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• Required better customer interaction management system to ensure faster response times
• Needed enterprisewide visibility into customer interactions
• Wanted to improve escalation process
• Desired executive visibility into customer issues
• Needed to proactively identify customer issues and improve customer satisfaction levels

• Deployed Salesforce Customer Portal and Salesforce SFA to 170 users in engineering, finance, sales, marketing, client services, and customer support. With Force.com Builder, implemented a custom escalation process in days and a customer feedback process in less than a week.

• Reduced support email traffic by 95 percent and case volume by 10 percent
  
• Handled ten times the number of customers with the same staff
• Increased survey participation by 200 percent
  
• Customer satisfaction levels reached 99 percent and attrition rates dropped

Postini, a company that provides integrated message management services, knows the importance of personalized customer service. Founded in San Carlos, California in 1999, Postini employs 250 employees who process 3.5 billion messages every week. The company provides nearly nine million users in 35,000 businesses worldwide with enhanced email protection services such as virus detection, directory harvest attack prevention, spam blockage, and email management capabilities. Today, customer satisfaction levels are almost perfect: Nearly 100 percent of customers renew their services each year. This wasn't always the case.

Not so long ago, the company kept track of customer data on Excel spreadsheets, dealt with customer issues via individual emails or phone calls, and had limited analysis capabilities that amounted to executive management meetings. To achieve the company vision and business potential, things had to change.

Business Requirements

Knowing there was an urgent need for change, the company developed a list of requirements that precluded adding IT staff. The new system had to be hosted, with no need for yearly updates or outside consulting fees. It needed to integrate with existing systems, be flexible and customizable, give a better view of all customers and their interactions with the company, and be cost-effective.

In 2000, Postini started implementing Salesforce strictly as a sales tool. Soon, other departments—such as marketing, HR, and executive management—were using Salesforce. For example, marketing started populating Salesforce with leads, pushing them to sales. All activities were tracked and custom reports created, providing management with real-time visibility of customer status from any angle needed. The corporate culture was changing.

Next the company needed to focus more directly on customer satisfaction. With accelerated growth, customer satisfaction, in fact, became the highest priority in the company. Postini knew it needed direct contact and more feedback—a place where customers could log on and handle all aspects of their business with Postini.

"We knew upgrading customer satisfaction levels required faster response times, more personalized service for each customer, and 24/7 support. We needed a self-service portal," says Mark Bloomquist, director of customer support for Postini. Web portals have become an established way for companies to manage and encourage customer interaction with their organization. Portals provide critical business intelligence, allowing for specific data gathering and personalization. To help the project succeed, Postini upgraded to Salesforce Enterprise Edition specifically for Salesforce Customer Portal's Web self-service functionality. Today, Postini has 170 Salesforce licenses.

Companywide Engagement

Postini motivated customers to visit its Web self-service portal by notifying them that cases submitted through the portal would get higher priority. Customers used the portal to log, monitor, and close cases automatically, thereby inserting inquiries into high-priority support queues. Additionally, the portal helped customers find solutions to their inquiries instantaneously, making it unnecessary for them to contact service reps and enabling a tenfold increase in the number of customers handled with the same number of staff.

Today, as users log in, the system retrieves and displays customer-specific information and links. Every interaction is personalized. No customer query is left unresolved. Business escalation rules have changed due to the customization and in-depth visibility afforded by the system. Bloomquist's team—utilizing custom objects and email templates that were created in-house in about 30 minutes—ensures that senior management can review the status of any customer or business issue at any time and quickly escalate any issue to the most appropriate agent or team. Billing reports that once were outsourced (at about $2,600 per report set) now are created in-house, in minutes.

The portal's success in delivering real-time information has affected just about every department of the company. For example, Postini now tracks all billing cases through Salesforce, and resolving billing problems is much faster. Training has changed as well. "We used Force.com Builder to customize Salesforce in-house so that we could completely automate training registrations," says Bloomquist. "While we can't put a number on the savings, it has made the whole process easier to access and much simpler to manage."

The portal also enabled another important function: gathering and acting on customer feedback. Postini is able to gather and process case feedback from more than 15 percent of its customer base. Prior to Salesforce, client feedback rates were lower than 1 percent. According to Bloomquist, the reports generated in Salesforce Service & Support reflect a 99 percent positive rating from Postini customers today. The best part, however, is that of the remaining 1 percent, or 67 cases over a six-month period, none resulted in a customer cancelling service. The ability to reach these customers quickly with solutions helped ensure that they stayed on as satisfied clients.

Defining Success

Before Salesforce, Postini responded to inquiries almost entirely via individual emails. Today, only about 4 percent of responses are via email, with the remainder handled through the Web portal or by phone. Thanks to the increase in available information and the ease of customization, responses are fully personalized, and response times and costs are down.

The company now has more than 11,000 portal users, with about 3,000 customer interactions each month. Customers have submitted approximately 30,000 cases via the portal. Management visibility into day-to-day operations allows Postini to handle escalations efficiently and in a timely manner, with consistency across all channels. Feedback indicates that customers feel their comments and issues are heard and resolved.

By redirecting clients to the Web portal, gaining access to critical real-time business data, and responding more economically via the portal to customer issues, Postini has radically lowered its day-to-day operating costs. In many ways, Postini has transformed its Web self-service portal into its business gateway to the future.