A Brave, new world: How a robust customer engagement system ushered in the “new normal” for this luxury retailer

Unprepared for a post-pandemic world, the retailer urgently needed a customer engagement platform to enhance connectivity and improve customer service.

THE CHALLENGE:

Imagine this. It’s the middle of the COVID19 pandemic.

Marketing analysts are raving about a “new normal,” and businesses are investing in new technologies that can address performance issues, enhance connectivity, and streamline operations.

Our hero, a prominent online retailer, works with thousands of shoppers, consignors, and luxury managers across eight regions in the United States.

Prior to the global crisis, this retailer was using an old-school scheduling method to organize its affairs: a phone number to book or re-book meetings.

This process was prone to human error, the manual data entry lacked accuracy, and was devoid of personalization.

However, the sudden shift & focus on digital interactions left the retailer in a challenging position, requiring urgent updates to their customer engagement process. Facing huge potential losses and multiple shutdowns, the retailer was ready to change how it handled its customer service and invest in a “new normal.”

THE OBJECTIVES:

In order to modernize the retailer’s engagement system, key pain points had to be analyzed, discussed, and addressed through the solution.

As a result, SUMO recommended the following feature implementations be added to the new and improved engagement system:

A revamped Infrastructure: As none of the retailer’s systems interacted with each other, a real-time understanding of customer needs was unattainable.
Automatic customer mapping: The manual scheduling process lacked customer focus, causing clients to be paired with random services.
Real-time analytics: The marketing department was unable to provide much-needed personalization and automation.
Calendar integration: Meetings between clients and in-house experts were being scheduled via spreadsheets and other disjointed resources.

THE SOLUTION:

In a matter of weeks, SUMO deployed its customer engagement solution, which allowed prospects and customers to make self-guided appointments with the right experts by following a simple link on the company website.

Following this, SUMO’s Assignment Engine matched specific clients with appropriate services or experts, based on pre-recorded data shared legally and consensually with the retailer through the Salesforce-native integration.

This feature helped the retailer create custom objects that automatically mapped prospects and customers to appropriate services and experts.
Furthermore, the Real-Time Analytics Builder enabled lead nurturing and customer engagement through personalized drip campaigns and templates, geared towards maximizing every step of the buyer’s journey.

Lastly, SUMO’s calendar integration synced with Google Calendar, allowing the retailer to view all available time slots and recommend them to new prospects, maximizing output.

THE RESULTS:

First and foremost, SUMO’s Assignment Engine has optimized customer mapping, ensuring that clients are paired with the most suitable experts at the right time.

Real-time custom reporting via SUMO’s Analytics Builder has empowered the executive team to make data-driven decisions based on specific campaigns, locations, appointment volume, and personalized key performance indicators.

SUMO’s Calendar Integration has not only reduced missed appointments but also eliminated the need to manually follow up with customers.

SUMO’s native integration with platforms such as Pardot has simplified the majority of marketing tasks, allowing prospects and customers to seamlessly schedule follow-up appointments at their own convenience.

Owing to these implementations, SUMO has provided the retailer with a transparency that was previously lacking, and created a streamlined method for business representatives to book appointments on behalf of luxury managers.

Working with a solution backed by the right mix of experts and technology, real-time customer support has now become the retailer’s calling card.

THE FUTURE:

The executive team plans to fully embrace omni-channel & drive more business to the company’s physical and web properties via targeted campaigns and online scheduling capabilities.

It also plans on expanding its data-driven approach by utilizing custom analytics to track the path to purchase in order to closely align with the needs of their prospects and customers.

The retailer looks forward to developing its partnership with SUMO, knowing that it has only scratched the surface of possibilities through its new customer engagement strategy.

Top Graduate School

Challenge

Seeking a Platform to Connect Students and Tutors

Educational institutions often find it difficult to streamline class scheduling and coordinate meetings between students and tutors while ensuring staff availability, enrollment, and engagement. Automated omnichannel scheduling software can help universities establish a consistent time table for each department, automate courses, secure classroom availability, and effectively connect students and instructors.

A top leader in postgraduate education, recruited SUMO Scheduler to address communication and appointment coordination challenges head-on through the implementation of cloud-based software. The technology has enabled the university to connect over 14,000 educators with students and faculty across 2,800 schools and resulted in significant improvements in the course scheduling, student engagement, and academic planning processes.

Solution

Flawless Academic Planning With SUMO

For a long time, faculty and administrators struggled to build a consistent schedule of classes. Time, space, and program constraints made it hard for the departments to prepare their schedule for the upcoming semester and ensure consistent progress. While existing rules and procedures were meant to alleviate some of the complexities, they lacked the ability to effectively distribute course sections and reach optimal enrollment goals.

The university administrators struggled to keep up with the manual assignment of courses, rooms, and individual meetings between students and tutors which lead to appointment conflicts and an inability to effectively organize students and resources. Implementing an automated scheduling software seemed like the best way to move forward.

SUMO Scheduler was selected by the organization’s leadership committee due to the platform’s balance of features and intuitive user experience. Together with its implementation partner, SUMO built an automated solution that allowed students to schedule meetings and classes with coaches straight from their community.

Faculty and staff were impressed by the platform’s ability to seamlessly pass contact details from the school’s CRM platform and to link them with participants’ calendars in order to establish common availability based on appointment type, dates, and times. This highly configurable, yet simple, system turned a previously tedious scheduling process into a well-functioning workflow.

