For the very first time, Salesforce has rewarded five customers with the Customer Trailblazer Awards at this year's Dreamforce event. The winners were selected based on their business vision, their collaborative abilities, their transformation efforts and their ability to continually learn and adapt to changing business conditions. . Prizes were awarded in five different categories including growth, innovation, equality, inspiration and trust.
The winners of the first Salesforce Customer Trailblazer Awards are:
Pioneer of Growth – Components of Lippert
Innovation Trailblazer – Eurostar
Trust Trailblazer – Designing Equipment
Equality Trailblazer – Metro College Success Program
Inspiration Trailblazer -Interlochen School of the Arts
Nicole Sult, Lippert Components' Customer Service Director, winner of the Growth Award, shared with me the role that CRM, particularly Salesforce, has played in the explosive growth of the company over the past two years. last years. Here is a transcript of our conversation. To hear the full interview, check out the video and the built-in SoundCloud player below.
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Nicole Sult: Lippert Components is a manufacturer of RV parts. We sell our components to the organizations that build the recreational vehicles, then they sell these recreational vehicles to dealers and then to retail customers. And we have the opportunity to serve all these different channels. We have a variety of different clients, and they want to be served in different ways. We have a great ability to reach a lot of people in the leisure industry.
Small Business Trends: You are the winner of growth. Talk a bit about how Salesforce helped propel this growth.
Nicole Sult: Part of our business model is that our growth goes through acquisition as well as through organic growth. And what we discovered is that when we acquired new companies and integrated them into Lippert Components, our overheads grew at the same rate, which is obviously not the case. from most companies. And when we launched Salesforce, we had the opportunity to start seeing how much efficiency we were losing, and then where we won it. And as we continued our journey with Salesforce, what we found was in two years, we doubled our efficiency.
We had an agent in 2014 who could only handle 6000 contacts a year. This is not much. Today, we treat more than 14,000 people. And as we start adding new channels, such as chat and instant messaging, we're able to continue to increase that number. So, that really helped the growth. This really supported our margin as we continued to grow, which is about 60% from one year to the next.
Crazy numbers we talk about and a great opportunity to really participate with a lot of different people.
Small Business Trends: This is not just growth in terms of numbers but opportunities for interaction and quality of interactions.
Nicole Sult: Absolutely.
Small Business Trends: How Did Salesforce Contribute to That?
Nicole Sult: It's honestly at the root and heart of everything we've done with Salesforce. So, if I went back five years, I was a customer of Lippert Components and it was not a situation where it was someone you wanted to call. You called them out of necessity. That was really the beginning of our trip, it was to say, "This is not the position we want to be in." So, once we were able to launch Salesforce we really got out of this data-driven interview. query process, and really focus on the customer experience.
That's right, that's what people want. And Salesforce has allowed us to stop thinking about which button can I click here, where can I type, you know what … Just all these little data entry points, just have a conversation with a customer while gathering information, while giving me information about that customer. It has been very exciting and fun, where we can really work on the things we want in relation to the things we have to do.
Small Business Trends: So you have spent two very good years up to now.
Nicole Sult: Yes.
Small Business Trends: What will happen in the next two years? What is the goal and how can Salesforce and CRM contribute to it?
Nicole Sult: We are embarking on other industries, and we have made an acquisition of services where it is a company that provides services to recreational vehicles, so to the retailer , this end user. It is this person who lives on the ground and who camps with his family, who has a problem or concern, or who needs an upgrade. It's really there that we will go the furthest, with regards to using the service in the field to offer a really smart service to these people and to be able to create our own applications that allow it. Corresponding to marketing, it's so exciting. IoT, we are in all of this, so it's really fun that we get everything together and everything happens in customer service. We enjoy all the benefits of the business that they use and explore.
Small Business Trends: Where Can People Learn About What Lippert Does?
Nicole Sult: Of course, Lippert Components has a website – LCI1.com.