Raymond Realty builds frictionless, personalised stakeholder experiences with Salesforce

Since its inception in 1925, Raymond has been a renowned brand, synonymous with trust, quality and excellence. Raymond Realty, the real estate arm of Raymond Group, was founded in 2019 and is moving forward, building upon the group's rich legacy, setting new benchmarks in the Indian real estate industry. The group's focus is clear and absolute – to go beyond the conventions of real estate. With a growing portfolio and expanding boundaries, it's achieving new heights.

As a key component of this culture of excellence, Raymond Realty places the utmost importance on cultivating a customer-centric approach. Says Vishal Sharma, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, “Buying a home is usually a once-in-a-lifetime experience. To make it memorable, we strive to connect meaningfully with the customer at every touchpoint. With real-time visibility on Salesforce, our data-driven strategy helps us to better understand the customer and continually improve personalisation.”

Using technology to lay the foundation for memorable stakeholder experiences

Previously, the sales, service and marketing teams at Raymond Realty had well-defined processes to engage with customers. However, the absence of unified data views hampered their attempts to build deeper customer understanding.

Prospect and customer data from multiple channels was distributed across numerous worksheets, and finance processes sat on an ERP platform accessible only to a few employees. Meanwhile, external brokers - crucial partners in real estate sales - were using technology ineffectively or not at all; and were not part of the company’s digital ecosystem. This meant that sales managers needed frequent in-person interactions with them to track progress while nurturing leads or to follow up on payments.

The leadership team wanted a solution that would offer real-time 360 customer views underpinned by up-to-the-minute analytics, so teams could personalise customer engagement for better conversions. They also wanted to bring their broker partners into the company’s digital ecosystem to empower them for greater success.

Salesforce, with the ability to integrate data and processes from multiple sources on one trusted platform, became the obvious choice. Raymond Realty has now deployed all its real estate modules and processes on Salesforce, including pre-sales, sales, CRM, and marketing.

“Our entire business is dependent on Salesforce, whether it is sales or service,” observes Arvind Maurya, Lead Salesforce Administration, Raymond Realty. “Salesforce allows us to unify email, social, phone, and chat support and manage every channel from one console. It also helps us support our teams and broker partners with insights and automation for personalisation along the home buying journey.”

Automation and single customer views personalise interactions and accelerate conversions

Using Sales Cloud, Raymond Realty automates its marketing campaigns to easily and efficiently attract high-quality leads and move them through the funnel. When a qualified prospect interacts with Raymond Realty on any channel, their details and requirements on location, budget and home dimensions are captured on Salesforce. And then auto-assigned to a sales manager.

Pre-sales agents follow up on leads, aided by a hierarchy system, automated reminders, conversation logs, and an integrated dialler, so they never miss a scheduled call. Comprehensive, live dashboards with a classification of hot, warm, and cold cases, and forecasting capabilities help streamline the sales pipeline and predict future revenues. Automated alerts also remind the sales team of activities like site visits.

After every conversation or interaction, the 360-customer view is enriched with information, helping sales teams quickly build a deeper understanding of the customer, and suggest the right home for them.

This streamlining has helped boost the productivity of pre-sales teams by 100%, while conversion rates have jumped from 5% to 12%.

Empowering broker partners for success using technology

In real estate, brokers help increase sales with their on-the-ground knowledge of the market and customer requirements but are often unable to optimise their efficiency because of too many manual processes. Raymond Realty wanted to change this.

The company has built a dedicated channel partner app, Raymond Realty Sync, on Experience Cloud for brokers to efficiently manage the sales process and customer relationship – by logging their customer conversations, analysing the lead pipeline, and staying up-to-date on project and pricing information.

Also, brokers today no longer need to reach out to Raymond Realty sales managers for updates at every stage. They have information at their fingertips for impactful customer interactions that accelerate deal closure. When one of their prospects converts to a home buyer, brokers are alerted and can use the dedicated portal to invoice Raymond Realty and track their payments.

“Salesforce has helped us build trust and transparency and create a seamless experience for brokers. Our brokers now feel like the valued channel partners they are and want to work with us more,” says Maurya.

Smooth service delivery for higher buyer satisfaction

Once a prospect decides to buy a Raymond Realty home, the entire onboarding process happens on Sales Cloud. Starting with a welcome email, to payment reminders through SMS and email, all communication is automated and customised based on interaction history. This makes customer communication timely and accurate on parameters like home details, price, and agreement documentation. Technology has also made it easier to record customer feedback.

As buying a home is such an important life experience, Raymond Realty addresses customer concerns at any stage sensitively and fast to make it as smooth as possible. Financial information, such as the last EMI paid, was previously only available on the ERP. It is now visible on Salesforce to any employee. Information such as last-minute purchase cancellations is quickly updated. Hence, teams are equipped to prevent misunderstandings at any point during the ownership process.

When customers call with issues needing resolution, cases are automatically created on Service Cloud and assigned to the appropriate internal team. Here, the single view of the customer and streamlining of service processes has improved productivity by helping Relationship Managers keep phone calls short and effective, and resolution time under 10 hours. The escalation rate to senior managers has also reduced from 100% to 20%.

“With Salesforce, our sales and service teams are equipped with the latest updates on the ownership process. They have been able to respond speedily and empathetically to issues, and support customers on their significant journey,” says Sharma.

Building a customer-centric approach on the back of technology

Since all business activities are now tracked on Salesforce, teams find it easy to build customised reports and dashboards that monitor patterns and trends along the project lifecycle and share them with the management. “Comprehensive analytics and dashboards provide us with the visibility we need to quickly identify areas of improvement and growth opportunities in the short term, as well as projections to formulate long-term strategy,” observes Sharma.

The company has many projects in the pipeline and is looking to incorporate advanced technologies in these; such as intelligent automation, advanced and predictive analytics, and VR. And data-driven decision-making will remain at the core of the company's operations.

Empower your stakeholders to create unforgettable home-buying experiences.

Here is how Salesforce can help