfaction with Polk’s service is rising, with a 7.5 percent jump from 2005 to 2006 in the area of issue resolution
  • The company cuts customer-reported issues by 21 percent
  • Time-to-close an issue is reduced by 64 percent
  • Polk's Salesforce solution makes it possible to share—in real time—customer data between more than 400 employees in sales, support, operations, and product strategy
  • By making internal collaboration more efficient, Polk saves an average of 15 minutes per case and eight hours per employee per week
  • Replacing its paper-based systems with the custom-built CAR application running in Salesforce enabled Polk to execute 1,440 preventive processes a year, up from 100 a year 
  • The company has saved an estimated $1.2 million annually by extending Salesforce to implement preventive customer support processes
  • By streamlining its support operation with Salesforce, Polk now resolves customer issues within five days
 
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