Two years ago, CMC’s IT Department began researching a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that could integrate key areas of our business into one platform, including customer service, marketing, sales and more. After extensive research and testing, Salesforce was chosen.
Some of Salesforce’s key benefits are:
- Its shared view of every customer
- Automated workflows using artificial intelligence
- Easy integration with CMC’s Energy Reduction Management System (ERMS) and other existing data and systems
- Ability to keep business data safe and secure and that it can be customized based on our needs.
“One of the main benefits of Salesforce is its app store, Salesforce Marketplace, which allows you to buy additional functionality in pre-packaged form,” said Kevin Terry, CMC’s Senior IT Manager. “We have the flexibility to add into the system the newest and latest functionality, because they’re constantly adding features. This saves us the work and time it would take to develop it ourselves.”
IT expects that tentacles of Salesforce will expand over time into everyone’s work life and will help us look at our work system holistically between departments – whether it’s a marketing campaign, customer service outreach, or a technician conducting an energy audit. Salesforce will bring the organization’s work into one succinct, organized view. Its benefits will be far reaching when it’s fully implemented and finalized.
“Management can get insight into how a program is doing while also seeing a snapshot of how CMC is doing as a whole,” Terry said. “Originally, we had looked into building these capabilities into ERMS, but Salesforce was a more timely and cost-effective solution.
“Now, we have the ability to bolt Salesforce onto ERMS, so they can communicate, and CMC users can attain the information that they’re looking for,” he added.
Currently, IT has rolled out Salesforce for several of our programs, including scheduling for PECO and PPL, but we still communicate through ERMS for audit information. PPL’s audit survey also will move to Salesforce going forward and we will build off Salesforce’s interface for billing and inventory control.
Every process that is data driven will eventually flow through Salesforce because it’s a nimble platform that doesn’t require a lot of coding to develop solutions. It democratizes data and is much more straightforward than ERMS – ultimately making it easier for everyone to build data reports.
As we continue to rollout Salesforce in stages, CMC employees will have access based on need and will be offered training on an ongoing basis.
“IT did a great job and had good cooperation from other departments in rolling out Salesforce,” Terry said. “It really benefited us that people throughout the company were open and honest about what they found beneficial and what they disliked about ERMS, so we knew exactly what they were looking for as far as capabilities and functionality.”
Mike Waller, CMC’s Customer Care Manager, also has found Salesforce helpful for the ComEd program, which was built in Salesforce.
“Salesforce was a key differentiator for the ComEd team,” Waller said. “It allowed our customer care representatives (CCR) to manage customer relationships using tools such as knowledge base.
“Our CCR’s have been able to transition from a traditional call-taker role to a trusted ComEd ambassador,” he added. “Salesforce best practices also have really helped us exceed ComEd KPI goals and offer a premier customer experience.”