The organization experienced first-hand a tailored approach that provides students with a summary of their appointments along with the number of times they are allowed to book a meeting with a specific faculty member, coach, or panel. Scheduled participants are automatically nurtured with regular email communication and reminders – a key functionality that tremendously reduces manual tasks and saves time.

Automated scheduling also provides transparency into the appointment status as well as the number of missed and completed meetings. With the newly implemented system, admins have no issues tracking absentees, rescheduling meeting times, or finding available classrooms.

Results

A Fast Track to Results

Since partnering with SUMO, the organization has achieved impressive results. Faculty members and administrators can easily streamline their internal scheduling process and keep students on track with the fully customized workflow which includes features such as custom fields and templates, calendar integration, and multiple location support.

SUMO’s innovative technology not only allows students to keep track of their scheduled appointments, receive timely updates and notifications, and stay connected with the tutors but it also dramatically reduces the number of missed meetings due to scheduling conflicts. Additionally, faculty members can easily see all of their appointments and assigned students from a single calendar view.

The software helps faculty members stay on top of their priorities by automating processes and eliminating scheduling errors which, in turn, leads to improved productivity and operational efficiency. With SUMO, academic departments can easily avoid double-booking classrooms to ensure meeting space availability at any given time.

The organization has a strong vision for future growth and plans to continue partnering with SUMO to fulfill them. It will continue working on various initiatives to enhance collaboration across departments and campuses to improve productivity, increase efficiencies, and enhance engagement by standardizing scheduling systems from a single multi-device omnichannel platform.

Leading Healthcare Insurance Provider

Challenge

A leading healthcare insurance provider with over 2.9 million members and largest network of doctors has recently faced a growing demand for a branded online scheduling experience to successfully accommodate customers and prospects.

Besides aiming to capture important contact information such as email, age, and referral source, the sales team wanted to be able to quickly identify new contacts who entered the database upon scheduling a meeting. Sending reminders via email and text and allowing customers to schedule appointments based on meeting length and staff availability was another top priority.

To achieve these goals, the company needed a robust online scheduling software with greater visibility and capacity to accommodate the entire organization.

Solution

This Fortune 500 organization selected SUMO as their strategic technology partner because SUMO makes it easy to create and manage highly automated and personalized online scheduling systems in any digital environment.

SUMO worked closely with the organization’s sales and service teams to integrate a Salesforce-native appointment scheduler. Key features included branded pages, email templates, custom labels, and fields mapped to individual records. The improved classification was achieved by creating custom fields for contact details, referral source, and age brackets.

Additionally, SUMO helped set up a list of services that were mapped to the scheduling process. Custom fields created for individual service objects allowed a high level of appointment type classification and also provided transparency into reporting. Finally, the ability to set and define availability for SUMO Providers through work shifts inside Salesforce made it easy to optimize time management.

Results

Modern Medicine: How A Multinational BioPharmaceutical Company Saved Its Dying Scheduling Process

With time running out and their clients’ health at stake, this company tasked SUMO with injecting new life into an old scheduling system.

THE CHALLENGE:

How can we effectively deliver our medicines?
How can we organize and align several departments?
How can we consistently meet the needs of every patient?

For a multinational research-based biopharmaceutical company, time was running out. Solutions to these questions seemed unattainable, and the systems were flawed.

Simply put, the client’s nurses responsible for meeting with patients and distributing the company’s medicines were using an archaic scheduling system.

Booking appointments via phone calls and managing them through an overstuffed Excel spreadsheet was leading to miscalculations and inaccurate delivery data.

Critically, human error and faulty data processing could result in incorrect deliveries for clients who needed specific medicines in specific dosages, putting their health at serious risk. Facing this critical issue, the client reached out to SUMO to revitalize their entire scheduling system.

THE OBJECTIVES:

SUMO conducted a thorough analysis of the client’s operations, and focused on the following areas of improvement:

Enable customers to self-schedule appointments directly with nurses
Provide various appointment types to meet each customer’s needs
Ensure specific field values for each medicine’s guidelines
Create additional records automatically once an appointment is booked
Guarantee security for sensitive customer and company data

THE SOLUTION:

First and foremost, as a Salesforce native application, SUMO assured top-tier data security, HIPAA compliance, and seamless integration with the Salesforce platform.

With the client’s data-related concerns secured, SUMO implemented a scheduling platform focused on efficiency and customer service.

SUMO achieved this through the following:

Customers could now self-schedule appointments through the client’s website and email, while retaining the option to book them through phone.
Customers could instantly book appointments in-person, online or via conference. Both customers and nurses were informed about the appointment through SUMO’s Remider Engine.
SUMO’s Assignment Engine assigned a duration to each appointment type while maintaining specific branding guidelines for each medicine, making it easier for customers to choose what they needed.
To keep all departments on track, a trigger was put in place to create additional records once an appointment was booked.
Nurses could view all available and scheduled appointments in an automated Multi calendar, rather than manually typing data into an Excel sheet.

THE RESULTS:

SUMO’s new scheduling solution provided the client with bank-grade security measures, ensuring the level of protection required for critical healthcare data.

The client’s data was stored securely within the Salesforce environment and protected by strong firewalls.

The self-scheduling streamlined the client’s appointment scheduling process, and reduced manual errors.

Patients could now make appointments that fit their schedules, and nurses became more productive as they no longer had to handle constant calls. Furthermore, the Multi-calendar now allowed nurses to view all appointments in a unified calendar and manage them efficiently.

SUMO’s Assignment Engine matched customer needs to the right medicine, allowing orders to be placed directly with nurses, saving time and effort.

Finally, the Reminder Engine helped both customers and nurses prioritize their meetings, ensuring consistency and punctuality.

