CASE STUDY
Integrating Customer Support Database
with CRM & Marketing Automation Systems
CMO-ToGo has transformed our sales and marketing automation into a modern machine. They tied together our back-end systems and developed a full set of email nurtures that span our customer’s lifecycle. Beyond their command of marketing, their Marketo and Salesforce.com expertise is deep and they demonstrated an unwavering drive toward execution. Last, but not least, they completed our project on time and on budget.
Scott Lewis, VP WW Operations
The Challenge
Often, Support teams use a different customer information system than Marketing and Sales. Support systems like Desk, ZenDesk, FreshDesk, and Oracle’s RightNow are invaluable for support reps. These systems, however, house valuable customer information that could be extremely valuable to Sales and Marketing as well. Unfortunately these systems are often siloed databases, un-integrated with a company’s CRM and marketing automation systems.
When brought together, the mosaic of different pieces of customer data can be combined into one clear picture of the health of the customer. Without this unified view, renewal reps don’t know if they are about to step on a landmine when they ask for the renewal. And marketing may be marketing to wrong people at each customer account. The customers that call Support are typically the power users – the ones that can have a disproportionate impact on renewals and add-on purchases. How many of these supported users is Marketing reaching if they are locked away in a separate database?
The Solution
CMO-ToGo integrated the client’s customer support database with their CRM and marketing automation system. After implementation, the company was able to derive a more complete picture of the health of their customers. The marketing team used the number of open tickets as one of the inputs into their customer health score. Without leaving their CRM, account managers and customer success managers now see which of their customers have unresolved support cases. Renewal reps lean on their Support team to provide ‘white glove treatment’ to customers up for renewal that have lots of unresolved tickets. Marketing benefits from the integration by having more contacts to sell to. Now whenever Support enters new contacts in their Oracle support system, those records are brought directly into the marketing automation system for nurturing.
The Implementation Process
1) Strategy & Requirements: Working with the client, CMO-ToGo defined project objectives and authored detailed requirements, highlighting key fields for integration and required data transformations. Upon client approval,development commenced.
Data Mapping Between Source & Target Systems
Flowchart showing business logic and transformation rules
2) Development: CMO-ToGo authored functional specifications based on the agreed upon requirements. After determining required tools and system environment, a quick proof of concept was conducted to surface any end-to-end issues. At this point CMO-ToGo wrote the required integration code, including audit trail, versioning, backup, alert system & exception error logging. Once all developer tests were successfully completed,QA testing commenced.
Integration Code
3) Testing & QA: Following code review and developer unit testing, the original requirements were converted into a test plan. A test environment was created to replicate the target system environment and bulk data testing commenced. With successful completion of bulk testing, CMO-ToGo commenced manual data testing, simulating client UAT (User Acceptance Testing). Once completed, we were ready for deployment.
Detailed Test Plan
4) Production & Client Hand-off: CMO-ToGo provided the client with step-by-step testing instructions along with a testing template. Upon client approval, the system was ready to move into production. The client was provided with final documentation (requirements, flow charts, code, deployment instructions, etc.). Upon approval, the new system was deployed into production.
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