Case Study: Tackle Customer Service to Expand Marketing Initiatives Using Social CRM

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1 Research G February 2012 Case Study: Tackle Customer Service to Expand Marketing Initiatives Using Social CRM Jenny Sussin Bonobos, an Internet-based men's retail clothier, wanted to jump into social media, but needed a way to manage the influx of customer service inquiries prior to beginning a social marketing initiative. In placing customer service and marketing for social CRM hand-in-hand, the company saw a decrease in customer support response times and an increase in revenue. Key Findings Bonobos did not need to hire additional staff to deal with social customer service and support; all staff is able to access a shared workload and view customer support history case by case. Customer service agents working from the Desk.com dashboard handle customer service and marketing inquiries and commentary coming in from Twitter and Facebook, but can forward requests for assistance to other employees for additional support. Engaging with customers via their medium of choice grows customer advocacy. Recommendations With the state of the social CRM marketplace being immature, it is best to go with a niche solution that directly addresses a business need rather than try to integrate a complete CRM suite to get a foot in the door. Balance experimentation and rapid adoption with integration requirements for delivering broader support for multichannel customer service solutions. Execute social CRM strategies for customer service and marketing in tandem with a single planning unit and shared work space. What You Need to Know Bonobos implemented a social CRM solution for its customer service initiative that allowed employees across the organization to pitch in with customer service and support, establishing a base for social marketing initiatives that led to a 65% increase in revenue. The retailer chose to invest specifically in a customer-service-centric solution and engage in marketing initiatives via free dashboarding tools such as HootSuite F469

2 Case Study Introduction Bonobos is a privately held men's retail clothier based in New York City. It sells directly to consumers via its website, Bonobos.com, and has grown its business selling directly to customers who look to the company for style-conscious shopping convenience. The business started small, but as detailed within this Case Study, is rapidly growing and currently has 50 employees. The Challenge Bonobos was in a position similar to that of many organizations in feeling the need to get involved in social media not only because of the hype, but also because of the community development and revenue opportunities. In developing a social strategy, the Bonobos team recognized that social CRM is a give-and-take relationship, and knew they needed to provide customers the support they wanted via Twitter and Facebook before running contests, promotions, asking questions of the day, etc. The social CRM work Bonobos was undertaking was overly manual and the company was already resourcestrapped. Bonobos needed a way to manage the new influx of customer service support inquiries and marketing opportunities that were becoming available while working with the staff it already had. In looking for a customer service and support tool, the Bonobos operations and experience team sought a former best-in-class solution that turned out to be expensive to update and unable to incorporate social media. The solution was implemented in a few weeks, but it was unfeasible for Bonobos to upgrade or even make minor tweaks to the solution because of the cost. Many of the CRM processes were manual, and Bonobos's customer service and support agents were having issues handling case management with the application. The director of operations and experience knew it wasn't working, and the jumping-off point for the social strategy would be a different technology combined with having a coherent customer service dashboard in place that could integrate with social channels and allow for shared workloads. Approach Bonobos needed easy integration, usability, flexibility and adaptability in a customer service and support tool. The director of operations and experience at Bonobos tried software as a service (SaaS) provider Desk.com (formerly Assistly) while shopping around for a different customer service platform. He was able to integrate the offering in one night while watching TV. Recognizing the minimal time to value, Bonobos made its purchasing decision. The company was able to configure and customize the platform without any technical involvement and, in the year and a half since the initial integration, it hasn't booked a single hour of development or technical work. With Desk.com, customer service and marketing inquiries could be escalated based on rules so that all inquiries were handled in a timely manner. The operations and experience team, referred to as "ninjas," could click a button and add a rule that says, "Any tweets with derogatory words get escalated." The dashboard is intuitive enough for employees in departments outside customer service and support to take a break three to four hours a 2

3 month to assist with service and support. These employees are referred to as "white belt ninjas." All ninjas are working off the same queue of Twitter, Facebook and inquiries, but have a personal dashboard so that when they log in, the inquiry dashboard displays those inquiries that most align with their area of expertise. At the end of the day, ninjas are the primary gatekeepers, and other departments provide additional support on a necessary basis. White belt ninjas are still meeting the requirements of their primary roles, so as business picks up, additional resources will be needed all around. White belt ninjas are rewarded with an invitation to a monthly happy hour after work and intangible professional credibility among peers. With primary customer service and support concerns out of mind, Bonobos was free to ramp up its marketing outreach beginning 1Q11 with tactics like short-term promotions advertised via Twitter, contests and crowdsourcing new names for new products. The Bonobos team uses the free iteration of HootSuite for campaign management, allowing for shared corporate account access, scheduled tweeting and posts to Facebook, and simple URL click analytics (see Table 1). 3

