Epos Now

With Salesforce, we’ve been able to bring more affordable and accessible payment systems to thousands of companies around the world.”

— Jacyn Heavens, Founder and CEO of Epos Now
 

Increasing sales and customer satisfaction with simpler processes, richer business insights, and greater team collaboration

Jacyn Heavens used to run a bar in Norwich. Fed up with the high costs and poor features of the point of sale systems on the market, he started tinkering with a second-hand till bought on eBay. Jacyn now runs a pioneering technology company – and is taking the retail and hospitality sector by storm.

“I started Epos Now because I was a frustrated business owner. I wanted to make life easier for other people like me and help them increase customer satisfaction,” revealed Heavens. “With Salesforce, we’ve been able to bring more affordable and accessible payment systems to thousands of companies around the world.”

Founded on cloud technology, Epos Now’s electronic point of sales (EPOS) systems can be accessed from anywhere, and integrated with other business systems to enable companies to learn more about their customers while also processing payments.

With more than 100,000 sales in just four years, Epos Now has grown rapidly, largely due to the team’s ability to provide exceptional service. “It’s a very competitive market, with new companies popping up every day,” explained Hayley Johnson, Chief Operating Officer at Epos Now. “Understanding our customers stands us apart and fuels our growth.”

To help unlock these insights, Johnson needed a smarter customer relationship management (CRM) solution. “I was trying to manage a team and our customers relationships while blindfolded,” she added. “I couldn’t see how many customers were on the platform, identify trends, or spot when a service case had been open for weeks.”

Seeing things in a new light

In October 2014, Epos Now deployed Salesforce – and Johnson lost her blindfold for good. “Salesforce was the only solution that could deliver the agility and visibility we wanted,” she explained. “We’re a creative and ambitious company; we needed a platform with the flexibility and freedom to build customisations ourselves without relying on a third party.”

Service Cloud was an instant hit with the company’s service team. Onboarding a new customer used to be clunky and time-consuming, but Service Cloud’s automated workflows have made it seamless and straightforward. If key actions don’t occur within certain timescales, an alert is sent to the team to remind them.

“With Service Cloud, our customers feel like they’re dealing with a different business,” revealed Johnson. “We need to respond quickly to customer issues and queries. With Service Cloud, we can constantly improve how we work.”

The team is alerted to negative reviews and comments across all customer channels, which means it can act at the first sign of any problems. This has helped Johnson and her team increase the level of trust with customers. Since deploying Salesforce, the company’s score on an online community for customer reviews has consistently topped 8.9.

Epos Now also uses Service Cloud to track feedback from customers around potential improvements to its products. “We want to listen to our customers and make sure our products really work for them. A constant flow of feedback means we can refine our products, and retain our market-leading position,” said Johnson.

Taking the lead

With growth top of the agenda for Epos Now, its sales team needs to ensure every lead is followed up. With Sales Cloud and the Salesforce Mobile App, the team can track a lead throughout its lifecycle – even if they are on the road.

Epos Now has also integrated a number of apps from Salesforce App Cloud’s AppExchange with Sales Cloud to further empower the team. For example, one app builds and sends customised proposals, while another displays live updates on screens around the sales office to showcase recent deals.

Since using Sales Cloud, conversion rates have shot up from 12% to 20%, with a new customer signed up every two hours. “In 2015 we saw 160% growth, and were placed 13th in the list of fastest growing UK businesses in The Times 100 Tech Track Awards,” Johnson affirmed.

This rate of expansion doesn’t faze Johnson and her team. “We’re currently looking to launch in the US market,” she revealed. “To do that we need to be able to work at pace. With Salesforce, we can access company and customer information from any device from anywhere in the world.”

A journey with no end

A growing team in a growing number of locations creates new operational challenges for Johnson, for example employee training, “We were getting the same questions over and over again, so I thought why waste resources on training when you can get technology to do it for you?” said Johnson.

Every question and response is now logged in Chatter for all employees to access. “Instead of relying on a single person to provide training, we can now learn from each other,” explained Johnson. “By typing a few words, employees can find all the resources they need. It’s really empowered our people.”

By providing an online community for collaboration and knowledge sharing, Chatter helps bring everyone at Epos Now together, even if they have been working in the field for several weeks.

The company hopes to encourage similar real-time collaboration with its logistics partner by integrating Salesforce CRM with its delivery systems. Epos Now is also looking at Community Cloud to improve customer engagement, and Pardot, a marketing automation solution, to track prospects that download its trial app.

“There will be no end to our journey with Salesforce,” said Johnson. “We can continue to grow and improve our business and our products to meet customers’ needs.”

 
 

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