THE FUTURE:

Prior to SUMO’s solution, appointment scheduling was a major issue for the client, relying on an error-prone system that could critically affect the customer’s health.

Now, the biopharmaceutical company can focus on providing excellent healthcare to patients across the United States, while trusting SUMO’s solution to assist them with their scheduling needs at every turn.

All On Board: How a Fortune 500 Pharma Company Restoredits Client Onboarding Process

Stuck in an ineffective circle of communication, this company was losing clients fast, and requested a complete overhaul of its customer onboarding process.

THE CHALLENGE:

Client onboarding is the start of a customer’s journey with your business.

It can define your company’s reputation with a client, and if communication is lacking during onboarding, it can harm the relationship between the client and your company.

Vendors of this Fortune 500 pharma company faced constant back-and-forth emails and phone calls while trying to schedule their onboarding sessions.

These outdated methods wasted time for both parties, trapping vendors in ineffective communication and depleting the time customer service experts could spend on actual onboarding tasks.

Furthermore, the bulk of the customer service experts’ day-to-day tasks remained unfinished as they had to stay on the line manually booking and rebooking appointments.

The company noticed a decline in customers, despite positive marketing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

This led to a startling realization: the client onboarding process needed to change, and fast.

THE OBJECTIVES:

Seeking a fresh start with maximum customer satisfaction, the client approached SUMO with an onboarding process in dire need of an update.

SUMO conducted a thorough analysis of the client’s day-to-day operations, and gathered key stakeholder opinions to understand the most pressing pain points.

After the analysis, SUMO and the client chose to focus on the following objectives:

Data security through top-shelf
Automatic scheduling options for vendors through the website
Real-time reporting, developed within the Salesforce infrastructure
Specific welcome team interactions through queue management
Automated reminder engine, to free up the customer service experts

THE SOLUTION:

First and foremost, as a Salesforce native application, SUMO assured bank-grade data security, HIPAA compliance, and seamless integration with the Salesforce platform.

Thus, the client onboarding overhaul began by allowing the vendors to self-schedule their appointments through the community portal within Salesforce.

First, SUMO’s Online Scheduler provided vendors with multiple ways to book an appointment through the following process:

– Once a customer service representative qualified the vendor, an email was sent to them with a self-scheduling button.

– From a self-scheduling button embedded in the email, the vendor could now set the date and time most convenient for them.

– After the vendor self-scheduled, they were placed in a queue for the welcome team.

Second, through SUMO’s Assignment Engine, the vendors were distributed to a specific welcome team member to start the onboarding process, depending on the date, time, or location. Third, SUMO’s Reminder Engine sent email confirmations to the vendor and customer service expert, assuring both parties were synced. Subsequent reminders leading up to the appointment date were then sent at timely intervals.

THE RESULTS:

SUMO’s scheduling solution provided bank-grade security measures, ensuring the level of protection required by a Fortune 500 business.

The client’s data was stored securely within the Salesforce environment for convenience and safeguarded by some of the strongest firewalls available on the market.

By using SUMO’s Online Scheduler and the self-scheduling feature, customer service experts saved valuable hours. This allowed them to refocus on onboarding tasks instead of wasting time on back-and-forth calls.

Additionally, the Assignment Engine matched each vendor with a free expert based on factors such as date, hour, and location. This enabled seamless connectivity and region-specific interactions.
Finally, SUMO’s Reminder Engine helped both experts and vendors prioritize their meetings. As a result, vendors were less likely to miss their appointments.

THE FUTURE:

By adding self-scheduling to the onboarding process, the Fortune 500 client has reported:

A 45% increase in call center agent usage, shifting time spent on phone exchanges to onboarding activities through the Assignment Engine
Over 200 appointments processed per month, a company record achieved via the Online Scheduler’s automated links
A 27% reduction in no-shows, a direct result of the Reminder Engine’s automated follow-ups

Prior to SUMO’s solution, timing was a major blocker to completing the onboarding process.

Now, the Fortune 500 company is once again revered for its client onboarding process, rehabilitating its reputation and image on a global scale.

Look-Out-Outlook: Find Out How SUMO’s Automated Scheduler Removed This Client’s Need For Manual Data Processing

Alarmed by their clients’ dissatisfaction, this company approached SUMO with an urgent request: to revitalize their appointment scheduling process.

THE CHALLENGE:

As a market leader providing software solutions, this company provided training and onboarding services to its clients.

However, the customer training team was managing incoming requests for training using Outlook and Excel, which made booking appointments an extremely manual process. This process was time-consuming, and led to errors and duplicate bookings. Specialist trainers were left either sitting idle or “over-training” groups, leading to a decrease in their productivity and the customers’ satisfaction.

Furthermore, with no follow-ups from the trainers, customers would regularly miss their appointments, leading to regular breakdowns in communication.

Worried about the negative customer sentiment and their overall brand value, the company reached out to SUMO.

The objective was clear: revitalize their appointment scheduling process.

THE OBJECTIVES:

In order to better understand the client’s needs, SUMO conducted a thorough analysis of the company’s operations.

SUMO highlighted the following objectives:

Moving away from manual data processing to automated scheduling
Decreasing idle time for training specialists
Creating a streamlined calendar to view all scheduled appointments
Safely migrating Excel data for up-to-date client integration
Keeping clients (and trainers) accountable for appointments

THE SOLUTION:

As a Salesforce native application, SUMO assured HIPAA compliance, and seamless integration with the Salesforce platform, ensuring that the company’s sensitive data was secure.

