ChowNow is a Trailblazer

Premier Success is something we should’ve had from the start because it’s been very helpful. It’s a way to get more done faster.”

Amy Larion, Director of Business Systems at ChowNow
 

Learn how ChowNow helps restaurants streamline online ordering with Salesforce.

ChowNow is a subscription-based digital food ordering platform that provides technology and support for online ordering directly from restaurant websites without a per-order commission. Using ChowNow, restaurants can customize and brand their online ordering apps. For customers, the experience feels just like ordering directly from a local restaurant.

Salesforce has been an integral part of ChowNow’s operations since the company’s founding in 2011. While ChowNow has experienced continued growth over the years, demand for their services increased exponentially in March 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. They suddenly found their customer service call volume skyrocketing, and Service Level Agreements weren’t being met.

ChowNow leapt to meet demand with Salesforce Jump Start.

To meet rising demand, ChowNow decided to use Salesforce Jump Start — a customized program that brings in experts to help companies save time and money getting started with Salesforce. They were able to quickly implement multiple new digital engagement channels, including chat (through LiveAgent) and SMS. Since completing their digital engagement with Jump Start, ChowNow has experienced a 50% decrease in average support call wait time, and case handle time has been reduced by one-third. In addition, 92% of ChowNow’s support calls are answered in two minutes or less.

Premier Success has also been critical in accelerating time-to-value for ChowNow. “Premier Success is something we should’ve had from the start because it’s been very helpful. It’s a way to get more done faster,” said Amy Larion, Director of Business Systems at ChowNow. Through features related to Premier Success, ChowNow saves more than 15 hours per month in admin time.

ChowNow and Salesforce help restaurants weather the pandemic.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Salesforce has helped ChowNow quickly add new products and services, like curbside pickup and a no-cost loyalty program, as a way to help restaurant partners navigate the new service landscape.

The flexibility of the platform allowed ChowNow to quickly reconfigure existing workflows and processes to onboard restaurants faster and get them back in business. “Salesforce is very integral to most of our processes,” said Larion. “In dealing with COVID-19 from a Salesforce perspective, we gave priority to anything that would speed up onboarding or sales, or reduce friction.”

ChowNow upgrades and expands with Salesforce tools.

ChowNow also recently upgraded to Sales & Service Cloud Unlimited Edition (UE) from their previous Enterprise Edition of Salesforce. The upgrade to UE solved major business challenges, allowing ChowNow access to increased API limits. In addition, “admin and data-loader tasks are more efficient,” said Larion. “UE has also been great for basic updates to onboarding users, as well as for dashboards and report creation.”

Outside of customer service, ChowNow was also undergoing a quote-to-cash transformation and found that Sales & Service Cloud Unlimited Edition (UE) gave the company the full-copy sandbox they needed.

 

Virtually everyone at the company uses Salesforce. We sent out a survey recently, and out of 100 respondents, 97.3% said they use Salesforce daily.”

Amy Larion | Director of Business Systems at ChowNow

ChowNow plans to drive service success with Salesforce.

ChowNow has already seen measurable benefits in terms of customer service from the Jump Start engagement. “Within a month or two, we’re anticipating that we’ll be able to see a lot of calls routed through chat and SMS,” said Larion.

“Now, we’re moving our organization to [Salesforce] Lightning; we’ve been on Classic,” said Larion. “Our service organization will be the first department fully on Lightning, and we’re adopting LiveAgent as our chat solution."

Learn more about getting up and running on Salesforce fast with Jump Start, and explore the benefits of our Premier Plan.

 

More Tips and Tools for Trailblazers

Amy Larion’s advice on using Premier Success and Jump Start to transform the digital customer experience