Ocean Network Express sets sail on a journey to deliver a differentiated customer experience

Find out how Ocean Network Express has used Salesforce to transform its ways of working and provide customers with a personalised and consistent experience at every touchpoint.

Ocean Network Express Pte. Ltd. (ONE) is one of the largest container carrier companies in the world, covering over 120 countries internationally. The company was formed through the integration of three Japanese shipping companies and commenced operations in 2018 with a focus on enhancing service and innovation. Aligned to this aim, ONE’s Global Commercial & Service Management department has embarked on its own transformation encompassing people, process, and technology.

“We want to continuously enhance sales and service and make life easier for customers at every touchpoint,” said Sundar Pandurangan, eCommerce & Digitalisation, Global Commercial & Service Management. “Service is also an area where we can truly differentiate ourselves, whether by empowering customers to self-serve or offering faster response times.”

Salesforce is a partner in ONE’s transformation which will bring sales and service onto a single platform to improve both customer experience and employee satisfaction. Known internally as ONE Force, the platform will allow the company to have a single, 360-degree view of customer interactions and deliver more personalised and engaging experiences.

As a global leader in CRM, Salesforce was a logical choice and the seamless integration with Google enables us to improve our overall customer management and performance.

Sundar Pandurangan

eCommerce & Digitalisation, Global Commercial & Service Management, Ocean Network Express

Building the foundations

In early 2020, ONE’s Digital Strategy Committee identified a number of projects to improve the customer and employee experience. Not wanting to be limited by existing technology, ONE partnered with Accenture to conduct a review of its enterprise architecture. Khoo Boo Beng, Managing Director, Technology Lead for ONE, Accenture, said “We are pleased to be part of ONE’s customer foundation transformation journey and we look forward to providing our continued support in business advisory, and to helping to build ONE’s technology capability for the future.”

Through this initiative, ONE realised the need to replace its CRM and selected Salesforce, in part, because of its integration with Google. ONE uses Google applications extensively and wanted to leverage this integration to centralise data and simplify workflow.

“As a global leader in CRM, Salesforce was a logical choice and the seamless integration with Google enables us to improve our overall customer management and performance, as well as to drive us towards a more solution-based methodology of handling customer service requirements,” said Sundar.

ONE engaged Salesforce Professional Services to support the implementation and to ensure the company made optimal use of the Salesforce platform. Together, they conducted workshops to define user stories and map out a solution that required as little customisation as possible. Working as a blended team with ONE employees and partners including Accenture, CI&T, and NeuraFlash, Salesforce Professional Services was able to bring specialist platform expertise to help ONE maximise value from the tools deployed.

“There is a reason that Salesforce is a leader in the market and it was important to us from the outset to align our processes to the platform. Leveraging out-of-the-box features as much as possible also ensures return on investment and reduces time to market,” said Sundar.

Josef Steindl, Senior Manager - ONE Force Product Owner, Global Commercial & Service Management, shared that Salesforce helped guide design and architectural decisions by providing feedback on the trade-offs and impacts of various options. “You need different perspectives to make a project work and while we had our vision of how things should be done, Salesforce helped to highlight other factors we needed to consider along the way,” said Josef.

There is a reason that Salesforce is a leader in the market and it was important to us from the outset to align our processes to the platform. Leveraging out-of-the-box features as much as possible also ensures return on investment and reduces time to market.

Sundar Pandurangan

eCommerce & Digitalisation, Global Commercial & Service Management, Ocean Network Express

Increasing efficiency and intelligence of sales

ONE has now deployed Sales Cloud to its global sales team. Sales Cloud is integrated with Google and operations management software OPUS Terminal to streamline workflow and improve visibility of customer data. In the past, there was just one-way synchronisation from OPUS Terminal to ONE’s CRM and it occurred only once per day. Now, data syncs both ways approximately every one to two hours, reducing duplication of data entry and ensuring information in both systems is always up to date. In this way, the sales team is able to respond faster to customers' queries and provide better customer service.

Integration with Google adds to these efficiencies by enabling tasks like scheduling meetings to be completed in just a few clicks. ONE can also directly input data from email and calendar events into Sales Cloud using Einstein Activity Capture.

On top of this, ONE has set a target for the sales team to input all sales events and meeting notes into Sales Cloud within seven days. Sales teams are now at 78% compliance, helping to improve the amount and quality of ONE’s sales data.

ONE has integrated its business intelligence platform with Sales Cloud to draw insights from this data. For example, it has dashboards to track booking performance against customer volume agreements, helping reps have proactive conversations with customers to ensure commitments are met.

In the future, ONE will gain even more actionable insights through the expanded use of Einstein and features like lead scoring.

Sales Cloud integrates with Google and other key systems for increased efficiency and improved visibility of customer data.

Delivering faster and easier customer service

ONE is now equipping agents with Service Cloud. The global rollout has started with a pilot involving a number of countries to ensure the solution meets the needs of agents and customers everywhere.

Once fully deployed, Service Cloud will provide a unified workspace for agents and consolidate information from different systems for faster case resolution. It will also support a consistent process for case management and enable tracking of key performance measures such as response times.

“We will be able to measure each and every touchpoint for valuable insights on how we can improve,” said Sundar. “Our sales team will also be able to share these metrics with customers to show that we offer a differentiated service.”

Einstein is a key part of ONE’s strategy to make service faster and easier for customers. For example, Einstein Bots allows customers to self-serve and check on their last “free day” to collect containers before they incur charges. Automating responses to more questions like this will free up agents to handle more complex inquiries. And with the planned use of AI-powered Einstein Recommendations, agents will be able to provide customers the right answers quickly.

“One of the main things we want to do is deliver a consistent customer experience globally. At the same time, we are increasing agent productivity which reduces our response time and improves customer service,” said Josef.

One of the main things we want to do is deliver a consistent customer experience globally. At the same time, we are increasing agent productivity which reduces our response time and improves customer service.

Josef Steindl

Senior Manager - ONE Force Product Owner, Global Commercial & Service Management, Ocean Network Express

Fuelling adoption and success

ONE has made the transition to Salesforce as easy as possible for employees with a comprehensive strategy for change management. This has included internal communications to promote the benefits of the change and gathering employee feedback to inform user stories and technology enhancements.

The company has also leveraged In-App Guidance and Sales Enablement to facilitate training for global sales and service teams. Previously known as myTrailhead and powered by Salesforce’s online learning platform Trailhead, Sales Enablement supports the delivery of custom learning content. Personalised learning paths known as trailmixes have been set up for sales and service and include training on Salesforce and new ways of working. The trailmixes are mainly comprised of Salesforce-produced modules, although ONE has plans to develop more of its own learning content in the future. This will include modules and trailmixes for specific roles.

“In the past, we had to manually create and deliver presentations to onboard sales and service teams whereas we now have trailmixes that take them through the day in the life of a salesperson or customer service agent. This greatly enhances the employee experience and we want to build on this capability,” said Josef.

ONE’s focus right now is continuing its deployment of Service Cloud, supported by Salesforce Professional Services and Accenture as well as NeuraFlash which has been engaged to support the implementation of Service Cloud in North America.

ONE is also further differentiating itself through a focus on sustainability. One initiative in this space includes publishing CO2 emissions on its ecommerce site so that customers can understand their environmental impact.

“We really want to be a leader in decarbonising the shipping industry and will therefore continue to invest in greener assets and technologies,” said Sundar.

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