Immigration Law Firm

Challenge

Our client is a high volume Immigration Law Firm handling over 7,500 cases per year. Unlike other practices, they specifically focus on working with individuals and families who are attempting to emigrate into the United States. As a practice with more than eight attorneys, dozens of clerks, and multiple assistants, the logistical challenge of balancing calendars for all involved as well as coordinating with client schedules manually, caused human errors including double scheduling, missed deadlines, and appointments that fell through the cracks. They were searching for a solution that would enable them to efficiently and reliably balance their staff calendars while preventing these errors. Important as well was the client and information privacy necessary in their vertical.

Solution

SUMO Scheduler’s out-of-the-box solutions were put in place such as the: Multi-Calendar, Assignment Engine, Online Appointment Scheduler, and Reminder Engine.

The Multi-Calendar’s ability to organize their entire team’s calendars in one view while also integrating client information into their Salesforce CRM provided a unified scheduling view as well as crucial information security and privacy.

The Assignment Engine’s ability to balance scheduling between all parties involved and provide real-time availability updates prevented their previous issue of double and triple booking appointment slots from continuing to be a hindrance to business. Additionally, this solution was able to balance case load between the firm’s attorney’s thereby ensuring each client received the service of an attorney who’s time could be efficiently dedicated to their case.

The Online Appointment Scheduler allowed clients to book appointments at their leisure while guaranteeing that their meeting would take place at the correct time with the perfect attorney to meet the specific needs of their individual case.

Finally, the Reminder Engine provided meeting reminders for all attendees preventing both attorneys and clients from missing meetings. This allowed each case to be handled with the care it deserved while preventing any client’s immigration situation from falling through the cracks.

Results

“We never have a booked appointment not land on all necessary calendars. We never have had an issue of the sumo system going down in the past two years that would not allow us to book appointments on Sumo. The sumo software has been consistent and reliable.”

Reliability and consistency has been the hallmark of the service our client has enjoyed. The results speak for themselves. They have been able to keep over 1,700 families together, over 450 deportations be halted, and over 1,250 greencards be issued due to their ability to streamline their scheduling processes with SUMO.

We asked our client what they would say to anyone who was on the fence about working with SUMO:

“The level of customer tech support that SUMO provides is far and away the best I’ve seen from any tech app. I can contact and get a response and resolution for most of my issues on the same day.”

With results and feedback like the above, our client has truly found a game-changing solution for their practice with SUMO Scheduler.

Speech Pathology & Occupational Therapy Services

Challenge

In Australia, though healthcare is universally available to citizens, there are a few hoops one must jump through in order to take advantage of these programs. Umbo exists as a for profit business that invests 50% of its profits back into the community in order to make access to healthcare programs available to the disadvantaged. Umbo’s focus is on Speech Pathology and occupational therapy. They work with people of all ages, however, they are particularly focused on providing therapy solutions for children whose needs are often more pressing for their development.

In the past, finding the right provider for the client has been a task that involves hours of research and cross referencing in order to find the right fit for each patient. Therapy is not a one time appointment, it is a recurring appointment that happens monthly, bi-weekly, or even weekly. These appointments also must be scheduled and in the past this scheduling has all been handled manually.

Each appointment that is booked in Umbo’s system produces an email confirmation to the patient. If ten appointments have been booked at one time, the patient receives ten individual emails for confirmation. Should any adjustments to the patients therapy sessions need to be made, again, each appointment must then be adjusted as producing recurring appointments in their existing system would cause each and every appointment to be changed.

All of this manual research and scheduling equals hours upon hours of wasted administrative time that cuts into Umbo’s bottom line, thus reducing the amount of profits Umbo has available to invest in their community to make healthcare available.

“Each dollar saved and reinvested equates to a child being able to receive the care they need.”
Piroska Bisits-Bullen
Head of Data, Technology & Growth

Solution

SUMO was the perfect solution for Umbo. Two of SUMO’s features in particular had an immediate application for their needs: Assignment Engine and Calendar API.

SUMO’s Assignment Engine pools available providers and their specialties together and will automatically assign the right therapist for the patient instantly. This eliminates hours of cross referencing and research from Umbo’s process thus freeing up admin costs and increasing overall profits and efficiency.

SUMO’s Calendar API was another useful feature that helped faculty and staff save time and drastically improved productivity. Powered by REST API, the Calendar offers a number of unique services such as aggregating time availability in real-time. With the new calendar interface, coordinators were able to see a full list of booked appointments by the user, appointment time slot, and appointment type. Canceling and rescheduling were also done in real-time without the risk of losing valuable time slots or resources. Again, this feature freed up hours of admin costs and increased overall profits.

Results

Today, Umbo has seen their overall profits, and thereby their available capital to invest back into the community increase. Where time related to scheduling is concerned, simply integrating SUMO Scheduler into their process has reduced that time by 90% which equates to 7 hours per week for practice managers. As Piroska told us, “Each dollar saved and reinvested equates to a child being able to receive the care they need.”

Not only is Umbo making a difference today by providing services for those in need, they are making a difference in the lives of their patients by helping them to maximize their potential as they are able to live more independent lives through the improvements they see thanks to the occupational and speech therapy they receive.

Multinational Insurance and Finance Corporation

Challenge

Today’s global organizations face an unprecedented need to accelerate the adoption of digital technology to provide customers with instant access to resources and information. Companies that are doing business across multiple countries and in various time zones must embrace technologies that allow them to deliver a unified customer experience, enhance collaboration, and improve business efficiencies.

