Eye tracking pioneer boosts growth and efficiency with global customer insights and seamless services

Tobii Pro is revolutionising research with eye tracking technologies that provide unique insights into human behaviour. Tobii Pro is a division within Tobii, which was founded in 2001 by three Swedish entrepreneurs and has grown from a ‘garage startup’ to become a global leader in its field. More than 3,000 companies and 2,000 research institutions, including all 50 of the world’s highest ranked universities, use Tobii Pro solutions.

Working with such ground-breaking technology means that Tobii Pro has to focus on growing its market, not just its market share. “We want to increase awareness of eye tracking and its benefits for commercial and academic research,” said Oskar Fajerson, VP of Sales at Tobii Pro. “Eye tracking has long served academic researchers, but recent innovations have taken it out of the lab and beyond niche applications to a tool being adopted by commercial companies looking to understand how and why people use their products and services. It’s up to us to develop the right approach and best practices for our diverse customer group.”

To address this need, in addition to selling hardware and software, Tobii Pro has a team of eye tracking experts conducting research on behalf of companies, and is currently establishing a software-as-a-service model to meet customer demand. “We’re an extremely dynamic company; we’re constantly changing and growing our offerings and our customer base,” said Daniel Scheffold, Customer Success Manager at Tobii Pro. “To stay connected to our existing customer base while also breaking into new market segments, we need scalable CRM capabilities that will adapt with us.”

With Salesforce underpinning sales and technical support since 2008, Tobii Pro hasn’t just achieved great agility but also great visibility across its business. “With Salesforce, we have the flexibility to adapt our processes as the business and market evolve,” said Cecilia Strömberg, Head of Business Processes and Systems at Tobii Pro.

With assets, customers, and marketing activities all tracked in Salesforce, Strömberg and colleagues in other departments can also keep their eyes on the ball as their company grows into an increasingly global player.

Tobii Pro’s 60-strong sales team use Salesforce across its seven international offices to manage direct sales and reseller relationships. With centralised information, account managers can remain completely customer-oriented while ensuring a consistent approach to sales across the globe. All Tobii Pro products and currencies are also captured in Salesforce, which enables account managers to automatically create accurate quotes.

“With Salesforce, we can see what’s happening in every region.” Scheffold continued: “We use a range of reports and dashboards to track opportunities and sales performance in real-time.”

Salesforce dashboards are also crucial to Tobii Pro’s ability to forecast sales. As well as helping individual account managers track their pipeline and determine what leads to prioritise, the dashboards help senior managers make more informed business decisions and investments.

As eye tracking has gone from niche scientific applications to applied commercial research, Tobii Pro is increasingly approached by researchers constantly finding new ways of applying eye tracking in their research methodology.

Sourcing feedback from customers also helps drive smarter decision-making, as Fajerson explained: “As a pioneer in our field, we need to know what’s happening in the market at all times. Chatter enables resellers and account managers to share feedback from our customers and emerging trends.”

Chatter also brings the dispersed sales community together so they can collaborate on opportunities, check out new demos, and access the latest product news.

Enabling greater collaboration between the sales team and marketing colleagues is equally important for delivering a seamless customer experience. Pardot helps marketing provide account managers with qualified prospects, automates responses to website downloads, and distributes emails to announce new product launches and updates. With every communication captured in Salesforce, marketing and sales can work together to better engage with prospects. “With Pardot, we can nurture prospects throughout their journey,” said Scheffold. “It also automates customer onboarding, sending out personalised emails at certain trigger points to keep the process moving.”

Tobii Pro’s commitment to delivering an excellent customer experience extends through to technical support. The team uses Service Cloud to track and escalate cases, while the order management team uses the solution to fulfil customer requests and assign licences. “Integration with our ERP system and software licensing tool means we can view the devices, assets, serial numbers, and contracts associated with each customer, which means the technical support team can provide informed advice and fix more issues faster,” explained Strömberg.

Tobii Pro has recently integrated a survey tool to source customer feedback following support cases and other key points in the customer journey. “From a customer success perspective, Salesforce is absolutely crucial,” said Scheffold. “With a 360-degree view of the customer, we can track outstanding support cases, identify upsell opportunities, and start customer conversations at the right point and at the right time.”

The company is also constantly exploring new solutions from the Salesforce AppExchange. “We love it! The AppExchange makes it really easy to try new things, as it’s so much quicker and simpler than developing ideas from scratch,” said Strömberg.

The ability to keep evolving its processes and tapping into new insights via a single platform will be key as Tobii Pro’s business continues to grow. “Salesforce is a great partner,” said Fajerson. “It’s supportive and cares about our success. Salesforce provides the flexibility and scalability we need to explore new markets, expand into new territories, and launch new services.”