“With Salesforce, we can provide a consistent service experience to our customers and minimize disruption to their production lines.”

From insulation and rice to peat moss and animal feed, Premier Tech plays an unseen role in ensuring billions of products reach customers around the world. “We provide packaging systems and automation solutions that help companies enhance the efficiency of their manufacturing facilities,” said Simon Roy, VP Marketing & Client Solutions.

As a provider of automation, Premier Tech designs, installs, and maintains up to thousands of systems for customers in the nutrition, agricultural, organics, and industrial sectors. All these systems need to run smoothly to ensure no costly downtime to customer supply chains. “We offer free technical support for our systems. When companies buy from us, they know we’ll be there to help them in 25 years’ time,” said Roy. “Our approach to client service is a real differentiator and helps to drive growth.”

And Premier Tech has grown massively since it was founded in Canada almost 100 years ago. The family-run business now has operations in 27 countries and employs around 4,500 team members across multiple business units. Its systems and automation group is supported by a global client service team, which helps to generate annual revenues of around CAN$100 million. 

This 200-strong team are at the frontline of ensuring Premier Tech’s packaging and processing systems operate as efficiently as possible. Thanks to Salesforce, they can now provide a faster and smarter response to client queries. For example, Premier Tech is now able to react twice as fast to help its clients on technical support and can organize a field service visit with clients four times faster.

“With Salesforce, we can provide a consistent service experience to our customers around the world and minimize disruption to their packaging processes and production lines,” said Roy. “We can share the right information at the right time both with our colleagues and our customers, which improves case resolution times and satisfaction levels.”

In the words of Premier Tech customers, Jon Wilson, who is the Production Supervisor of United Animal Health: “I've been around for a long time and I've not seen a company that does as well with support.”

Satisfaction is also high across Premier Tech’s client solutions team, with a 92% rating for team members, who respond to customer queries via telephone, live chat, and email. “A motivated team is important for attracting and retaining talent,” said Roy. “With Service Cloud, we can automate repetitive tasks, so agents get to focus on value-added activities.”

Premier Tech deployed Service Cloud and Field Service Lightning in December 2018 as part of a wider digital transformation of its business. “We didn’t just want a point solution; we wanted a platform that would enable us to fully integrate the customer journey in the future,” explained Philippe Hammond, Digital Offer Director. “Salesforce enables us to iterate quickly, which is a real game-changer. It’s the foundation of our digital transformation.”

The Salesforce solutions are used by field service technicians, service coordinators, technical support teams, and parts technicians to respond to queries, order spare parts, and schedule on-site visits. “We’ve brought greater efficiency and visibility to our global client service operation,” said Hammond. “Prior to Salesforce, we had different sites using different systems, so there was no central view of the customer experience.”

As well as providing management with a big picture view of client service performance, Premier Tech has empowered individual team members with personalised dashboards. “With Salesforce, we can measure and manage client service across our 16 sites and unlock new insights to drive continuous improvements in efficiency and quality,” said Hammond.

Premier Tech has also empowered its field service technicians, who make around 4,000 on-site visits per year to its customers. “Field Service Lightning has transformed how the team works,” commented Hammond. “Field service technicians can now view a full-service history and asset list for every client before they even arrive on site.”

The 200-strong team can also check upcoming appointments, capture photos and notes from site visits, access troubleshooting information, and communicate directly with clients via Field Service Lightning on their smartphone. “Salesforce has become the most important link to Premier Tech for our field service technicians,” said Hammond. 

Premier Tech is also taking steps to open the information gateway for its clients. It plans to integrate spare parts ordering with ecommerce and provide self-service access to key documentation and processes. “With Community Cloud and Commerce Cloud, we can make it easier for clients to engage with us and deliver a richer experience,” said Hammond. “We want to turn connectivity into a competitive advantage.”

As part of its digital transformation, Premier Tech will also be looking at how it can leverage IoT to deliver more preventive and predictive support for its systems around the globe. “We pride ourselves on listening to our clients; IoT will enable us to take that to a new level,” explained Hammond. “We are always looking at new ways to maximize value and drive growth.”

Premier Tech already has an impressive track record in innovation – not just at a product level but also at a process level. “With Salesforce, we can brainstorm an idea one day and put it into the production the next,” said Hammond. “It has been a real game-changer for us.”