AIG, one of the world’s largest insurance organizations with offices in over 80 countries, has long been struggling with manual scheduling processes. Consultants were not able to keep up with growing demand, and customers were often left waiting for appointments. Manual processes not only jeopardized customer experience but also compromised sensitive customer data by increasing its vulnerability to cyberattacks.

Solution

In an effort to improve customer experience, staff productivity, and data security, AIG has implemented SUMO Scheduler. SUMO Scheduler is a powerful online appointment scheduling software that automates record creation and maximizes performance. With the state-of-the-art interface, SUMO introduced a 360-degree view of every appointment booked which offered visibility into the entire scheduling process.

Additionally, SUMO’s Email and Invite Feature gave admins the power to send personalized email invites that took the guesswork out of the scheduling process. Upon receiving an invite, students simply clicked their personal link inside the email to choose a time, and the meeting automatically appeared on everyone’s calendar. SUMO’s automated process streamlined the scheduling and freed up coordinators’ time, allowing them to focus on other important tasks.

SUMO’s state-of-the-art multi-calendar became AIG’s central hub of information. With features such as color-coding, drag-and-drop rescheduling, room availability, no-show indicators, and proximity search, the unified calendar allowed AGI consultants to gain complete control over their scheduling process almost immediately.

Furthermore, the automated process of sending personalized appointment invites through the Invite Manager Module significantly reduced the amount of time needed to schedule private appointments. This allowed consultants to focus on servicing customers without having to worry about scheduling accuracy and data safety.

Results

One of the main goals for AIG was to improve consultant productivity and increase appointment bookings. SUMO’s powerful automation features helped AIG’s consultants quickly and easily schedule appointments without having to worry about record creation and other complex tasks. SUMO Scheduler’s intuitive design and seamless implementation resulted in a quick adoption by the vast majority of AIG’s teams. SUMO has now become an indispensable tool for the insurance agency, helping to increase sales and improve consultant productivity.

Looking ahead, AGI is excited to see how SUMO’s other features will help them improve productivity and increase sales. The SUMO team is constantly innovating and expanding the capabilities of SUMO Scheduler. Recent updates include the edition of Analytics Builder, a powerful platform for creating unlimited reports to track staff utilization, appointment volume, no-shows, reminder engine success, and more. It’s no surprise that SUMO Scheduler is the leading choice for online appointment scheduling software by insurance organizations worldwide.

Medical Technology Company

Challenge

Medtronic is a medical technology company that has been a pioneer in the healthcare industry since its inception in 1949. Today, it serves patients in 150 countries around the world. One of the main challenges that Medtronic has always faced is outdated appointment scheduling system. Patients often had to call customer service to schedule appointments, which has proven to be time-consuming and frustrating. Additionally, manual scheduling resulted in errors which led to missed appointments and poor customer satisfaction.

To improve team productivity and elevate the patient experience, Medtronic turned to SUMO, a web-based automated appointment scheduling software that allows businesses and organizations to manage their appointments online. SUMO was the perfect solution for Medtronic because it offers an automated way for patients to schedule appointments without having to call customer service. Additionally, SUMO helped address potential privacy risks that stemmed from outdated non-secure scheduling methods.

Solution

SUMO’s Event and Class Scheduler was critical in helping Medtronic organize its highly complex training calendar. The scheduler automated the process of creating and managing event registrations, which previously was a time-consuming and error-prone task. Designed to manage thousands of annual events, the Event Scheduler is 100% hosted on the native Salesforce platform which eliminated the need for third-party integrations, calendars, and security services.

Lastly, SUMO’s Assignment Engine was key to connecting patients with the right experts based on a custom need, location, and time zone. Architected for robust performance and highly configurable to support any business process, the real-time assignment process completely eliminated double booking and missed appointments. As a result, Medtronic immediately saw higher-quality engagement and patient satisfaction.

Patients are now able to self-schedule appointments from any device and time zone. Appointments are automatically added to the employee’s calendar, and patients receive scheduled reminders via customized email links. Newly introduced self-scheduling not only saves time for patients and employees but also eliminates the possibility of human error.

Medtronic’s switch to automated appointment scheduling with SUMO has helped the company save time and money and also improved customer satisfaction. In fact, Medtronic saw an increase in first-time appointments of nearly 15% after implementing SUMO Scheduler.

Results

Thanks to SUMO’s automation capabilities, Medtronic was able to improve patient satisfaction by reducing appointment wait times while ensuring that its clinicians had the time they needed for training and development. The company was also able to improve its bottom line by freeing up time that could be put towards other strategic initiatives.

Medtronic’s experience is a great example of how automated scheduling solutions can improve customer satisfaction and privacy. If you’re looking for similar benefits for your business, SUMO Scheduler is the perfect solution. Contact us today to learn more!

A Prestigious Ivy League University

Challenge

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a major disruption in the way we learn, posing a critical challenge to schools and universities across the globe. In March 2020, the President of Columbia University announced a new policy to shift student learning from in-person to online interactions with tutors and mentors. This unprecedented change not only affected how students interact with tutors but also disrupted the entire scheduling infrastructure.

SUMO Scheduler, an automated scheduling platform, was the answer to the university’s unique problems. With a simple interface that empowers students and tutors to book their classes directly on the University’s website, SUMO became an answer to the crisis.

