Comvita is a global natural health company committed to the development of innovative products, backed by on going investment in scientific research. They are the world leaders in Manuka (leptospermum) honey and fresh-picked Olive Leaf Extract. Comvita sells into more than 18 countries through a network of branded retail locations, online (nine country specific e-commerce websites) and third-party outlets. They have over 450 staff located in New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the USA.

Comvita’s expansive network of manufacturing and sales calls for stringent enterprise resource planning (ERP) and management. As the company grew, its systems strained to keep pace. Employees needed a single, unified view of the global sales channels and customers.

“We had an ERP system but it didn’t really meet our sales and service team’s requirements,” Dan Waugh, General Manager of ICT, says. “They used spreadsheets to track data on everything from sales and stock to customer service call cycles, which wasn’t ideal.”

“We had very little integration,” says Cassie Matcham, Campaigns Manager for Comvita North America (previously Australia). “For example, our stock management platform drew on very basic information from our website platform, both of which were also separate from other information contained in spreadsheets and emails. Because information wasn’t centralised, we didn’t have visibility over our entire eco-system.”

Comvita uses Sales Cloud for contact, opportunity and lead management. Key B2B account managers can access the entire history of interactions with customers, all in the one place. Reports and dashboards motivate people to shoot for their targets, giving them real-time stats on leads and sales. And, it’s supercharging the sales process.

Sales and Service agents use Service Cloud, including Knowledge and Live Agent, to hold continuous conversations with customers and prospects – both B2B and B2C - and give them accurate on-the-spot answers without asking them to repeat themselves. Easy integration on Salesforce Platform helped Comvita connect computer-telephony integration (CTI) with Service Cloud quickly. This localises communications between the telephony system and Salesforce on each service agent’s screen.

Salesforce has created a hive-mind at Comvita – everyone is using the same source of customer data for sales and services. The company is well on its way to achieving its goal of creating one view of the customer.

Since introducing Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, Comvita has increased the number of B2B sales accounts in Australia by 600%. Despite this massive increase, it’s kept its workforce lean, reducing the size of its sales and service team by 30% while keeping average case resolution down.

Comvita’s B2B field account managers can hit the road, safe in the knowledge that all the information they need is on their tablet or phone. This is especially useful for negotiations on products in limited supply.

According to Nicole Barlow, Customer Sales and Service Manager at Comvita Australia,
“There has been a significant improvement in case management time – all our sales and service team members are working much faster.”

So fast, in fact, that the number of cases closed by each service team member has increased tenfold, Matcham confirms.

Barlow says the Knowledge tool has played a huge role in improving customer service. The company has uploaded product FAQs into Salesforce and it’s saving everyone a lot of time.

“We respond to cases and product enquiries much faster,” she says. “It’s been so successful that we’re also using Knowledge for internal service policies and procedures, which is definitely helping everyone work smarter.”