Para Mobility

Assistive technologies can be life changing, but the purchasing process can involve many stakeholders and be emotionally charged. Salesforce helps us reduce complexity and provide more personal service.”

Sally Farrow, General Manager, Para Mobility
 
 

30%

Increase in revenue

 

Para Mobility grows with Salesforce to make life more inclusive

As a manufacturer of assistive technologies, Para Mobility’s vision is to enable work, health, and play to be inclusive for everyone. To make that possible, it provides assistive technologies to families, healthcare providers, government bodies, private organisations and groups as diverse as the Crowne Plaza Hotels, SeaWorld, and Sydney Children’s Hospital. The company’s products are all manufactured in Australia and include car access systems, ceiling hoists, pool lifts, and aquatic wheelchairs.

The 35-year old business has made a positive impact in the lives of many, first as a family-owned business and now as part of the wider DNW Group. The Group acquired Para Mobility in 2016 and General Manager Sally Farrow joined soon after. Almost immediately she recognised the need for a solution like Salesforce to better understand and manage customer relationships.

“Assistive technologies can be life changing, but the purchasing process can involve many stakeholders and be emotionally charged. Salesforce helps us reduce complexity and provide more personal service,” said Farrow. “It also helps us raise awareness that these technologies exist so we can reach more people and help them live more independent lives.”

Getting closer to customers

Before the acquisition, Para Mobility’s customer knowledge was held by employees; only invoicing contacts were formally documented. Also, while Para Mobility had good relationships with customers and partners like occupational therapists, it lacked a comprehensive view of stakeholders and an understanding of their different roles.

“Before Salesforce, we just had drawers of business cards. Customers, family members, and therapists had to explain who they were and who they were related to every time that they called. We needed a more effective way to capture and manage data, and gain a long term view of the business,” said Farrow.

Using the data in Sales Cloud, Para Mobility is able to provide personal service to each stakeholder – whether they’re calling to discuss a new order or funding for an existing one. It can connect the dots when dealing with multiple contacts from the same business or family to meet their needs more effectively.

Para Mobility has also digitised its sales processes for a massive boost in efficiency. Using Salesforce Inbox, reps can quickly add leads and data to Sales Cloud while working out of their email account. This, together with the ability to produce quotes in Sales Cloud, has reduced a huge amount of admin.

“We’ve doubled our sales revenue over the last two years and a lot of that growth is a result of good data management and being really disciplined using Salesforce to track and follow up on opportunities,” said Farrow. 

Maintaining momentum during COVID-19

Para Mobility’s focus on data management has played an important role in helping the business navigate through COVID-19. As the pandemic began to spread, one of the first things the business did was go through its customer records and production data to understand and prioritise customer needs. As an example, if the team saw that a customer was facing isolation with just one carer, they could quickly assess the need for a lift would be urgent. On the other hand, production and delivery of equipment to facilities still under construction could wait.

“There was such uncertainty in the early days, but we had people relying on us and waiting for life-changing technologies. So we had to keep moving forward and take control of what we could control,” said Farrow.

Communication was key and Para Mobility reached out to customers and suppliers right away to let them know that the business would remain open. This was especially good news for suppliers as many of those that Para Mobility works with are small and micro businesses who rely heavily on its business succeeding. They were thrilled to continue operating and, due to slow downs in other areas, some were able to deliver materials and services to Para Mobility faster than usual.

In some cases, this helped Para Mobility to reduce the time to deliver new orders from an average of four to six weeks to, in many cases, less than one week.

While all of this was happening, many of Para Mobility’s office employees had transitioned to working from home. Phone lines were diverted to people’s personal numbers and, using Salesforce, employees were able to access the data they needed in real-time to support customers.

Anne Nasr, Customer Experience & Marketing Consultant at Para Mobility said, “It is a testament to the systems we have that we were able to literally pick up our laptops, go home, and carry on working just like we were in the office.”

Employees remained connected with regular video conferences and participated in activities like virtual bingo to maintain morale. Many employees also spent time in the office to connect and support the manufacturing team.

Sustaining growth

Throughout the pandemic, Para Mobility was focused on the sustainability of the business. Accelerating pipeline was more important than ever and the business quickly got to work on new initiatives to nurture leads.

Para Mobility was already using Pardot to score leads and prioritise follow up. However, there were still hundreds of engaged leads that they hadn’t yet spoken with. So leveraging Trailhead for insight and training, Para Mobility created a journey in Pardot to help move these leads through the funnel. It also turned on Live Chat to actively engage with people coming to the website to research products.

“The goal for us is to establish a personal connection with these leads earlier on and have a quality conversation about their needs and how we can help. Building that relationship from the start is also important to providing a great customer experience,” said Nasr.

This activity helped Para Mobility to activate and re-engage leads from past tradeshows and convert them to qualified leads and understand their product preferences. Finding value in these existing leads was important due to the fact there are no planned tradeshows in 2020 to enable new opportunities and leads.

All of this effort across sales, marketing, and manufacturing contributed to what Para Mobility now refers to as its Monster May where it broke several records, including the largest month of revenue in the company’s history and the largest volume ever of key account, partner and distributor sales. Para Mobility also experienced its biggest month in terms of volumes from councils. Many used this time to increase the accessibility and inclusivity of their facilities—something which Para Mobility has been advocating for passionately.

Increasing customer satisfaction

Para Mobility is continuing to innovate to increase efficiency and improve customer satisfaction. Already, it has reduced the time to respond to customer enquiries from days to within 24 hours and it has increased manufacturing output by 36%.

Customer satisfaction is measured using NPS and this sits at 66, high above industry average. One way that Para Mobility plans to improve this is by integrating more of its systems and data into Salesforce for an expanded view of customers and partners.

“The more we’re able to understand our customers and partners, the more we will be able to meet their different needs. Bringing everything together in Salesforce will allow us to do that,” said Farrow.

 
 

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