Before SUMO entered into production in April 2020, class scheduling at the university solely relied on educational coordinators. The process was time-consuming and prone to error as admins had to manually input requests and match personal calendars of students and tutors in order to make an appointment. This resulted in lost productivity and missed classes.

The administration expressed a strong need for an integrated platform that allowed students to self-schedule classes directly with the faculty while offering real-time access for coordinators to monitor the scheduling process. After hearing about SUMO’s success with educational institutions, the staff felt that the SUMO Scheduling Platform could help them streamline and improve its scheduling.

Solution

SUMO was the perfect solution for the university. It automated the process of class scheduling and allowed students to manage their own appointments with faculty. Real-time access for coordinators eliminated any need for double booking or missed appointments. In addition, SUMO’s reporting features gave administrators valuable insights into how many students had registered for online classes, who their instructors were, and which students needed additional support. SUMO’s scalability allowed the university to easily add new courses every semester without employing more staff.

Calendar API was another useful feature that helped faculty and staff save time and drastically improved productivity. Powered by REST API, the Calendar offers a number of unique services such as aggregating time availability in real-time. With the new calendar interface, coordinators were able to see a full list of booked appointments by the user, appointment time slot, and appointment type. Canceling and rescheduling were also done in real-time without the risk of losing valuable time slots or resources.

Finally, automated smart matching helped students meet with the right advisor, at the right location, and at the right time. This minimized scheduling errors and improved attendance. With automated email and text reminders, students showed up on time, ready to learn! Indeed, SUMO’s automation reduced no-shows, increased staff utilization, and improved student engagement.

Results

Today, the University has seen a dramatic increase in efficiency with manual tasks being eliminated across all departments. SUMO enabled over 20 teams throughout the university to effectively schedule appointments with students. The amount of appointments that were made online has increased by over 70% eliminating the game of back and forth and providing a robust infrastructure for online learning.

The University is grateful for SUMO’s contribution in helping maintain its infrastructure during this challenging time. The technology successfully met students’ fast-paced needs while automation provided coordinators and faculty with much-needed support and consistency. SUMO Scheduler has been a game-changer in the lives of Columbia’s students and staff.

A Canadian-based Real Estate Firm

Challenge

Navigating through Unpredictable Times

A few years ago, only a select group of people in the real estate industry had access to online scheduling. Today it’s become so much more accessible thanks to advanced platforms that connect brokers and agents with buyers on their terms – no matter where they are!

Our client is a Canada-based real estate firm that specializes in the sales and marketing of newly built residential and commercial properties. With 25 years of success and over 12,000 global partners, they have built a solid reputation with clients in all markets and time zones.

When the COVID-19 pandemic first erupted, many organizations were left to struggle with uncertainty. In the real estate industry where personal communication has always been seen as an important component to building successful client relationships, face-to-face meetings became problematic and the majority of communication shifted online.

For the customer, conducting remote meetings with buyers, vendors, and investors presented a set of unique challenges. First, the outdated scheduling software was unable to handle the volume of online events. As a result, the company saw an influx of errors and missed appointments. Customers were constantly having to reschedule, which increased the number of online appointments and cluttered calendar space. Lastly, due to lack of automation, many critical tasks were left unfinished resulting in frustration with team members and clients.

Lack of automation and inability to match clients with the right resource at the right time left the team with less time to focus on their clients and further complicated their relationship with buyers, vendors, and investors. The need for automated scheduling software became apparent.

Solution

Introducing SUMO

SUMO’s Online Appointment Scheduler was a great solution. Their leadership quickly realized the benefits it would offer: improved online reservation capabilities, reduced errors and missed appointments, and finally, automation of critical tasks. In just a few short weeks, the SUMO team helped solve the majority of challenges Baker’s team was facing.

First, SUMO implemented its core platform for managing appointments and staff availability, so customers can book with the right team member at the desired time. The easy-to-navigate interface also shows key behavior patterns that allow the leadership team to predict future possible responses from customers for a more streamlined approach to client communication.

Second, customers were impressed by the new ability to self-schedule from any device, at any time even outside normal business hours. They also noted that automated email notifications, convenient invitation links, and timely reminders made appointment scheduling an easy and pleasant personalized experience.

Results

The Results Speak for Themselves

Their clients are now able to easily login into their customer accounts, self-schedule an appointment with the right team member, and even reschedule if needed. The new process has proven to be so efficient, it helped generate more profit from real estate transactions by closing deals faster than ever before.

With SUMO Scheduler, the real estate firm was able to minimize manual processes by automating every step of the scheduling process. SUMO’s Assignment Engine swiftly matched customers with the right expert while completely eliminating double-booking, human error, and awkward mismatching. The best part is that there are no extra fees for each online appointment, which means every deal counts.

SUMO Scheduler seamlessly integrates with their website, existing online marketing portals, email newsletters, and online directories to ensure personalization and brand consistency. Finally, the intuitive interface provides the leadership team with a 360-degree view of all customer interactions and staff availability. With SUMO’s robust and scalable technology, the company is happy to report a positive experience and improved customer satisfaction.

A Leading Land-Grant Research University

Challenge

Facing the Challenge of Outdated Systems

Higher education has long struggled with obstacles related to digital transformation. Traditionally, universities have used a mix of platforms to aim for student support, including outdated manual systems and disparate tools. And today, it comes time for a change.