4 Table 1. Bonobos Customer Service and Support Evolution in Five Tasks Customer Service Task Pre-CRM Tools With Initial Tool With Desk.com Assigning cases Manager prints screenshots of service inbox and highlights subjects on copies of screenshots as a way to assign tasks to different employees. Shared inbox allowed for cases to be marked as complete, but did not denote once employees were inside to respond, so multiple responses were being sent. Shared queue, allowing employees to see open cases. Once a case is opened and is occupied by an employee, other employees can see it and move on. Setting up a follow-up for a case Employee creates an event in his or her individual employee calendar and enables alert. Case reopens at a date set by employee and re-enters queue. Includes note about what to do with the case for the next employee seeing it in queue. Same as previous. Case reopens at a date set by employee and re-enters the queue. Includes note about what to do with the case for next employee seeing it in queue. Handling Twitter- and Facebook-based inquiries Log in Twitter accounts or Bonobos on Facebook to look for mentions. Employees use best judgment in figuring out which are new and require responses, or manually pair incoming mentions with outgoing posts. Same as previous; log in Twitter accounts or Bonobos on Facebook to look for mentions. Employees use best judgment in figuring out which are new and require responses, or manually pair incoming mentions with outgoing posts. Twitter and Facebook mentions flow into queue, similar to . Everything is handled within the same workflow. Addressing customer pain points with merchandise, site or operations teams Employees members of these teams directly, or forward relevant s. No automated way to track stats on frequently mentioned pain points. Same as previous; employees members of these teams directly, or forward relevant s. No automated way to track stats on frequently mentioned pain points. Each case has a check box asking if the case is a pain point. Employees can check the box, select which team it applies to and finish the case. Department teams still receive alerts about pain points, and can choose to view cases individually or log in to Desk.com to see pain point stats per department by week. Updating the administrative system There was no administrative system, other than printing the System needed vendor assistance to update, Initial administrative setup was done by one Bonobos employee. New agents and 4

5 Customer Service Task Pre-CRM Tools With Initial Tool With Desk.com screen shots and passing them out to employees (see the first task: assigning cases). requiring consultation and development time. new rules can be created immediately. Source: Gartner (February 2012) Results Customer Service, Marketing and Sales Success Bonobos is handling inquiries and cases that not only are customer-service-specific, but also expand to marketing and operations. Bonobos went from having 10% of its staff involved in customer service and support to having almost 50% of its staff certified as white belt ninjas. Visibility into a shared queue allowed a level of automation that resulted in: Going from 50% of inquiries handled in under an hour to 75% handled in under an hour, just by changing platforms. Going from 75% of inquiries handled in under an hour to 90%-plus based on tweaks done following Desk.com-administered survey results. New customers were acquired via social media, and current customers who had never given feedback to the company were beginning to reach out through their channel of choice: In two months, Bonobos doubled fans and followers on Twitter and Facebook. Interactions via Twitter increased from 5% to 14% in six months. Interactions via Facebook increased from 5% to 11% in six months. Web traffic from social channels increased 215% from 1Q11 to 2Q11. Revenue increased by 65% after the Desk.com adoption. This is a case where the increase in active fans, followers and engagements via social media directly correlated to an increase in Web traffic. Since the Bonobos website is the sales vehicle, its opportunities subsequently increased. Persistent Issues Bonobos now faces these issues: 5

6 The order management system is not merged with the customer service and support record. Due to limited technical bandwidth, Bonobos elected to work around the issue using an administrative rule within Desk.com, which enables employees to pull a link from a customer's sales cart into the Desk.com window. The process is manual, but Bonobos is looking to upgrade its cart before integration so as not to duplicate work. Transferring customer information from the initial CRM tool to Desk.com. Bonobos decided to archive the data so that it could be accessible, but started fresh with Desk.com mainly due to limited technical bandwidth. Critical Success Factors Bonobos, a rapidly growing organization, has an adaptive culture by nature. It is an organization willing to try new things. Bonobos recognized that, in social CRM, the ability to provide customer service is a necessary foundation before marketing initiatives can be successful. Desk.com's ease and practicality of use has allowed for the expansion of customer service assignments to Bonobos employees outside the customer service and support team. Lessons Learned Know your company's pain points before searching for vendors. Just because an offering has won a series of accolades doesn't mean it is the right solution for your organization. The changes in social media are rapid, and you need to be prepared to change with them. Be sure to ask a vendor what future costs are associated with tweaking a solution so that you don't go bankrupt staying modern. Customer service comes first. Don't try to market to a constituency if you're unable to handle their inquiries in return. With a trusted customer relationship comes the ability to grow the customer base and market to increase sales. Customer service and marketing go hand-in-hand when it comes to social CRM Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without Gartner s prior written permission. The information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information and shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in such information. This publication consists of the opinions of Gartner s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Although Gartner research may include a discussion of related legal issues, Gartner does not provide legal advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such. Gartner is a public company, and its shareholders may include firms and funds that have financial interests in entities covered in Gartner research. Gartner s Board of Directors may include senior managers of these firms or funds. Gartner research is produced independently by its research organization without input or influence from these firms, funds or their managers. For further information on the independence and integrity of Gartner research, see Guiding Principles on Independence and Objectivity on its website, 6