INDUSTRY:
Information Technology
LOCATION:
Australia & New Zealand
CHALLENGES:
-
Siloed channel engagement
-
Lack of mobile access
-
Low functional visibility
-
Poor platform flexibility
HOW FRESHSALES
HELPED
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Rapid user adoption through a simple & intuitive UI
-
Contextual conversations through event tracking and AI-insights
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Reduced time to first contact with intelligent workflow automation
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Improved sales productivity by focusing on high potential deals
-
Better management visibility through custom dashboards and reports
+ 40% in 6 months
Growth in Monthly Recurring Revenue
+ 90% in 12 months
Pace of outbound contact
- 20% in 12 months
Time spent on admin tasks
Synergy’s journey from consulting to SaaS
For more than 20 years, Synergy Enterprise Solutions has been offering customer experience, omnichannel engagement, and collaboration solutions in the Asia Pacific region. They partner with globally recognized partners such as Twilio and Genesys and have hundreds of customer success stories across many industries and company sizes.
Traditionally, Synergy started out as a contact center consulting business selling voice and data solutions to larger solution providers. In 2018, they found an opportunity to sell directly to B2B customers through the cloud that was becoming the de-facto operating model for any organization looking to scale, secure, and satisfy customer needs.
The foray into subscription software space proved to be a game-changer. Today, they offer personalized cloud-based contact center and CRM solutions to enterprises across the world.
The search for a capable customer engagement solution
As they pivoted their business into subscription software, Synergy began to face hurdles in managing the surge in customer demand. Their growth had to be supported with the scaling of their sales and support capabilities.
However, this wasn’t going to happen overnight. The CRM platform they were using was under-equipped to match the pace of the organization’s growth or the evolution of their sales organization.
They were facing multiple challenges, listed below:
1. Siloed channel engagement: With Synergy being huge advocates of connecting with customers on their preferred channels, they did not have the right SMS and business chat capabilities within their CRM platform.
2. Lack of mobile access: With their sales team juggling appointments while on the road, or during time away from their workstations, it was crucial for them to review and update the status of deals from anywhere.
“The CRM not being “in-the-pocket’ for my teams often meant delayed or forgotten status updates, prospect follow-ups, and ultimately stalled or lost deals.”
3. Low functional visibility: There was limited visibility that the sales and support teams had into each other’s function, especially around customer interactions. In short, customer engagement practices were running in silos.
4. Poor platform flexibility: Their earlier CRM platform locked customers like Synergy into their ecosystem, constraining their ability to configure the software to fit their needs. The CRM wasn’t able to work with Synergy’s existing systems and support their direct sales model.
“More recently, I’ve used another popular CRM platform which was configured so poorly that every entry became a chore – with irrelevant dependent and mandatory fields causing roadblocks at every turn – resulting in the bare minimum data entry and no useful insights. CRM should not be hard!”
The Freshsales experience - and Synergy’s most-loved features
Synergy Enterprise Solutions had been a happy customer of Freshdesk, an analyst-recognized customer support solution for the last 6 years. When they explored the potential Freshsales (formerly Freshworks CRM) offered to overcome their sales challenges, it was a relatively easy choice to make. Today, both the products are part of the Freshworks portfolio, meant to be intuitive, easy-to-use, and intelligent.
Here’s a rundown of the top features helping Synergy drive their business growth today:
1. Workflows & Email Sequences: Synergy leverages the full potential of Freshsales' automation capabilities to configure and take over a number of activities currently executed manually. Without Freshsales, an unexplainable number of selling hours would have been taken away from reps, saddled with having to close routine, admin tasks. In addition, their lead nurture campaigns are now powered by the Freshsales' Sales Sequences to keep their prospects engaged. The eventual goal is to drive them through the pipeline and to a close.
2. Lead scoring: Freshsales offers Synergy the ability to track the customer’s engagement levels across the buying journey. Instances like replying to an email or signing up for a demo have a weightage of points attributed to the buyer on the platform. The more important the event is, the greater it exhibits the possibility of a closed deal. Synergy has been able to filter the most promising of opportunities for their sales teams to invest time on.
3. AI-driven insights and reports: Event tracking, displaying the buyer activity timeline, and behavior-based segmentation are some of the intelligent capabilities driven by Freshsales' proprietary AI engine, Freddy. Synergy has been able to track their customer's behavior from closer quarters and find next best actions to offer value during the journey of evaluating their services. Besides, customized reporting has helped Synergy extract the right numbers on performance to improve forecasting their future quarters.
“Very quickly, we realized the importance of using a cloud CRM to enable our new strategic direction. We were already using Freshdesk, so it made perfect sense for us to leverage Freshsales to effectively manage our sales process.”
A peek into their sales transformation journey
Over time, as Synergy began to experiment and unlock the full potential of Freshsales, they realized its potential to support efforts with their direct sales model and existing Freshdesk investment. Simon cites these parameters are instrumental in accelerating their sales performance and transforming the practice over time:
1. Rapid user adoption: Through a simple, uncluttered, and intuitive user interface, account executives can interact with the software better. That has grown adoption rates rapidly. They can effortlessly add deal information, configure workflows and personalize sequences even while on the move.
2. Contextual conversations: Reps today have a single-window view of their customers’ interactions. AI-based intelligence that works in the background helps boost engagement and lifetime value (LTV) scores. As a result, they are able to streamline account management and revenue generation efforts.
3. Reduced time to first contact: Automated workflows and a closer marketing and sales collaboration through Freshsales helps in the allocation of new leads to reps faster than before. Also, outreach activities like nurture campaigns can be executed through predefined sequences. What results is faster first touches with prospects and higher chances of closure.
4. Improved sales productivity: While workflows & sequences automate operational tasks that sellers have to undertake over the journey of a lead to deal, smart insights can uncover high-potential opportunities to prioritize their efforts towards.
5. Better management visibility: Simon and his team of managers can track the sales performance of their teams through custom dashboards and reporting capabilities. For instance, granular data such as the daily outreach activities per rep can be extracted.
“Freshsales lets us sell without getting in the way of selling. It helps us manage our customers better, so we can focus on what we do best.”
The journey with Freshsales, according to Simon, has been highly beneficial. In fact, the numbers speak for themselves:
1. Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), grew by 40% in the last 6 months. The pace of outbound contact grew by 90% in the last 12 months. Time spent on administrative tasks by teams dropped by 20% in the last 12 months.
P.S: MRR is calculated for Software-as-a-Service businesses who are paid by customers on a month-on-month or quarterly basis, versus a one-time license fee.
The path to engaging customers in a digital world
As we enter a radically new phase of customer-brand interactions, behavior has and will continue to evolve in line with finding safe ways to do business. And there is very little room for our reps to devote time to activities that do not directly contribute to revenue that can sustain and grow our business. Moreover, intelligent, easy-to-use solutions should help organizations engage with their new and existing customers. By shortening the sales cycle, Freshsales helps us engage, grow, and nurture our customers in a digital world.
“The CRM platform should play the role of a critical enabler to both the sales rep and the sales management. To the rep, it must offer the speed and scope to engage buyers according to the cadence of their purchase journey, and at the pace they expect to make a decision. For management, it must provide accurate data across the complex sales cycles we see today. This may be how customers are interacting across growing channels, the speed at which responses are expected, or use-case scenarios for our customer’s business challenges.”