The University of Kentucky, a leading land-grant research institution, stated that many students didn’t receive the support they needed and had to make multiple phone calls to schedule an appointment with a coach. Frequently, students would be unable to reach their coach of choice, having them miss out entirely or attempt to make an appointment. This caused frustration among students and academic coaches.

University leadership issued an initiative to bring as many platforms as possible into their Salesforce as they were using a mixed bag of systems in the past: paper forms and emails for referrals, Outlook calendar for scheduling appointments, and yet another platform for signups.

The problem was that the recruitment and appointment-making process was time-consuming, tedious, and errors were often made due to the manual input of information into a third-party system from various sources. This created an extremely inefficient process for coaches and students. Additionally, appointment data had to be cleaned since students were having to manually register for accounts with their ID numbers, which led to duplicates and a consistent mess in an effort to keep the existing platform clean.

Solution

An Integrated Platform for Instant Appointment Booking

In response, Academic Coaching Team decided to recruit SUMO because its adaptive omnichannel scheduler has proven to eliminate many of the existing challenges they faced, especially having to use multiple tools that couldn’t be properly integrated with Salesforce.

SUMO didn’t disappoint. In record time, the implementation team established student accounts in Salesforce and installed a native platform that allowed students and coaches to book multiple appointments and receive instant email confirmations and reminders. To implement this feature in their existing system, they had to custom code and pay for a software developer. This integration process alone saved them substantial time and money!

SUMO’s ability to automatically link student-specific information in a single platform, with the option to include additional fields for IDs, phone numbers, and email addresses is exactly what they needed. Additionally, a fully branded and customized scheduling flow quickly and efficiently connected students with appropriate advisors via calendar connector and Outlook integration.

Results

Bridging The Gap Between Students and Coaches

With the introduction of SUMO, students can now use their standard school credentials to quickly schedule appointments with their advisors and receive instant confirmations and customized appointment reminders via email. And the best part is that the new scheduling solution allowed the university team to easily leverage native Salesforce providing full transparency into each account.

The ability to pass contact ID into SUMO’s Online Scheduler via a single sign-on system (SSO) inside Salesforce eliminated the constant manual cleaning process that was previously needed to keep records organized. Now, advisors and admins are spending more time focusing on working with students and less time performing tedious manual tasks.

Connecting students to advisors within a unified solution eliminated the need to switch between multiple platforms to book follow-up appointments. Administrators were amazed by how much time they are now able to save, which resulted in more time for meeting with students. Student scheduling was greatly simplified, which wasn’t the case before SUMO. What a success! With improved appointment flow, student scheduling experience was streamlined and challenges with the booking process quickly became the thing of the past.

Top U.S. Public Research University

Challenge

Getting On Board with Digitalization

In an age where digital literacy is a mandatory skill for students to learn, universities have been left behind. Traditionally manual processes have been a preferred way of conducting day-to-day tasks. However, the need for modernization, efficiency, and innovation prompted educational institutions to get on board with digital transformation.

Considered as one of the largest American universities, our customer was no different in this regard. Complete with over 24k students and 1,200+ employees, the university seemed like a tough nut to crack when it comes to digitalization. And yet here we are – introducing an automated appointment scheduling system that facilitates communication between staff and students.

Solution

A Tough Road to Success

The road to digital success began with the introduction of two major automation tools: Salesforce and Pardot. These tools were implemented to make processes more efficient for users across campus. While the University admins were happy with the functionality, they quickly realized that the legacy scheduling application didn’t quite fit in with the newly introduced digital mix. The most obvious issue with their legacy system was the lack of automated appointment reminders and email notifications. They knew they needed something that would cut down on manual work and increase visibility into schedule changes.

Lack of automation between the scheduling app and Pardot resulted in multiple issues with marketing campaigns and didn’t produce the expected ROI. Additionally, the use of Eventbrite for virtual/in-person events proved cumbersome, as it was time-consuming and difficult to manage. This customer eventually came to SUMO in search of an automated appointment scheduling platform that would securely integrate with their Salesforce and Pardot applications.

Results

Results-Driven Solutions

SUMO’s Appointment and Event Scheduling feature connected the dots with its native Salesforce integration which allowed newly acquired digital platforms to reach their full potential and improve customer engagement strategy. The automated appointment scheduling system streamlined the process of tracking appointments and reserving time on calendars for their faculty, staff, and students. With Appointment Scheduling, organizations can automate tasks such as phone call reminders, email confirmations, SMS notifications, automated follow-up for unconfirmed appointments/reservations by leveraging their existing login credentials.

The team deployed several customized and branded Online Schedulers across multiple websites, each focused on different use-cases specific to their website location. Students could book appointments in a matter of seconds, and in the process, choose the right advisor, calendar, and service. With automated appointment reminders, next-generation calendars, and follow-up reminders by phone or email based on user behavior history in the application, they’re able to reduce no-shows by 20% across all departments.

SUMO’s Events Suite brought appointment and event functionality under one roof in Salesforce, drastically improving user experience and maximizing calendar real estate. Double-booking became a thing of the past, due to SUMO’s direct calendar connection to Outlook which allowed advisors to spent far less time on scheduling activities, and more time on meeting with students.

Finally, SUMO’s Marketing Scheduling Links feature entirely automated data collection to help leverage event attendee information for future marketing campaigns. This allowed the university to communicate directly with event attendees from within their Salesforce account.

