R. L. Polk & Co. Proactively Resolves Customer Issues and Saves $1.2 Million Annually with Salesforce Service & Support

"The most important benefit of Salesforce Service & Support has been the significant increase in the customer satisfaction level. According to our annual customer survey, Polk's customer satisfaction level continues to trend upwards, with a jump of 7.5 percent from 2005 and 2006 in the area of issue resolution. With Salesforce Service & Support and our custom apps, we're saving an estimated $1.2 million annually by avoiding repeat customer support issues."


Challenge
  • R.L.Polk & Co., which provides market data analysis and planning services for automotive clients, lacked visibility into sales opportunities and customer issues
  • A decentralized approach to managing customer data resulted in a fragmented view of the customer
  • The company needed a centralized system to more efficiently log, track, and resolve customer issues generated from multichannel customer interactions
  • Polk also lacked the organizational processes to effectively implement proactive customer support and had difficulty meeting internal service level agreement (SLA) goals

Solution
  • Polk deployed Salesforce SFA in 2000 and Salesforce Service & Support in 2004 to gain full visibility across sales and customer support operations
  • The company used AppExchange Builder to create two custom applications—C orrective Action Report (CAR), for analyzing the causes of a customer issue, and Preventive Action Report (PAR), for developing processes to prevent customer issues from reoccurring
  • Polk set up escalation rules and workflows to streamline internal communication to efficiently resolve customer issues

Results
  • Customer satisfaction with Polk’s service is rising, with a 7.5 percent jump from 2005 to 2006 in the area of issue resolution
  • Polk's Salesforce solution makes it possible to share—in real time—customer data between more than 400 employees in sales, support, operations, and product strategy
  • By making internal collaboration more efficient, Polk saves an average of 15 minutes per case and eight hours per employee per week
  • Replacing its paper-based systems with the custom-built CAR application running in Salesforce enabled Polk to execute 1,440 preventive processes a year, up from 100 a year 
  • The company has saved an estimated $1.2 million annually by extending Salesforce Service & Support to implement preventive customer support processes
  • By streamlining its support operation with Salesforce Service & Support, Polk now resolves customer issues within five days
 
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