KI Delivers Customer Satisfaction with Salesforce CRM Service

Challenge

• KI, which manufactures innovative furniture and wall system solutions for education, healthcare, government and corporate markets, needed a better way to manage its customer service workload and measure the team’s effectiveness.
• The company relied on a manual system with paper call logs and project folders. 
• KI support employees provide client project coordination from pre-sales through order management to post-sales, and field a range of client requests including providing quotes, changing order information, and expediting product warranty issues. The company wanted a robust solution to accommodate its diverse needs.
• Unlike other contract furniture manufacturers, KI markets directly to customers and through dealers; the company required a customer service system flexible enough to support its unique model and that could be expanded over time.

Solution

• KI chose Salesforce CRM Enterprise Edition for the Salesforce CRM Service solution’s extensive feature set. The company appreciated Salesforce CRM’s delivery model and ability to be adapted to meet its unique needs.
• With help from Salesforce.com Consulting, KI customized Salesforce CRM and deployed it to more than 100 customer support and quote specialist users.
• KI administrators participated in Salesforce.com Training & Certification programs to learn to configure the solution and create custom tabs; customized salesforce.com training materials have helped drive high adoption rates.
• Salesforce CRM activity management capabilities help KI’s support team manage project workflows and tasks related to supporting more than 100 contacts—both phone calls and emails-- per day per coordinator; dashboards and custom objects provide fast access to important data. 
• KI installed the Cast Iron Systems integration appliance from AppExchange for bi-directional integration with its existing BPCS ERP solution, keeping account information in sync and providing 360-degree customer views.
• Outlook integration keeps a record of customer communications so account information stays up to date.
• The company purchased an additional 275 licenses and is rolling out the Sales Cloud to the field.

Results

• KI’s customer service team has access to complete customer information and is supported by automated activity tracking; employees are more efficient, so the team can support more accounts without adding additional resources.
• The customer service team can easily share information so it can shift workload and support customers through employee absences, significantly improving overall service. 
• Detailed data on support team workloads helps support managers plan effectively, and facilitates better business planning and decision making. 
• The company is considering rolling out Salesforce CRM Marketing, Salesforce CRM Partners, integration with CTI through i3, and Salesforce CRM's mobile access in future phases of deployment.