Furthermore, this allowed SUMO to seamlessly migrate the Excel and outlook data into the platform, creating a “smart” ecosystem where the solution would automatically highlight data for repeat customers.

SUMO proceeded to upgrade the company’s appointment scheduling process through the following steps:

Customers would now receive three options to self-schedule an appointment: by phone, email, or conference.
As soon as the appointment was scheduled, both customers and trainers were informed about the appointment through SUMO’s Remider Engine.
Once the appointment was scheduled, every trainer in the company could view the booking through a unified “multi-calendar” for seamless visibility.
In case there were any scheduling conflicts for customers, SUMO’s solution would automatically recommend appointment alternatives.
Lastly, SUMO created a bespoke feature that would cancel future bookings should a client decide to put the training program on hold.

THE RESULTS:

Using the self-scheduling feature, customers now had multiple options to schedule their appointments based on their convenience.

Additionally, this feature decreased the idle time for trainers, while ensuring that each new group was properly accounted for.

The client’s data was stored securely within the Salesforce environment and protected by strong firewalls.

Furthermore, the Multi-calendar allowed the trainers to view all up-to-date appointments and efficiently manage their time and resources.

Finally, the Reminder Engine helped both customers and trainers prioritize their meetings, ensuring consistency and punctuality.

THE FUTURE:

The company was looking to increase trainer productivity and customer satisfaction by reducing the manual effort it took to schedule a training session.

Therefore, SUMO’s Scheduler simplified the booking process and removed the need for Excel and Outlook altogether, providing the client with a solution that was easy to implement, and efficient for the long run.

Leading Coaching Firm

Challenge

SUMO has a new customer that is a Leading Coaching Firm who provides coaching and training to real estate professionals with one-hour business coaching sessions being one of their key products. The company originally chose a competing scheduling solution to manage appointments for their sales and coaching teams. However, within the first year, they found it was not fulfilling their needs. The business was being negatively affected by the app’s restrictions on creating self-scheduling sites, ability to quickly book sessions and the extra connector license fees needed to get the app to work with Salesforce®. They saw a doubling of billing increases within a 3-month timeframe. The app was not allowing the business to scale without an extra investment of time and money.

Solution

Requiring a more robust tool with user-friendly self-scheduling and flexible workshift management, the organization contacted SUMO after a search for their top competitors. Being built native on Salesforce was their top selling point followed by its ability to scale to their growth. Finally the cost and speed of implementation made SUMO the optimum choice. The organization now can create unlimited self-scheduling sites without added fees, so every rep, program and product can now be represented. Ease of use was also a draw as they found training very user-friendly and the support team lowered the learning curve during the transfer from the other scheduling tool.

Results

The organization is now able to reduce time spent scheduling appointments by almost 50%. With their previous scheduling application, up to 10 different pages needed to be opened and appointments had to be manually moved to match coaching requests. With SUMO, they are now able to use SUMO’s drag and drop feature to easily match any available rep with coaching requests, make updates or corrections. One page bookmarking lets their admin quickly retrieve scheduling and calendar pages needed without maintaining a library of open pages. Working in Salesforce classic mode with plans to convert to lightning mode, the company found extra benefit that SUMO is lightning-ready.

Worth A Fortune: How a Fortune 500 Insurance Company Revitalized Customer Support and Productivity

Struggling with constant no-shows and facing a drop in customer sentiment, this Fortune 500 business was looking to increase productivity by re-inventing its appointment management system. Here’s why they chose SUMO.

THE CHALLENGE:

The client, a worksite insurance provider, needed to prepare for an annual open enrollment event with an enterprise premier care provider with over 13,000 employees across 29 states.

However, their existing scheduling system was archaic, buggy, and crash-prone, leading to not only lost time but also lost customer appointment data.

The constant cycle of contacting leads & asking them to re-fill personal data was not only inefficient, but also reflected poorly on the client, which made the event less effective for the provider’s staff & the customer’s employees.

The clients who tried to schedule appointments found available times inconvenient, and there was no option to efficiently re-book or request a different appointment hour.

The effect? On-site staff sat idle for long periods; their calendars had few appointments, and no-shows became extremely common.

Seeking a fresh start with maximum customer satisfaction, the client approached SUMO with a scheduling system in dire need of care.

THE OBJECTIVES:

SUMO conducted a thorough analysis of the client’s day-to-day operations, and gathered key stakeholder opinions to understand the most pressing pain points.

Furthermore, the client had some clear feature requests to the scheduling technology, and as such, SUMO focused on meeting the client’s minimum requirements while the provider decided to focus on improving the appointment process.

The feature requests included:

Integration with their CRM platform, Salesforce
The ability to assign specific enrollers across multiple locations
Automated 24/7 scheduling, with a modern, crash-proof interface
Personal data protection with bank-grade safeguards

THE SOLUTION:

First and foremost, as a Salesforce native application, SUMO assured bank-grade data security, HIPAA compliance, and seamless integration with the client’s Salesforce platform.

This meant that the client’s data was not only stored securely within the Salesforce environment for convenient access, but also safeguarded by some of the strongest firewalls available on the market, ensuring maximum data protection.

Secondly, SUMO deployed its Assignment Engine, enabling the staff to match with employees based on their insurance needs and the enroller’s areas of expertise, providing the expert assistance required.

Moreover, SUMO’s Reminder Engine allowed the insurance provider’s staff to send automated emails, text messages, and phone reminders to ensure every client showed up on time or rescheduled at their convenience.

THE RESULTS:

SUMO’s multi-faceted solution allowed the worksite insurance provider to tackle its key pain points while significantly improving customer service and productivity.

