Case Study: ThomasNet Energizes Service Operations with Envox PhoneLink

ThomasNet is an online industrial marketplace and business-building site connecting buyers and sellers worldwide. Buyers from Fortune 500 companies, the government, the military and more depend on ThomasNet to search for and purchase the products and services they need.

ThomasNet provides access to more than 607,000 industrial companies, indexed by 70,000 product and service categories, and featuring more than 20 million CAD drawings that help buyers find products to meet their specifications. Industrial manufacturers and service companies are successfully using ThomasNet to grow their businesses, discover new markets, develop new customers and uncover new revenue sources. Drawing from the company’s experience in the industrial market and ongoing research on buyers’ and sellers’ needs, ThomasNet has helped thousands of clients create Web sites that incorporate online catalogs, CAD drawings and e-commerce capabilities.

Challenge:

Providing outstanding service and rapid response to inquiries for promotional services is a top priority for ThomasNet. They deployed Salesforce CRM in 2004 to better manage customer information and track utilization of the company’s wide range of promotional services. Because they have such a large database of companies with whom they work, having their customer support representatives manually look up the caller’s exact company record was quite time-consuming. Without quick access to this information, ThomasNet representatives could not easily engage with the customer or make the best recommendations.

Solution:

ThomasNet selected Envox PhoneLink to eliminate the delays associated with manually accessing records in the Salesforce CRM system. When a customer calls in, Envox PhoneLink automatically opens and sends the customer’s Salesforce record to the agent’s desktop along with the call.

Envox PhoneLink is a computer telephony integration (CTI) solution for Salesforce. It is fully integrated with ThomasNet’s existing Nortel Meridian Symposium PBX. The Envox PhoneLink software reads the phone number from which the customer calls and matches that data with the information in Salesforce to automatically identify that customer. It then coordinates the voice and data transfer to ThomasNet’s support representatives.

Envox PhoneLink also provides click-to-dial capabilities. Now, ThomasNet representatives can simply click a button in Salesforce to automatically place an outbound call to that customer. The call is automatically logged in Salesforce as well.

“Envox Worldwide is one of our leading CTI partners on the Force.com AppExchange,” said Clarence So, chief marketing officer for Salesforce.com. “With successful customer deployments in major industries such as financial services, travel/hospitality, utilities, telecommunications and manufacturing, Envox Worldwide has proven that they have best-in-class CTI capabilities to help enterprises optimize Salesforce CRM.”

Results and Benefits:

Implementing Envox PhoneLink has enabled ThomasNet to better utilize the customer information stored in their Salesforce CRM system to provide faster, more personalized service to their customers. Agents can quickly engage in a more meaningful conversation from the start. By eliminating the time it previously took to manually access customer records, ThomasNet has significantly increased productivity and responsiveness to inquiries.

“Envox PhoneLink puts all of the caller’s information at our customer support representatives’ fingertips at the time of the inquiry,” said Brian Makas, manager of business intelligence for ThomasNet. “Knowing whether it is a new company or a company with whom we already work is extremely helpful. And, for those companies that we already work with, having access to their complete customer file not only enables our customer service representatives to quickly engage in a more personalized and productive conversation from the start, but also helps us to avoid the type of conflicts that a lack of information can create.”

Prior to the deployment of Envox PhoneLink in January 2008, the customer support representatives were jotting down notes manually and then entering them into the CRM database days or even weeks after the fact. This led to a duplication of work, inconsistent record keeping and thin information. Because Envox PhoneLink automatically opens a new record as the customer calls in, it is easier for ThomasNet’s customer support representatives to record the entire interaction in Salesforce as it is taking place. Now the company has more complete, richer information that enables them to better understand their operations, and their customer support representatives’ satisfaction with the CRM system is much higher.

“We continually look for ways to leverage Salesforce to extend productivity improvement into other areas,” said Janet Tarzia, executive director of marketing for ThomasNet. “Envox PhoneLink is a perfect example of a solution that works within our current environment and adds the customer service results we are looking to achieve.”