NewVoiceMedia Secures More Deals, Satisfies More Clients with Salesforce CRM

Case Study

When Paul Turner agreed to speak at a salesforce.com event three years ago, little did he know it would change his career and the strategy and prosperity of his future employer. His presentation focused on the success his employer at the time was having with Salesforce CRM; and among those listening intently was Jonathan Grant, chief executive officer (CEO) of NewVoiceMedia, a leading UK provider of hosted contact center technology. NewVoiceMedia had recently begun using The Sales Cloud, but it needed someone with customer relationship management (CRM) vision, insight, and experience to spearhead the rollout.

An exchange of business cards during the event ultimately led to Turner becoming chief operating officer (COO) for NewVoiceMedia, an episode which eventually led to the company closing more deals more quickly, gaining real-time visibility into its sales pipeline, and being able to collaborate instantly on client issues. But all that was in the future. When Turner joined, NewVoiceMedia was still relying on several different and separate sales management systems. Leads were scattered across the business, sales forecasts were produced using spreadsheets, and if a sales person needed a quick snapshot of how a client was performing, they either faced walking the corridors to talk to different staff or searching between different systems.

Turner takes up the story. “My immediate priority when I joined NewVoiceMedia was to replace every other sales management platform with the Sales Cloud. Standardizing on the software-as-a-service model was a vital step, because it enabled this dynamic, fast growing organization to quickly and cost-effectively move the entire sales management process into the cloud. No software, no hardware, and no capital expenditure.”

Streamlining all phases of sales management

Within six weeks of joining NewVoiceMedia, Turner and his team had rolled out the Sales Cloud licenses to the entire organization. And because it is as easy to use as consumer websites they were familiar with using every day, the staff were productive within hours―streamlining all phases of sales management, from lead management, to analytics and forecasting. "Our clients range from small and medium-size enterprises with less than five people taking calls who don't even think of themselves as a traditional call center, to large corporations such as Grant Thornton and the Royal Mail with multi-site contact centers and hundreds of agents. Using the Sales Cloud, our sales team can compile a complete picture of each client at a glance — including account history, contacts, interactions, and assets. It doesn’t matter if they’re in the office, in a hotel, or in Starbucks waiting to see a client; the information is all there in one, easy to use application."

Besides providing a comprehensive platform for account, opportunity, and lead management, the Sales Cloud is also helping NewVoiceMedia manage and refine its marketing campaign process. From list segmentation, email blasts, and landing pages, to lead capture, lead routing and assignment, the Sales Cloud manages it all. NewVoiceMedia used this powerful marketing functionality to full effect during a recent hosted contact center roadshow event in London. The Sales Cloud made the event quick and easy to organize, and throughout the build up, the marketing team had instant drill-down insight into who would be attending, their interests, and their prospect status. And the outcome exceeded all expectations. "We had more than 70 delegates attend the event and we generated more than $375,000 in pipeline opportunities," says Turner. "Once the leads were in, we used the Sales Cloud to automatically route them from marketing to sales, ensuring each lead reached the right sales rep and that none were forgotten."

Rapid, easy, and effective customization

NewVoiceMedia is also using Force.com to quickly customize and launch highly effective applications. Takes expenses management for example. Previously, when a member of staff needed to complete a clam, it involved endless form filling, a round of manual signatures, and eventually re-keying by the finance team. Using the Force.com cloud platform, Turner’s team has automated the process: staff simply input their expenses online and the request is automatically routed through the organization for approval and payment. Many other services, including sales forecasting, the web-to-leads process, and purchase order management have been built in the cloud quickly and at minimal expense to the business.

"We practice what we preach," says Turner. "NewVoiceMedia's ContactWorld telephony solution is delivered using cloud-based technology, which provides the functionality, scalability, and configuration of an on-premise solution at a fraction of the price. We have also now integrated the Sales Cloud with our billing system so we can immediately understand how each ContactWorld customer is performing. We can view the minutes each agent has accrued, the client's usage pattern, and what the profitability is on that client. We have also created workflow alerts using Force.com which notify the sales team if the client's usage pattern changes, so they can take action."

Delivering inspirational client service

While the Sales Cloud has redefined the way NewVoiceMedia manages its sales environment, similarly spectacular results are occurring in service delivery. NewVoiceMedia is using the Service Cloud to deliver inspirational client service that is responsive, accurate, and trusted. Indeed, NewVoiceMedia's latest hosted contact center solution is integrated into the Service Cloud, allowing SME clients to deploy the same caller-centric capabilities in their contact center that have only been available to the world's largest organizations up to now. NewVoiceMedia’s telephony capabilities are embedded directly into the console that customer service agents use with the Service Cloud, giving agents a single, easy to use interface to manage their calls and cases. To help manage the contact center, supervisors can set-up call plans and graphically review real-time statistics for individual agents and the contact centre as a whole.

With a Salesforce CRM-powered customer portal, NewVoiceMedia clients get service on their own, 24 hours a day. They receive case updates and can search a knowledge base, all without picking up the phone.

Turner is keen to cite ways that the Service Cloud is accelerating productivity. "In the contact center environment, NewVoiceMedia is regularly taking credit card payments via agent-less IVR. This means we have to be PCI DSS compliant, to ensure secure transactions. There is a very strict change control process to manage PCI DSS changes and updates, which we used to perform manually and took one person half a day each week to complete. By automating the change control object in the Service Cloud, the process is now automated, freeing up that person's time for other essential tasks. The opportunities for Salesforce CRM to streamline processes and make the business more agile are limitless."

Connecting and sharing information securely

Salesforce CRM has also opened up a whole new world of real-time enterprise collaboration. With Salesforce Chatter, every member of staff is able to stay on top of what their colleagues are doing and on the status of important projects and deals. As both a collaboration application and a platform for building collaborative cloud-computing apps, Chatter is helping NewVoiceMedia connect and share information securely—all in real time. "Salesforce Chatter has been so successful that one of the NewVoiceMedia team was the first person in the world to break through the maximum number of objects that can be followed in Chatter. Following this, Salesforce.com increased the limit, but it reflects just how popular and powerful the collaboration platform can be," Turner explains.

Like almost every organization using Salesforce CRM, the journey never ends. NewVoiceMedia is no different. Turner and his colleagues are working on a number of new sales and service delivery projects, all geared to staying on top of every lead, every opportunity, and every client. This includes the roll-out of the existing customer portal to the NewVoiceMedia partner and reseller community, including BT and China Telecom. Force.com cloud integration will also be used to connect Salesforce CRM with the Sage accounting platform and a new provisioning system is waiting in the wings. It promises to be a busy year ahead for NewVoiceMedia, but the fundamental foundations for success are in place: a unified, reliable, and flexible sales and service delivery system.

Results

• Streamlined all phases of sales management, from lead management, to analytics and forecasting
• Provided comprehensive platform for account, opportunity, and lead management
• Managed and refined end-to-end marketing campaign process
• Generated more than $375,000 in pipeline opportunities from single marketing event
• Enabled the company to quickly customize and launch highly effective applications
• Supported inspirational client service delivery that is responsive, accurate, and trusted
• Powered customer portal providing clients with self-service, 24 hours a day
• Eliminated manual credit card checking process, freeing up ½ day per week for staff member
• Introduced real-time enterprise collaboration with Salesforce Chatter

NewVoiceMedia