As a Salesforce-native solution, SUMO enabled the provider to capture critical appointment information and optimize workflows seamlessly while ensuring data security.

Furthermore, the bank-grade security measures of SUMO’s scheduling solution provided the level of protection required by a Fortune 500 business.

Lastly, the Assignment Engine and Reminder Engine optimized the customer service process, matching specialists with the right clients and providing clients with more self-scheduling opportunities.

The worksite insurance provide has reported the following numbers since implementing SUMO’s solution:

13,000+ employees are now able to self-schedule with a representative based on their product interests and needs.
8,000 independent agents are now matched by product certifications, tenure, and geographical location for convenient support
400 locations are now staffed by skill-matched representatives with an optimized schedule of pre-set appointments.

THE FUTURE:

The addition of SUMO Scheduler to the provider’s open enrollment process continues to improve both the productivity of their enrollment representatives, and the overall experience for the (fast) growing customer base.

As the Vice-President of Operations stated after 6 months:

“SUMO Scheduler is truly driving business growth by adding
up to 50% more appointments to our insurance agents’ calendars.“
– Jane VP, Operations, Fortune 500 Insurance Company

SaaS-tifaction Guaranteed: The Complete Upgrade Of a SaaS Company’s Customer Service Process

Blasted with critical reviews and facing thousands of dollars in losses, this SaaS company knew it urgently needed an upgraded scheduling process. The solution went even further

THE CHALLENGE:

The client, a SaaS company responsible for providing support & product training to customers through client administrators, was managing incoming training requests using Outlook, Excel, and email.

While these are fine tools, the process of manually adding critical client data while searching for available appointment hours was quickly becoming a concern.

Both customers and client administrators were struggling with long wait times. Multiple appointment initiation points—such as email, phone, and website— had to be monitored around the clock for clients across different time zones.

Additionally, clients were being pushed to request appointments through the SaaS company’s designated Customer Portal, adding yet another initiation point.

Bombarded by customer support issues and facing huge losses, the company wanted to reduce wait times by decreasing its appointment initiation points.

However, this would also reduce incoming requests (and thus, income). Searching for a solution that would overhaul the process without leading to immediate losses, the SaaS company approached SUMO.

THE OBJECTIVES:

After conducting an in-depth audit of the business, including interviews with the workforce & anonymous clients, major pain points were discovered.

To address those issues effectively, SUMO suggested the following feature implementations for the SaaS company’s appointment scheduling strategy:

– Unified Appointment View: all initiation points should be up-to-date
– Revamped Infrastructure: each representative should access correct data
– Reminder Engine: clients should automatically be informed
– Designated Access: only the administrators should confirm appointments

THE SOLUTION:

First and foremost, the SaaS company was afraid to lose clients if they went through with their original plan: decreasing appointment initiation points.

Instead of removing those initiation points (and jeopardizing a revenue stream), SUMO created a transparent Multi-Calendar, fully synced for the clients
and the administrators based on each scheduled appointment.

This way, clients could continue using the existing initiation points, while each recorded appointment would automatically be added to the Multi-Calendar.

Secondly, SUMO created bespoke Case Management features, allowing each customer’s pre-recorded preferences to be quickly accessible for the consultants, enabling them to focus on customer service rather than data scrolling.

Furthermore, the new Reminder Engine would automatically send reminders
to the customers when their appointment was approaching, freeing up the consultants.

Lastly, a brand new interface with designated access allowed the administrators to log new case details more effectively, while an Automatic Trigger to pull in client contact information or assigned reps into a scheduled meeting kept everyone on track.

THE RESULTS:

SUMO Scheduler simplified the booking process, giving the global support team a single tool built within the Salesforce platform to manage appointments.

The Multi-Calendar view now provides a bird’s eye view over all incoming (and scheduled) appointments, allowing consultants to focus on more dynamic time-management and customer service.

As such, the global support department can now view Outlook for Salesforce, Salesforce events and SUMO self-scheduled appointments on one single calendar.

The Reminder Engine has eliminated the potential for double-booked or missed appointments, and thus the client administrators now have greater flexibility (and designated access) when managing their accounts.

By implementing the SUMO solutions, the SaaS company’s support team has drastically decreased wait times & after call work times, greatly improving the customer experience and satisfaction rates (they surveyed it!).

THE FUTURE:

The SaaS travel leader has reported increased productivity through the new, streamlined SUMO solution, with administrators & consultants appreciating the all-in-one customer engagement solution.

Beyond customer experience, the company has reported an increase in customer appointments, especially self-scheduled appointments through the new, streamlined Multi Calendar interface. Today, our client continues to provide top-notch service to its 100+ clients worldwide, all while trusting SUMO with its client relationship management.

Diamonds Are Forever: How A Specialty Jeweler Modernized Customer Experience Through Scheduling

The largest specialty jeweler in the US, UK, and Canada wanted a competitive edge to expand their client base & increase revenue. Interestingly, the key to their success turned out to be a… warranty?

THE CHALLENGE:

With rave reviews and a lucrative holiday season approaching, this specialty jeweler was desperate to increase revenue & grow its market share within a booming sector.

After conducting a thorough audit of the company, SUMO and the client realized that the biggest inhibitor to that revenue was right under their noses! (or necks, if you like pearls) The jeweler’s clients would receive a warranty with their purchases, and its validity was maintained by bringing the jewelry in for regular cleaning and inspection.

The consultants’ only means of scheduling those clients for this service was via phone, which was greatly limiting the possibilities of efficient scheduling returning clients and serving new customers.

