“Salesforce helps us get more predictive about customers so we can give them an amazing experience at scale.”

The fourth industrial revolution, or industry 4.0, has changed the way we manufacture for good. From smartphones to solar panels, technology is embedded in products that are connected, automated, and optimised to speed up the rate of innovation

But as IT evolves at an exponential pace, manufacturers are facing increasing pressure to develop smarter and more sophisticated products to meet rapidly changing requirements. And that means seamless production processes, high-performance equipment, and faster development cycles to get products to market.

“At Semilab➚, we help customers fine tune their processes and equipment to achieve higher yields and better quality while reducing waste and costs,” said Benedek Koncz, Head of Digital Operations at Semilab. “With Salesforce, we’ve transformed operations so we can be the best possible partner to help our customers succeed.”

Headquartered in Hungary, Semilab is a leading global researcher and manufacturer of precision metrology equipment for companies developing smart products. It not only supplies tools to monitor production processes and optimise development of materials such as silicon (a semiconductor used in microchips), it also offers remote or on-site maintenance to reduce downtime and help customers to meet their targets.

“Our customers are facing bigger challenges than ever, so we want to demonstrate that we’re here for them with personalised services and a diverse product portfolio to support future projects,” explained Koncz. 

To get closer to customers, Semilab needed 360-degree visibility of their experience and more joined-up processes. But its on-premise CRM system lacked the functionality it needed to achieve its goals.

“Salesforce impressed us with both its core functionality and the potential to customise the platform. It was easy to adapt it to work for us without compromising on our requirements,” said Koncz.

In 2018, Semilab rolled out a solution built on Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Experience Cloud with the support of their local implementation partner, Evo CRM.

Semilab sells to all major global markets, from the USA, to Europe, and Asia. By centralising processes on Salesforce, customers can now enjoy the same seamless experience across all regions.

“Salesforce helped us take the complexity out of our sales pipeline,” commented Koncz. “We’ve got full visibility of the customer journey from opportunity to after sales, and we’ve rolled out standard, best practice processes to optimise efficiency.”

The centralised platform has helped improve collaboration between teams. The sales teams have a deeper understanding of their role in fuelling company growth, and project managers can identify opportunities for improvement and make decisions based on real insights.

Salesforce is also integrated with the company’s business intelligence tool so different departments can pull tailored reports from a single source of truth. “Getting high level buy-in early on was essential to make the implementation go smoothly,” recalled Koncz. “The integration really helped people throughout the company see the value of Salesforce and how it could make their lives easier.”

With support from Evo CRM, Semilab customised the platform to automate manual processes and reduce duplication. “Our products are niche, and customers come to us with specific requirements,” explained Koncz. “Salesforce frees up the sales team from time-consuming admin so they can spend more time on meaningful customer engagements.”

Better access to data gives sales reps full visibility of customer history, including which products they currently have, when they’re due for an upgrade, and which products they could cross- or up-sell. Einstein Activity Capture pulls relevant information out of emails and into Salesforce so employees have a single view of the most up-to-date information.

“Customers often send us product samples so we can provide a demonstration of how our services work. Our R&D project management tool is integrated with Salesforce so the sales team has full visibility of the results when they’re talking to customers,” Koncz revealed.

The platform is also integrated with the company’s ERP system to streamline routine maintenance of equipment and simplify ordering parts from the product catalogue. As well as helping to manage stock levels, Semilab leverages Salesforce’s multilingual functionality so reps can easily quote for customers in their local language.

“Salesforce empowers our reps to really add value when they interact with customers,” added Koncz. “Siloed information was hampering our ability to see the big picture and to sell effectively.”

Next, the company turned its attention to support. With Salesforce, Semilab has unified customer service and set global SLAs to ensure consistent, high-quality support. With more transparent workflows, issues are classified faster and escalated to level two or three engineers as soon as possible, helping to speed up case resolution.

The service team also uses Knowledge articles built into Service Cloud to help answer common customer queries quickly and easily without having to pass customers between departments.

But Semilab goes even further with IoT and Service data inside of Salesforce. Via an integration with a data collection tool, Semilab monitors the status of customer equipment on site, enabling engineers to take proactive measures to reduce downtime. “By analysing operational data we can spot issues and provide support before production grinds to a halt, and Salesforce helps us to get even more predictive,” explained Koncz. “By tracking trends we can see if a particular model is prone to errors and work on a fix to stop it happening in the future.”

To further enhance the customer experience, the team built a dedicated self-service portal on Experience Cloud. From a single dashboard, customers can view account information such as purchase history, open cases, and status updates.

“The community helps customers to find answers to basic queries quickly, freeing up the service team to focus on more complex issues,” said Koncz. “It’s really important that we can show customers that their issues are important to us and that we’re working on them.”

Already a success in Europe and the US, the community is now being rolled out to customers across Asia.

With Salesforce, Semilab has aligned data and processes across the world. And better visibility doesn’t just improve the customer experience, it also helps the team to make smarter business decisions.

As Koncz explained, “Salesforce helps us to focus on areas we can optimise to improve our competitive advantage. Not only can we now identify customer requirements quickly, we have the agility to adapt to meet those needs, which is essential in such a rapidly-evolving market.”

By delivering consistent, more personalised services between regions, the company can continue to win more business with global players. “Giving customers a good experience is key to reaching our growth goals,” Koncz concluded. “Salesforce helps us get more predictive and proactive so we can give our customers an amazing experience at scale.”