Looking Into The Brighter Future

The new automated scheduling platform from SUMO has been a major success for this university. While our customer has traditionally lagged behind other organizations in their adoption of new technologies, they have made up for lost time with a project that made automated scheduling a reality. Looking into the future, they plan on keeping the momentum going and continue its success with automated scheduling.

Financial Services Firm

Challenge

The Need to Stay Ahead of The Curve

The financial industry has faced many changes in recent years and perhaps the biggest shift has affected its demographics. As current investors are aging, they are being replaced by millennials who are far more tech-savvy, confident, and aggressive in making financial decisions. That’s why having a technology that can efficiently handle mass volumes of client requests is paramount for companies striving to capitalize on new market opportunities and stay ahead of the competition.

Our customer is unlike any other financial planning firm. What sets it apart is 120 years in the industry and a diversified business portfolio including asset management, retirement planning services, life insurance, and annuities. As most of its clients come from onsite events and seminars, it’s important to have the ability to make follow-up appointments on the spot while potential clients are showing strong interest in connecting with an advisor.

Solution

Changing The Game With A Smart Appointment System

Our customer addressed SUMO with the goal to increase the volume of their leads coming from onsite events to help drive new business. The management team shared that they wanted to improve the effectiveness of recruiting new clients as in the past, they’ve struggled with outdated manual processes and disparate scheduling systems.

Previously, the company had no experience using automation and appointment scheduling was inherently decentralized and manual. A unified calendar view showing resource availability was the key missing component, making it hard to connect potential clients with the right advisors in a timely manner. In addition, using separate calendars and scheduling tools was time-consuming and often led to multiple errors in finding available resources and meeting locations. The management team knew they needed an automated scheduling platform to join up their activity and help improve the appointment flow.

Results

Seeing Goals Through To The End

The SUMO Customer Engagement Platform was central to the company’s ability to grow new business and convert event leads into long-term clients. Some of the benefits Strategic Wealth Designers attained with SUMO are:

Online Appointment Scheduler with Invite Manager and Resource Pools

The SUMO Platform provided a unified view for the appointment and staff availability allowing advisors to make quick appointments at in-person events. SUMO Scheduler not only displayed calendar availability for individual advisors but also showed vacant meeting facilities based on the client’s location and appointment time. In addition, an Invite Manager feature gave the team the power to send secure personalized email invitations for automatic bookings while Resource Pools assigned bookings to team members based on a preferred distribution method.

Instant Booker for The Right Person, Right Location, and Right Time

With its intuitive design and simple user experience, SUMO’s Instant Booking Module finds openings and connects the prospect with the right advisor and available location within a matter of seconds. From day one, the team was able to save up to 25% of the time by eliminating manual effort and minimizing scheduling errors. Multi-location support was also a key asset in finding available meeting locations and ensuring that the client gets booked with the right advisor no matter how many calendars are involved.

Reminder Engine with Automated Emails, Text, and Phone Notifications

Finally, the SUMO Reminder Engine made sure that no-shows became a non-issue for the company. The system was able to effectively cut appointment no-shows by 30% while driving revenue up with automated reminders. The team now has complete freedom to choose a configurable template based on the type of appointment which allows for personalized customer service. Clients also enjoy the ability to cancel or reschedule their appointment automatically, without having to contact their advisor by simply clicking a link inside the reminder message.

Today, our customer credits SUMO as a central element of the company’s tremendous success and looks forward to continuing the partnership.

City Government Agency

Challenge

Struggling to Serve a Community

Established by an act of the State Legislature in 1920. The agency is responsible for the retirement benefits for most employees of city’s public servants. Founded with over 13,000 members, the agency is responsible for assisting and managing disability or retirement benefits for over 350,000 active, retired civilian employees.

Members regularly making appointments regarding their disability or retirement benefits with one of the 80+ support reps were subject to a labor-intensive scheduling process comprised of manual and electronic methods. The existing scheduling system was difficult to navigate. Finding and scheduling a meeting or a call with the right person with the right knowledge for their needs was a long process. Staff management of important information associated with a member appointment such as powers of attorney was inefficient as well.

The entire system was prone to human error. Spending time on just making a member appointment was becoming an ineffective usage of time and resources as well.

The agency employed a Salesforce consulting partner to help solve the issue. The consultant group established scheduling as one of the workflows affecting the agency’s effectiveness in delivering on its mission as well as directly affecting its efficiency. A scheduling process that catered to both the external customers, the members, and its internal customers, the support staff was recommended. The consultant group evaluated several options and ultimately recommended SUMO Scheduler based on the solution’s ability to meet the long list of requirements. SUMO designed a custom scheduling solution that addressed every concern, improving both the member and staff experiences.

Solution

Evolving the Member Experience

A member starts their journey by logging into a community for authentication. From within the agency’s Salesforce community, they can click on a custom “Schedule Appointment”. A popup offers the member a choice of a disability or retirement appointment and a subtype topic choice like adding a guardian. Both the member and any requested attendees relevant to the member’s appointment purpose are sent an appointment confirmation by email.

Customizations deliver a transparency to members the agencies couldn’t provide with the previous system. Members are now able to go into the community portal to schedule and manage appointments and participants. Members have a similar view as staff members including resource availability.

Results

Delivering on the Mission

Staff also can easily create appointments based on the appointment type and subtype. They are able to schedule appointments based on capacity and volume limits within customized set intervals. Lastly SUMO delivers actionable data. Previous to implementing SUMO, the agency had limited reporting visibility on appointments scheduled, type, and volume. Using the standard reporting functions of the software, the agency now can monitor these important data points and more in a quicker manner.

