• Applications
• Platform
• Services
• Customers
• Partners
• Events
• Company
• Foundation
• Customer Login
• International Sites

NEXT STEPS

• Free Trial
• View Demo
• Screenshots
• Contact Me
• Resource Center

Resources

• Download PDF
• Snapshot
• Web Site

• Strengthen customer loyalty
• Accelerate call agent and management productivity
• Improve first-time call resolution time
• Gain visibility into the company’s worldwide technical support operations

• Enterasys deployed Salesforce’s customer service applications in just one month to 150 agents worldwide, fully integrating the system with SAP as well as Avaya telephony. Using Salesforce, Enterasys can handle more than 36,000 cases annually with the same number of support agents.

• Raising of customer satisfaction rates has increased to 94 percent—a record high
• Consolidation of customer management across sales, service, and engineering
• Six-to-eight percent business cost savings as a result of automated case management processes
• First contact closure rates improved by 15 percent
• Case resolution time decreased 50 percent
• Handles more than 36,000 support cases annually

For long-term business success, it isn’t always how much you do that counts, but rather how much you do well and how often you make the correct decisions. Enterasys Networks, Inc. (formerly Cabletron Systems), was doing well but knew it needed a course of action that would better employ its resources and allow its staff to make more-informed decisions. The company wanted to improve service quality and call resolution to its more than 3,500 customers in more than 70 countries. It wanted to consolidate and leverage disparate silos of information to respond more quickly, and with better results, to its client base. And, like any other company, Enterasys wanted lower costs while improving all its customer-related services.

The company, headquartered in Andover, Massachusetts, had made customer satisfaction a top priority. With 750 employees in offices in more than 30 countries, Enterasys needed greater consistency in its multi-channel responses to customers. It also required improved enterprise wide visibility into its technical support operations, on demand, in real time. And it wanted all this on the same platform.

Defining Requirements

Having previously used a Siebel/Scopus configuration, Enterasys now wanted a product that would be easy to use, enable a self-service portal, and employ highly sophisticated on-demand capabilities. The company defined four key goals: strengthen customer loyalty by expanding customer contact methods and incorporating survey response management practices into the call center; accelerate call agent and management productivity by bringing greater engineering focus and discipline to call center operations, enhancing business intelligence about product and escalation trending, and incorporating real-time call center industry benchmarking; increase total visibility by automating communications to internal and external customers and providing customized dashboards for presenting account insight to internal communities; and modernize call center operations by customizing ERP integration points to legacy systems such as Scopus and SAP.

Enterasys evaluated Siebel and Microsoft, among other vendors, but chose Salesforce’s customer service application to improve service quality and call resolution for its Global Technical Assistance Center. Salesforce was easily deployed to 150 agents in a month and came, out of the box, with all the tools Enterasys needed for routing, queuing, and escalating cases. And, in addition to the basic functionality of fielding inquiries, Salesforce could be applied to fit myriad business needs, such as product support, order desk, field service return authorization, and telemarketing. Integration with engineering went smoothly, and large volumes of data were moved without mishaps.

Benefits of a Flexible System

Handling about 36,000 support cases annually with Salesforce, Enterasys now saves about 10 minutes per case. When translated into dollars and head count, the company saves nearly $500,000 a year in this one area alone. On top of that, first contact closure rates have improved by 15 percent while case resolution time has decreased 50 percent. Add in the staff efficiency gains through workflow automation, more business control, and higher customer satisfaction and the savings are endless.

“We have been able to revolutionize our call center management by using cutting-edge CRM applications from salesforce.com,” says Vala Afshar, vice president, global technical services. "Salesforce has helped us improve service to our customers, as well as reduce our overall support costs."

Once the company had improved the basic task of responding to customer inquiries, Enterasys sought ways to extend its use of Salesforce. Enterasys also uses the system for engineering escalation management, partner and channel support, benchmarking capabilities, and survey response management.

Ease of adoption made change management minimal, and call agent efficiency gains were significant. Older methods of processing email requests and collating data now are streamlined. Case records are auto-created into a CRM database. Skills-based assignment rules route the cases to the most appropriate agent or team. All customer inquiries are documented, and e-response times are measurably improved. Another important advantage of the system is that more than 500,000 communications to customers and partners remain consistent throughout the organization, regardless of channel.

Lessons Learned

Enterasys was also able to customize Salesforce to fit its business. Using some of the available dashboard functionality, Enterasys created a custom object and an ongoing schedule for importing data from Excel spreadsheets and then was able to make worldwide support metrics available for real-time analysis. The best part: Everything from concept to utilization took just two and a half days.

"Our customers recognize the effectiveness of our support as one of the main reasons for their continued investments in Enterasys," Afshar says. "The effectiveness of our support is directly linked to the business intelligence tools we use, building a rapid response system with total visibility."

Insight Through Analytics

Enterasys now quickly and easily builds customized dashboards to provide agents and management complete visibility into critical areas of the call and operations center. With dashboards so easy to use and customize, the company can now efficiently handle more cases as its business and customer base grows with the same number of agents. Enterasys now uses more than 200 dashboards to help manage company business, providing granular insight into areas such as call center performance, support engineering performance, engineering escalation management, customer satisfaction, at-risk support revenue, and global performance by geography.

Understanding that customer satisfaction drives and predicts loyalty, Enterasys also brought the task of survey management in-house. Not only did this contribute to cost savings but it also allowed the company to consolidate and parse the information in any way it chose. For example, Enterasys now could be advised, with early-warning indicators, of dissatisfied or at-risk customers. Capabilities such as these, and dozens of other metrics, have fostered real-time action and coordination across departments. Customer response has been positive, with customer satisfaction numbers rising more than 10 percent.

Bottom Line

Enterasys now has improved visibility into activities of its staff, customers, and partners. Contact via electronic channels has grown by nearly 40 percent while enhancing agent efficiency, and in-depth survey results have helped drive customer satisfaction levels to new highs of 94 percent. The company is moving ahead in other areas too. In Europe Enterasys has extended the functionality afforded by using Salesforce Service & Support to partner management. For Enterasys, this is just one more step toward on-demand success across the enterprise.