Challenge

• Online comparison shopping pioneer Shopping.com, an eBay company, needed a CRM solution to provide a secure, centralized place for client data.
• Data resided in Excel spreadsheets on local hard drives, making it difficult to share. 
• In the midst of a move and a merger, the company wanted to deploy a CRM system within 60 days to avoid data loss.
• As a rapidly-growing shopping destination working with thousands of stores across the Web, Shopping.com needed a scalable solution it could customize as it grew.
• The company also required a solution it could expand to address customer service. Key requirements included ease of use and affordability, as well as support for its international business units.

Solution

• Shopping.com chose Salesforce CRM for its cost-effectiveness, robust customer support features, and the availability of the Force.com API—which makes it easy for companies to integrate Salesforce CRM with virtually any Web service.
• With the help of Salesforce.com Premium Support, Shopping.com implemented Salesforce CRM in just 2 weeks to users in the US, Europe, and Israel. Users in sales, customer support, and finance employees rely on the cloud-computing solution today.
• With assistance from salesforce.com partner Theikos™, Shopping.com deployed email-to-case functionality to integrate support aliases with Salesforce CRM and to route questions to the correct support queue.
• Customers can submit cases on the Shopping.com self-service portal via Salesforce CRM’s Web-to-case functionality.
• More than 20 custom dashboards and 10 custom objects provide more accurate forecasts and real-time views of critical business metrics.
• The company upgraded to Salesforce CRM Unlimited Edition for increased storage, enabling the tracking and archiving of important client documents.
• Force.com's connect for Microsoft Outlook keeps client communications in sync.
• The company installed ExactTarget™ from AppExchange to track outbound email campaigns. 
• Integration with proprietary applications provides more in-depth business intelligence. Integration with SAP for invoicing and a proprietary customer billing system is planned for the future.

Results

• Shopping.com has reduced the total number of customer support cases by 30% since deploying Salesforce CRM.
• The smaller case load and improved infrastructure allowed Shopping.com to increase employee productivity while also improving customer turnaround time.
• A central repository for client information provides 360-degree customer views, maintains data integrity, and preserves important records. It also streamlines marketing efforts.
• Improved reporting and access to business information facilitates better decision making.