By streamlining the member journey, the agency is now delivering on its mission and able to be more effective and efficient on delivering information and services to its members. They are also able to positively affect the organization internally with staff that has more time to engage members rather than tedious scheduling tasks.

Top-Rated Canadian Real Estate Agency

Challenge

Embracing Digital Transformation

While digital transformation leverages technology to advance global economies, it also challenges the way organizations operate and deliver business value. This is true for many industries, including real estate that has been traditionally slower to adopt new trends. Today, many experts agree that the housing market will only continue to grow and how we buy, sell, and interact with properties will evolve in the upcoming years. In an effort to increase business efficiency and stay ahead of the competition, real estate executives must embrace new digital technologies to help boost productivity and surpass revenue goals.

Our customer is a top-rated real estate firm from Ontario, Canada. It prides itself on selling properties at the maximum price with the shortest time to close. In addition to buying and selling, the company offers superior marketing and interactive services such as home staging, professional photography, state-of-the-art video tours, and drone videography. These additional services tremendously benefit both buyers and sellers while helping agents sell homes faster.

Solution

Demand-Driven Challenges

With buyers driving up prices and leading homes to sell quickly, our customer recently faced an unprecedented increase in business volume that challenged its ability to coordinate showings based on a preferred property type and square footage. Agents often had a hard time finding appropriate time slots and organizing disjointed calendars in an effort to efficiently accommodate new requests and schedule showings based on clients’ needs.

The staff has also found it very difficult to prepare properties for prospective buyers as they were required to schedule appointments with staging companies, photographers, and interior designers before each showing. Without these additional services, showcasing the property’s strengths and minimizing its weak points to attract potential buyers became hard to achieve. As a result, the company saw an increase in lost deals and unsatisfied buyers.

Additionally, the management team has often found it challenging to make sense of the growing client database and properly map contact details from native Salesforce to the appointment calendar. The need for change became clear and they began to look for an automated solution to streamline the appointment scheduling process and eliminate manual effort.

Results

Steering Business in The New Direction

SUMO Scheduler was recommended by one of the company’s longtime clients. In the matter of just a few short weeks, technological challenges that stood in the way of the progress and prevented them from successfully closing deals were eliminated for the most part.

The sales team was impressed by the simplicity of the software where advanced configurable features matched prospective buyers with the right properties and agents via an easily accessible website link. SUMO’s Assignment Agent successfully mapped contact, service, and listings objects stored in Salesforce to the correct appointment type for making timely and error-free appointments. Mapping was accomplished with the help of SUMO’s “Schedule Now” feature that was easily accessible straight from the company’s website.

Additionally, “Email and Invite” functionality was configured to allow the inside sales team to seamlessly book an appointment while speaking with a customer on the phone. Email notifications were scheduled to go out automatically to decrease the risk of no-shows and improve client engagement. For virtual showings, web conference details were automatically inserted into calendar invitations so buyers who preferred remote interactions were able to visit individual properties from the comfort of their own homes.

Finally, the entire scheduling process was redesigned with the company logo, colors, and custom templates that were easily recognizable and accurately represented the brand. Without any help from graphic designers or coders, the sales team can now design emails and create a unified user experience that offers consistency and makes a positive impression.

While they love the technology, our customer is also looking forward to continuing to grow and expand their market reach. The management team knows they’ve only scratched the surface with SUMO. They plan on adding more unique features to their customer interactions. In the future, they will employ advanced strategies to help generate sales appointments directly from mass emails via custom calls to action and forms synced directly with the master calendar view. They also plan on extending the platform with additional applications such as automated forms, survey apps, and dynamic flows to produce even better results.

The Leader in High School Sports

Challenge

Creating a Best-in-Class Digital Experience for the Youth

Sports organizations of all shapes and sizes face a major shift in the new economic environment where digital transformation calls for new opportunities in customer engagement and retention. Adopting agile technology that benefits customer service, streamlines operations, and drives revenue is the first step for achieving greater success.

PlayOn! Sports is a digital media platform that helps schools modernize the way they manage events. The company offers advanced capabilities in video production via streaming equipment that covers more than 30,000 high school sporting events per year. As with any digital media provider, PlayOn! Sports is extremely focused on continuous coverage expansion and strives to find new ways to improve customer engagement.

Solution

Automation with Precision

The first step in improving customer engagement and communication strategy was to find a solution that would automate the scheduling process for equipment installation at each school location. Previously, the company relied on outdated manual tools prone to scheduling errors and inconsistencies that often resulted in unhappy customers and missed revenue targets.

An automated scheduling platform seemed like the best way forward, and PlayOn! Sports narrowed it down to SUMO and one other vendor. The decision was made, and PlayOn! Sports signed up with SUMO.

“The Sumo Scheduler is helping us reduce the effort currently required to broker installation dates with our clients. It is also helping to accelerate our installation capabilities which needed to double over the past year.”
– Vince Maggio, VP of Operations

Customers are encouraged to self-schedule through automated email links that are seamlessly integrated with native Salesforce, so the management team can have full transparency into the number of installation appointments in a single pane of view.