Appointment setting, appointment rescheduling and special occasion reminders were also solely conducted through phone, which, during the forthcoming holiday season, was about to receive an overwhelming amount of workload.

This overreliance on the phone was affecting the jeweler’s ability to serve a larger number of customers because its communication lines were constantly blocked.

THE OBJECTIVE:

In order to set realistic and attainable goals, SUMO interviewed anonymous clients and the Jeweler’s consultants, asking them to describe the biggest pain points.

Once the analysis was complete, the following “needs” were prioritized based on each key stakeholder:

Multi-platform scheduling: for the business to move away from *just* phone
Load Balancing: for each consultant to have a fair number of clients
Reminder Engine: for clients to suggest hours at their convenience
Salesforce Compatible: for the managers to retain key customer data

THE SOLUTION:

Having a clearer view of the immediate issues, SUMO implemented the following motto; “a call should only be the customer’s last method of scheduling”.

Firstly, SUMO expanded the appointment requests to include new communication channels, allowing clients to now book appointments through email & website.

Secondly, a Multi-Calendar view was built in conjunction with the new channels, allowing clients to access each consultant’s availability online, allowing them to schedule their own appointments.
Focusing on providing the most efficient customer experience, a Reminder Engine would allow the jeweler to send follow-up emails, messages or calls(depending on the customer’s preference).

Most importantly, the solution was built within the Salesforce platform, allowing the jeweler to retain approved client data such as previous purchases, preferences and wishlists, without needing to re-add it manually for over 50,000 clients!

THE RESULTS:

With the jeweler now able to accept appointments through email & website, clients have the ability to schedule appointments from their multiple websites, 24/7, across any device, with the data being visualized through a multi-calendar view.

As for the data, owing to the retained customer data through a Salesforce native solution, management teams now have a more effective way to analyze their businesses with insightful data like appointment volumes & quota per branch.

In addition, with more appointments being self-scheduled by the clients, the jeweler’s consultants are now focused on selling & improving customer service, while developing their client base through new offers for the holiday season.

Satisfied with the results, the jeweler has decided to expand SUMO’s scheduling solution across all branches, and SUMO is now being used by over 20,000 sales consultants in over 2,000 locations.

THE FUTURE:

The largest specialty jeweler in the US, UK, and Canada can shift its focus on long-term objectives by:

Effectively serving client needs, without missing an appointment
Increasing client inflow & focus on expanding services or locations
Appropriately managing increases in demand

All while reporting record revenues for that year’s holiday season, confirming that SUMO’s solution was an investment worth… diamonds.

Turning The Cheek: How A Plastic Surgery Company Overhauled Its Failing Scheduling System (And Won!)

With its entire revenue based on top-class customer service, this client was facing over $10,000 worth of lost income each month, due to one critical flaw in its appointment scheduling system.

THE CHALLENGE:

The plastic surgery company, due to a combination of budgeting & staffing issues, was applying an archaic appointment scheduling method.

The receptionists would receive an appointment request, after which they would manually insert critical data into an Excel sheet… while being on the phone the entire time, thus blocking the line. This process was not only tiresome & prone to human error, but the long talk-times between the client and the staff led to *other* appointment requests being lost, which led to a vicious circle of “re-call, apologize, and repeat.”

Facing imminent chaos, this client approached SUMO with an appointment scheduling system that looked like a facelift gone horribly wrong.

THE OBJECTIVE:

SUMO started by conducting a thorough audit of the company’s operations, and interviewing the employees to better understand the scope of the issue.

Once the audit was complete, SUMO laid out the following objectives or “needs” that would help tackle the key pain-points for the company and its clientele:

Multi-platform scheduling: to move away from *just* calling
Automated data-entry & scheduling: for repeat clients
Multi-calendar view: for clients to suggest their ideal appointment times

Automated follow-ups: for clients to re-book after an appointment

THE SOLUTION:

SUMO began by crafting a solution that was customer-first, which began with a simple philosophy; “a call should become the customer’s last method of scheduling an appointment”.

Firstly, SUMO expanded the appointment ticketing requests to include multiple platforms, allowing clients to now book appointments through email & website.

Secondly, a Multi-Calendar view was put into place, which allowed the clients to view each specialist’s availability, allowing them to schedule their own appointments at their desired time. Moreover, SUMO implemented a scheduling system that would automatically update after each new appointment was scheduled, thus providing the receptionists with up-to-date data to recommend to a new client waiting on the call.

Lastly, with the pre-recorded data extracted from the excel sheets, the receptions now only had to add a few sets of data for new clients, while the platform would automatically allocate them to a sub-grouping of the company’s specialists.

THE SOLUTION:

SUMO began by crafting a solution that was customer-first, which began with a simple philosophy; “a call should become the customer’s last method of scheduling an appointment”.

Moreover, SUMO implemented a scheduling system that would automatically update after each new appointment was scheduled, thus providing the receptionists with up-to-date data to recommend to a new client waiting on the call.

Lastly, with the pre-recorded data extracted from the excel sheets, the receptions now only had to add a few sets of data for new clients, while the platform would automatically allocate them to a sub-grouping of the company’s specialists.

THE RESULTS:

Through the combination of the above-mentioned features, the client’s receptionists are no longer required to scroll long, error-prone excel sheets while making awkward small-talk with clients on the phone.

The client’s entire staff now has one central location to schedule and manage patient appointments, which has reduced the number of no-shows and cancellations for their practice.

SUMO’s modernized customer engagement platform offers a transparent, bird’s-eye view of all the appointments in a convenient & efficient manner.

