"With the Service Cloud, we can tie together all the ways we touch our customers so we can better meet their needs."


— Extra Space Storage

Extra Space Storage doubled its reservation conversion rate with the Service Cloud

Challenge

  • Extra Space Storage Inc. (NSYE: EXR), the second-largest operator of self-storage locations in the United States, needed a new CRM system to bring together sales and call center functions
  • The company, which operates over 750 properties in 35 states, used spreadsheets and homegrown solutions to manage customer information
  • Executives managing rapid growth wanted to focus on innovation and efficiency, not their data center
  • The company preferred cloud-based technologies that could easily be integrated, customized, and deployed
  • Support for business processes beyond sales and support was also important

 

Solution

  • Chose salesforce.com’s applications over Microsoft CRM and Oracle On Demand for their rapid deployment and easy integration with legacy systems, as well as salesforce.com’s leadership in cloud computing
  • After rolling out the Sales and Service Clouds to 50 sales and support employees in just 8 weeks, the deployment was expanded to 1,200 licenses
  • Integrated an InContact telephony system with the Service Cloud to create an end-to-end agent desktop that lets reps access up-to-date information on unit availability, promotions, discounts, and more
  • Integrated ExactTarget software for automating mass email campaigns for marketing
  • Integrated a SQL database with records of 30,000 self-storage facilities with the Sales and Service Clouds to support strategic and tactical planning
  • Integrated a CenterShift point-of-sale (POS) system to capture walk-in reservations, customer call-back times, sales-close percentages, and more
  • In-house developers participated in Saleforce.com Training and Certification and are building new applications on Force.com
  • Built an IT Purchase Order System and a Risk Management system that lets facility managers enter an accident, such as a customer driving a truck into a storage space, that is converted to an insurance claim and forwarded to reinsurers
  • Set up requirements management, project management, and software-release workflow and approval systems and created 350 dashboards outlining the status of multiple key performance indicators (KPIs) for 52 districts and 7 divisions
  • Integrated the corporate Web site with the Service Cloud, allowing Web-to-case tracking and response
  • Rolled out salesforce.com’s ideas community
  • Created joint venture partner reporting portals
  • Migrated systems for facility-asset management, capital budgets and expenditures, vendor management, contract generation and maintenance and repair to the salesforce.com solution
  • Completed site audit and internal audit (SOX compliance) forms and workflow

 

Results

  • Salesforce.com is becoming the data master for all corporate and customer records, with 6+ million contacts migrated from a legacy POS system
  • Up-to-date data combined with unified customer and business views and easy access to real-time performance metrics has improved planning and decision-making
  • In 2009, call center agents doubled their reservation conversation rate
  • Better data on customer interactions has improved customer satisfaction
  • A centralized business system has increased efficiencies
  • Adopting cloud computing has decreased IT and system costs
  • One developer created a new project tracking application in just 2 days
  • Facility managers are now able to research and reserve units at other Extra Space Storage facilities
  • Capital expenditures at the facility level can be budgeted, tracked, and scheduled across the entire Extra Space Storage portfolio in both the current year and historically
  • Extra Space Storage plans to implement NetDocuments from the AppExchange to move to cloud-based document management

 

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