Prior to the introduction of SUMO, blackout periods based on a client’s timezone were hard to estimate. This resulted in delayed equipment shipments and missed installations. With the help of SUMO, the company is now able to accurately calculate blackout periods and ship the correct equipment to the right school at the right time without having to rely on manual effort.

Results

Results from Day One

PlayOn! Sports started seeing the results of its work with SUMO almost immediately. Appointment automation made it possible to completely eliminate manual errors, thus improving client engagement. The introduction of automatic scheduling links streamlined the supply chain and dramatically reduced installation delays since they were sent out right after the equipment was shipped.

The company is now enjoying greater success with a more tailored approach to customer communication. Installation contractors can easily update their availability through the online community in a 360-degree view. Additionally, connecting schools with installers has never been easier with the new automated scheduling system which offers calendar integration and automated appointment reminders.

With SUMO staying on top of its product development, PlayOn! Sports enjoys the latest technology advancements in customer engagement technology including analytics, custom email templates, reschedule status, advanced phone options, and 24-hr support.

Looking into the future, the company plans to continue helping its clients connect with installers faster giving them clarity, confidence, and control over sporting events. PlayOn! Sports believes that the partnership with SUMO will allow them to continuously accelerate installation capabilities and connect with each customer in a highly efficient and profitable way.

Cybersecurity Giant

Challenge

Focus on Consumer Cybersafety and Innovation

Cybersafety has been an evolving concern for many industries as phishing, ransomware, and artificial intelligence continue to place individuals and organizations at risk. Creating technology that stays ahead of the threats is not an easy task, especially if it can’t get delivered to the end-user efficiently and on time.

Our customer, a cybersecurity leader in consumer protection, focused on empowering people to safely navigate the cyberspace. Its powerful product suite offers device security, identity protection, and online privacy applications that ensure confidence in digital interactions. When it comes to identity theft, rapid response is what matters the most. They pride themselves on providing real-time exposure mitigation solutions to its customers, so they can rest assured their data remains safe and secure.

Achieving real-time customer response is hard without a well-planned communication strategy. They have long struggled with a lengthy, multitouch response process in the absence of an automated omni-channel system that would allow scheduling service interactions in a timely manner. Additionally, scheduling based on staff availability was complicated by user-prone manual data entry and back-and-forth email communication. The inability to manage existing cases effectively due to missed and delayed appointments prompted the management team to identify the need for a tool capable of turning all aspects of the scheduling process into a streamlined customer experience.

Solution

A Streamlined Road To Success

The company was keen to take advantage of all that SUMO’s integrated scheduling platform had to offer, and the SUMO development team helped to get the project off to a flying start. First, the company identified the need to sync SUMO calendar with the existing Salesforce calendar. As a result, the SUMO platform allowed full visibility into staff availability, even among team members who weren’t using SUMO’s native calendar. This led to error-free and real-time scheduling for customers who needed an immediate interaction with the support agent. The all-in-one calendar view clearly laid out all customer interactions and made personalized experience across devices and time zones a reality.

The new SUMO Platform has also proven to be invaluable for the existing cases. It not only reduced scheduling mistakes associated with follow-up appointments but also shortened the support cycle by offering first available time slots based on staff availability. Additionally, customers were able to self-schedule 24/7 365 from any device and location. At the end of the project, their support team found that SUMO lived up to its reputation for the ease of integration and intuitive interface.

Results

Moving Upwards with SUMO

Their company has fully adopted SUMO’s omni-channel appointment scheduler and experienced first-hand the difference it made. The support team is now able to define and update its availability for quick real-time responses without having to manually schedule calls and send multiple email reminders. What previously derailed team members from effectively performing their duties got eliminated allowing them to focus on providing excellent customer service.

One particularly useful feature of the SUMO application is its Analytics Builder. They found this smart reporting tool extremely helpful in providing visibility into appointment volume trends and staff utilization. The analytics team is now able to create custom dashboards and leverage predefined reports to provide a valid ground for making intelligent data-driven decisions.

Going forward, the company plans to continue using SUMO for its real-time scheduling and staff availability planning. They believe that this partnership will greatly improve existing processes and enhance its ability to better communicate with each customer.

Healthcare Engagement Company

Challenge

Elevating Standards and Efficiency Through Cloud Adoption

In today’s global economy, digital transformation has been a top priority for a vast majority of enterprises, including healthcare. Many organizations have already embraced digital transformation as a way to streamline communication and enhance patient care. As operations migrate to cloud-based applications, companies are able to process data faster while improving key business functions such as virtual care, remote health assistance, and staff availability.

Our customer, a WebMD company, is a leading health engagement provider with over 40 years of experience delivering well-being and educational solutions that improve health outcomes through clinically driven behavioral change. By offering personalized assessment tools, coaching programs, and technological advancements, they helped hundreds of thousands of consumers lower health risks, reduce healthcare costs, and achieve a better quality of life.

Facing growing customer demand, they are able to successfully implement an automated engagement platform that took the patient healthcare journey to new heights. By introducing a highly customizable and scalable online appointment scheduling system, they not only increased customer engagement and satisfaction rates but also lowered operational costs while improving staff efficiencies.

Solution

A Case for Care

The company chose SUMO as its customer engagement partner due to the ability to provide a highly customizable scheduling software solution that would power its mission to improve public health through information and one-on-one patient education.

Through an extensive discovery process, they recognized that SUMO’s self-scheduling website, appointment reminder engine, and integrated calendar management features connect patients to medical services in a quick and efficient manner regardless of time zone and location. SUMO’s proven ability to deliver a personalized customer experience by matching users with a region-specific healthcare provider or specialty service with smart matching and routing was one of the main key capabilities that attracted them to the platform.