THE FUTURE:

The plastic surgery client can now focus on long-term objectives by:

Effectively serving client needs, without missing an appointment
Increasing client inflow & focus on expanding services or locations
Appropriately managing increases in demand

“Income” Statement: How a National Bank Maximized Business Growth by Optimizing Customer Engagement

How did a rapidly growing Laser Treatment Center manage to supercharge its customer service, increase revenue, and reduce appointment scheduling times by 50%? By incorporating efficiency… and a bit of SUMO magic.

THE CHALLENGE:

The client in focus is a Retail Banking institution that provides private banking services, lending programs, and personalized financial services to its customers; from long-term care to retirement planning.

Looking to upscale, the bank had previously attempted to increase the number of incoming customers, but doing so had created excessive workload for the staff, as all new client requests & inquiries had to be managed by phone & email.

These methods of communication had created a constant phone & email lag that would not only extend the time it took for advisors to meet & serve customers, but also lead to lost conversations, delayed wait times & lacking customer service.

THE OBJECTIVE:

The client, while requesting a Salesforce-native application as a critical factor, requested a solution that would help them achieve the following objectives:

Modernize data-recording efforts for client requests & inquiries
Develop features for self-scheduling service appointments
Decrease excessive call times for key staff members
Create a notification engine to reduce the possibility of lapsed/lost clients
Built the solution within the Salesforce environment

THE SOLUTION:

SUMO’s specialists concentrated on reliability and sustained usage when designing a modern, Salesforce-native platform tailored to efficiently handle large appointment volumes.

The employees/specialists no longer need to look for appointment availability by location, instead receiving automated emails and calendar support through a simplified and highly efficient process.

Secondly, SUMO’s customized platform provided the Multi-Location Calendar, a bird’s-eye view of all appointment openings and staff availability across multiple locations.

Not only was the platform engineered to operate for extended durations without encountering issues, the clinic employees were now quickly able to schedule an appointment once a request came into Salesforce from multiple contact channels.

Lastly, by utilizing SUMO’s Report Builder, the client gained access to a customized reporting and analytics dashboard with accurate, up-to-date data, allowing the Laser Treatment Center to plan future expansion and growth strategies.

THE RESULTS:

Customers were now able to self-schedule appointments with advisors at their convenience, successfully utilizing SUMO’s self-scheduling feature.
Advisors were able to focus the majority of their efforts on servicing their customers, owing to the decrease in excessive call times.
The client experienced an increase in customers maintaining their appointments and noted the Notification Engine to be the key factor.
The client reported a clearer, more intuitive data ecosystem created via SUMO’s Salesforce-native solution that retained critical data within the Salesforce platform.
Client surveys recorded higher rates of customer satisfaction after SUMO’s appointment solution was deployed for the client.

THE FUTURE:

The Laser Treatment Center has prioritized efficiency through a renewed process of appointment scheduling and customer experience with the help of SUMO’s platform.

The Treatment Center continues to grow and expand its services to more locations across the United States, bringing with it professional services, high-caliber quality, and a laser-like efficiency.

One For The Future: How an Entrepreneurial Institute helped create businesses through Automated Scheduling

THE CHALLENGE:

Our client, an Entrepreneurial Institute, provides training, research, fundraising, and networking opportunities to budding entrepreneurs within a community.

Entrepreneurs, with hopes of pitching their ideas and securing the Institute’s benefits, would book appointments, but the sheer number of incoming requests was becoming overwhelming for the staff.

The CEO reported that “some employees were booking up to 20 meetings a day to match the rising appointment demands”. As a result, the staff was overburdened, which led to an increase in delays and a drop in customer service quality.

Moreover, scheduling appointment requests was further complicated by the need to cross-reference and document multiple appointments across multiple schedules, which were recorded with highly manual methods: phone calls and emails.

THE OBJECTIVE:

Though the client was effectively using Salesforce® to manage their database of investors, partners, mentors and mentees, they recognized the need for a more robust scheduling method which would better serve their community.

The client chose SUMO scheduler, and requested a bespoke appointment scheduling solution with the following features:

A Salesforce native platform that would retain key critical data
Self-scheduling features for the staff to efficiently manage appointments
Safeguards to ensure no more double bookings or missed meetings
A customized routing system that would connect the entrepreneurs to the right representatives

THE SOLUTION:

SUMO’s Appointment Scheduler was built native to the Salesforce platform, meaning that the client’s critical data remained entirely within the Salesforce ecosystem. This setup reduced the risks associated with data being processed on external servers, thus fortifying security.

Furthermore, SUMO’s Appointment Scheduler allowed the institute to switch to communication methods that would automatically schedule any type of appointment without requiring an employee’s constant involvement: in-person, via phone, video, or even through a web conference.

Critically, a customized Assignment Engine allowed SUMO to automatically handle the matchmaking, scheduling meetings for Entrepreneurs with the right representatives by taking into consideration their availability, location, time, and the meeting method.

These features, coupled with the insertion of multiple calendars and schedules into an intuitive, configurable platform, allowed the Institute an at-a-glance view of all customer interactions, allowing them to deliver highly personalized service.

THE RESULT:

Through the implementation of SUMO Scheduler’s customized platform, the Entrepreneurship Institute experiencing no more issues with overlapping schedules, double bookings or missed meetings.

The proprietary Assignment Engine now automatically routes appointment requests to a representative or mentor based on their calendar availability, whereas the Self-scheduling feature has allowed the Institute to focus on scheduling follow-up meetings, helping young entrepreneurs further develop their ideas.

Owing to the above , the Institute’s staff has been able to claim back a significant amount of their daily work day, allowing that time to be directed to other important tasks.

Saved a Fortune: How a Fortune 500 company saved $400ka Month with SUMO

A 47% reduction in the Support Team’s workload while saving almost half a million a month on workforce management? How did this FinServ Powerhouse do it?

THE CHALLENGE:

As a firm operating in the Financial Services industry, the client’s customer support team was tasked with processing payments. However, another major objective of the client was to efficiently schedule product installations and training, as a secondary source of revenue.

Simply put, Productivity was becoming a critical issue as, according to the CEO, “it was taking too much time for support agents to schedule clients for their installations”. The company’s support team of over 1000+ employees was spending countless hours calling or re-calling to book installations. This burdensome (and exasperating) hurdle was reducing the time spent on actual real-time customer support, as not only were the agents becoming less productive, but the “quality of their customer service was declining at an alarming rate”, according to Robert, the Vice President for Process Management.

THE OBJECTIVE:

With resource-management being such a critical part of Financial Services, SUMO was tasked with optimizing the client-agent communication process, along with:

Minimizing wait-times for callbacks from customer support agents
Eliminating delays in payment processing and invoicing
Creating efficient workflows through a customized platform
Providing seamless integration with SalesForce

THE SOLUTION:

SUMO utilized its customized platform with Salesforce® for the client’s CRM. Critically, SUMO’s self-scheduling feature solved the delays that clients were experiencing, by allowing them to freely schedule one-to-one appointments with designated support agents in-person, via phone, video, and even web conference.

SUMO’s Assignment Engine proved to be another vital addition, as the feature eliminated the human error of mismatching the customer with an overbooked agent, thus greatly decreasing the number of no-shows, and improving customer experience.

Furthermore, as a Salesforce native application, the client was able to use SUMO to integrate seamlessly with their Salesforce organization profile, creating bespoke workflows and a customized organizational system.

THE RESULT:

At the end of the first month of implementing SUMO’s solutions, the client reported the following:

A 47% reduction in the Support Team’s workload and delayed responses
Record $400,000 saved a month with appointment scheduling automation
An Increase in positive client reviews regarding the Customer Service Team

“SUMO is automating a problem that costs our organization almost half a million dollars a month! It is an absolute bargain to work with them.”
– Robert, Vice President, Process Management

THE FUTURE:

By giving their clients the ability to Self- Schedule at their convenience, the Financial Service juggernaut also experienced an improvement in client satisfaction, as well as its net profit at the end of the fiscal year. SUMO’s multi-functional platform helped the organization immediately eliminate the issues its support team was facing, ensuring an efficient, effective process
for the organization’s long-term growth.

Money Movers: How a FinTech Firm invested in appointment scheduling

This renowned client saved more than 25% of its staff’s time by employing a modern, automated scheduling system, but how it managed to bring back lost clients is even more impressive.

THE CHALLENGE:

The client’s previous scheduling process for setting up meetings heavily relied on phone & email communication. Every appointment request would be picked up by the Reception staff, who would have to review each Financial Advisor’s individual calendar, and book the meeting.

That’s a little cumbersome, but manageable… if an Advisor’s calendar was wide open. If the Advisor was booked, another round of calls & emails had to be made in order to find a mutually agreeable time slot.

As if that wasn’t enough, the Reception staff were also tasked with re-booking appointments requested by the clients where they directly contacted the Financial Advisors. This resulted in more confusion and appointment overlap, leading to missed appointments, communication silos, and a frustrated workforce.

THE OBJECTIVE:

Recognizing the inefficiencies inherent in these processes, the COO Janise. aimed to reclaim the valuable time spent on appointment scheduling, while attempting to:

Optimize the appointment scheduling process
Create efficient communication channels between Advisors & clients
Alleviate the stress of additional responsibilities off the Reception staff
Prioritize individual client experiences through round-the-clock service
Enhance overall time-management efficiency

THE SOLUTION:

After a period of time persisting with the burdensome manual scheduling process, SUMO was brought onboard.

SUMO implemented round-the-clock, semi-automated response systems, meaning that the Client was able to book meetings at any moment, even during the off hours, directly affecting the inflow of customers.

Critically, this update allowed the client to radically decrease the number of no-shows, as both Advisors and Clients appreciate the simplified & efficient process of booking appointments.
Furthermore, custom meeting-types were built for the client, where they now had the convenience of selecting their meeting options based on their availability: phone, video or in-office. This directly resulted in the reception staff no longer spending all their time (re)scheduling appointments.

Ultimately, the implementation of SUMO’s solution had a positive effect on the FinTech firm’s C-SAT. Their Clients felt catered to as the Advisors focused on building interpersonal relations, whereas the appointments were now easy to moderate.

THE RESULT:

The COO reiterated the importance of time-management and efficiency in operations when asked about her key objectives for SUMO:

“Our firm offers full-service financial advice to its clients from non-commissioned fiduciary advisors, so meetings are integral to our service. Our goal was to remove any obstacle that keeps the client from not engaging or coming in for advice”.
– Janise, COO FinServ Client

The FinTech firm can now:

Manage appointments through a modern interface
Minimize no-shows through a semi-automated communication system
Personalized customer service through custom meeting types
Freed up the Reception staff to focus on more productive tasks

THE FUTURE:

The COO’s team is now able to achieve the primary business goal of handling every incoming appointment in an efficient and professional manner.

SUMO’s personalized solution turned a highly manual process of booking meetings, which was prone to human error, into a seamless, client-first system. SUMO now helps the FinTech firm connect and engage with their clients at their convenience.