Results

Achieving Process Automation and Improving Customer Experience with Smart Scheduling

The SUMO Customer Success team partnered with the company’s IT administrators to leverage the software’s out of the box functionality and develop a user-friendly online scheduling process that enabled patients to connect with health coaches in a timely and error-free manner. In order to effectively connect patients with health coaches, they turned to SUMO’s native ability to cover all customer touchpoints within the framework of the existing infrastructure. Without the need for costly software modifications and operational changes, they effectively integrated an automated scheduling system that ensured the best possible outcomes for its patients.

SUMO’s development team first analyzed and assessed current systems and business requirements to determine the framework for integration. Within the project scope, the team has built a customized platform that allowed the staff to see appointments in a client’s time zone, match individual patients to the appropriate team members, and allow them to work with the same coach or nurse throughout the entire program.

An ability to reroute patients to appropriate resources in case of scheduling conflicts and out of the office events was another valuable feature that helped ensure staff availability and considerably reduced the number of missed and rescheduled sessions. Their team was impressed by the software’s scalability where mass-reassignment of appointments can be done with just one click of a mouse.

Additionally, the implementation of the brand new health and wellness appointment scheduling software ensured full automation. As a result, spending countless hours on manual tasks quickly became a thing of the past. A simple “Schedule an Appointment” link on the website was a sure way to allow patients to schedule a desired appointment at a time that’s convenient for them, thus reduced manual scheduling by at least 25%. Automated text messages and calendar reminders also helped minimize no-shows and improved staff utilization.

As for the patients, allowing them to schedule their own appointments from any device not only increased the number of successfully completed sessions but also improved client engagement and helped patients achieve desired health goals faster. Customer satisfaction soared resulting in an influx of new business referrals and a high return on investment.

Overall, they successfully achieved the goal of arming patients with fast and easy access to the support they need ensuring the highest possible success rates. SUMO Scheduler became a game-changer that took the organization to the next level of customer engagement.

Fortune 100 Cloud Vendor

Challenge

Apparent Need for Process Improvement

In today’s global economy, digital transformation has been a top priority for a vast majority of enterprises, including technology companies. Many organizations have already embraced digital transformation as a way to streamline communication and enhance patient care. As operations migrate to cloud-based applications, companies are able to process data faster while improving key business functions such as virtual care, remote health assistance, and staff availability.

Our customer is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance, human resources, planning, and analytics. With noticeable clients such as Quicken Loans and AstraZeneca, they stay at the forefront of innovation, revolutionizing the workspace and helping companies achieve long-term economic success.

While providing excellent service to its clients, the company uses every opportunity to improve its own processes and help employees achieve high levels of job satisfaction. Recently, the company saw an immediate need for amplifying its scheduling flow in order to establish efficiencies and streamline interactions between customers and support teams. The need for an automated omni-channel appointment scheduling software became apparent and they utilized SUMO to automate calendar management to help employees get more organized.

Solution

Overcoming the Challenges

The company has long struggled with scheduling inefficiencies that often resulted in cancellations and frustrations from customers and team members. Customers’ inability to schedule their own appointments was one of the main setbacks. The need to improve the flow between clients and the support team became the number one task for immediate implementation.

As predicted, they recognized all the on-boarding support that SUMO offered. In a matter of just a few weeks, SUMO’s development team revamped the entire scheduling system with the brand new user interface that immediately allowed customers to self-schedule appointments based on available time slots and resources. Additionally, support consultants gained the ability to easily manage multiple appointments for each case.

As one of the main goals for using automated scheduling software was to simplify the user experience, SUMO’s development team implemented an intuitive design that offered the ability to email invitations for support calls with just one click. Clients appreciated the simplicity of the scheduling process which resulted in a considerable decline in missed and delayed calls. In addition to user interface improvements such as Outlook integration, the introduction of a no-reply address for automated scheduling reduced manual tasks and resulted in improved time utilization of the entire support team.

Another notable difference introduced by SUMO was the ability to archive inactive requests and hide them from the calendar view. This advancement helped to declutter the calendar and created more space for upcoming appointments. As a result, clients reported a higher level of satisfaction with the support team’s flexibility and responsiveness.

Finally, SUMO’s automated platform made it much easier to repurpose past invitations for handling new requests. At the end of the project, they reported up to 25% less time scheduling new meetings and following up to reschedule existing calls.

Results

Hitting the Ground Running SUMO’s Help

Since partnering with SUMO, the Fortune 100 company has achieved the goal of fully automating its scheduling process. Support consultants now have the power to manage customized tasks while giving customers the freedom to schedule, modify, and cancel meeting appointments at their own convenience regardless of the time zone. As a result, the company saw improved customer and employee satisfaction. In 2020, they was ranked in the Top 5 on the Fortune Magazine’s List of the Top 100 Companies to Work For based on an employee survey of satisfaction.

The company’s management team was particularly impressed by SUMO’s analytics tool that provided full transparency into meeting activity such as the number of scheduled and rescheduled appointments. With over 50 dashboard templates, the management team is now able to monitor and track staff utilization levels and identify gaps for further planning and improvements. Looking ahead, the company wants to expand the use of SUMO Scheduler across the entire organization and plans to achieve even better results in the future.