Manufacturer Transforms Customer and Team Member Experience with Salesforce

Jun 20, 2022

Manufacturer Transforms Customer and Team Member Experience with Salesforce

On this episode of “Salesforce Simplified,” we’re speaking with Chip Boeneke, VP of Information Technology at Residential Elevators, about digital experiences within the manufacturing industry, and in particular, his company’s recent digital transformation.

Episode Notes/Resources:

Salesforce for Manufacturing: https://bit.ly/3FIhZ5Y
Take the Manufacturing Cloud Quiz: https://bit.ly/3ovMKp8
The 5 Most Important Things Manufacturing Cloud Does for Businesses: https://bit.ly/2YWlaqZ

Episode Transcription:

Speaker 1:

Thanks for stopping by. This is Salesforce Simplified, the podcast from Ad Victoriam Solutions.

Mike Boyle:

Welcome, everyone. I’m Mike Boyle from Ad Victoriam Solutions, and on today’s Salesforce Simplified episode, we’re going to be speaking with Chip Boeneke. He’s the VP of information technology at Residential Elevators. We’re going to talk to Chip about digital experiences within the manufacturing industry, in particular, his company’s recent digital transformation. Hi, Chip. Thank you so much for joining us today. How are you?

Chip Boeneke:

Hey good, Mike. Thanks for having me.

Mike Boyle:

It’s a pleasure to have you with us, believe me. Oh, and in the interest of complete transparency, it’s important that everyone knows that Residential Elevators are an Ad Victoriam customer. Just want to make sure everyone knows that. And with that Chip, let’s just start by talking a little bit about you and about your company and how things are going at Residential Elevators.

Chip Boeneke:

Sure. Well, Residential Elevators is a direct manufacturer of home elevators. We cover about 15 states across the United States, as well as we have a few dealers within the U.S., as well as abroad. Each elevator that we build is custom to the customer and to the project. The specifications of that elevator are custom built for each individual project. So we needed a solution set that could help us with the customizations that we have, which are a lot and the specification entries for each elevator at each project. So we’ve come off of a mature system Mike and moving into Salesforce was a little bit of a challenge for us.

Mike Boyle:

Well, let’s talk a little bit about that Chip. Now let’s talk about that journey and you know, where you’ve ended up today. Talk to me specifically and the audience about why you came to AdVic for help and how did we help you?

Chip Boeneke:

Sure. So, as I said, we were coming off of a very mature system that was an in-house built system, that was really to tailored around specifically, our business model. And moving into off the shelf system like Salesforce was going to be a bit of a challenge for us to understand the nuances, if you will, of making Salesforce fit our business model. We interviewed quite a few different partners that Salesforce presented to us and Ad Victoriam was the number one choice that we left the table with. So AdVic has really worked hand in hand with us from start to finish, if you will. We started off with our service side. So we used the field service lightning portion of Salesforce to transform our service modules from our mature system over into Salesforce. And really without the help of AdVic, that would’ve been a huge hurdle for us and taken a lot longer than what it did take.

Mike Boyle:

Yeah, Chip. I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you, what were you dealing with prior to AdVic? What was your business processes like before we stepped in to offer our guidance?

Chip Boeneke:

So we did have a mature system that was tailored to our business. It was light in some areas, if you will, around the scheduling side, the mapping side, the mobile side. But it did have a lot of other features that our business used from dispatching and resources and all of the different components. Where AdVic and Salesforce brought to the table, was taking that to the next level, allowing us to use to get candidates and be able to schedule more effectively and more efficiently and setting up the processes in a better fashion from the system we used to have to the new system. Their depth and breadth of knowledge around the field service side, and that’s where we started, was instrumental in getting us to where we are today.

Mike Boyle:

As you were sitting contemplating what needed to get done, what were you looking at as the biggest challenge to this digital transformation that you were undertaking?

Chip Boeneke:

You know, the biggest challenge for us was migrating off of a mature system. We weren’t a paper based or spreadsheet based system. We were actually on a mature in-house built system and migrating off of that system and migrating our thousands and thousands of records over to a new system, into new processes, making them more effective and more efficient. That was really the biggest challenge, was the mapping of the processes and the mapping of all the historical data that we had into a new system.

Mike Boyle:

Well, that was your biggest challenge and I’m sure another challenge was getting all of your stakeholders involved and trained and how did all that go?

Chip Boeneke:

Yeah, absolutely. You know, that’s always a challenge, change of anything, is always a challenge and getting our stakeholders involved, getting our people, if you will, involved in the process from start to finish was somewhat cumbersome at times, as it is in any situation or any change. However, with the help of AdVic, with the WebEx’s and Zoom calls and everything else that we did, with all of the pieces of showing them as a step by step with the use cases, we were able to continually sail through the process of the benefit that we’re going to get at the end. It’s going to be a little hard up front and again, the adoption rate was going to be a little tough, but making it easy by having everybody trained and part of the process was big for us.

Mike Boyle:

And how do you think things are going now, everybody just kind of falling in line and just things are moving smoothly?

Chip Boeneke:

Sure. With our field service side, that was our first year project and our field service side is going swimmingly well. There’s always updates and changes and things, more things or more feature, more function that people want and we’re still continuing to evolve, but that change for the field service side has gone very well.

Mike Boyle:

Let’s talk a little bit about this digital transformation and how did it change the customer service side of your business?

Chip Boeneke:

So, to give us a better look into the overall aspect as a whole of the customer, was one big thing that was a little cumbersome for us in our old system. In our new system is it is a much better visual representation of the overall customer process and what the customer has done with us from start to finish. As well as tying in some of our other ancillary components outside of Salesforce and integrating those into Salesforce has really helped. Between the phone systems and some of the other components that we have built outside of the phone system with the help of AdVic and our internal resources has really changed the customer experience to the next level.

Mike Boyle:

And aside from customer service, field service, how did this new technology upgrade make that portion of your business more efficient?

Chip Boeneke:

Yeah, so the biggest part of that is the mobile side to give our field service technicians the ability to do all their work on a mobile platform and not on a thick client or what we call an E tool, which is a mini laptop and being able to process the payments and everything right there from the phone, has really helped that process grow and evolve. Before they used to have to pull out a small E tool kit, a small laptop, and do all of their work on that using a thick client that would integrate back into our home systems or would data sync at certain periods of time back into our home system, where this is more real time, no real synchronization other than the app, of course, but this is a more real time information strand that they get to see as they’re going out to that customer’s job site.

Mike Boyle:

So it’s not only more efficient for your employees, it’s also great for the customers as well. It just makes things seamless.

Chip Boeneke:

Absolutely. It’s fantastic for the customers. It gives the technician more visibility into what historically has happened at that customer’s job site to go in with more knowledge, to be able to help that customer in a better fashion and give them a better customer experience.

Mike Boyle:

Chip, what’s on the horizon for Residential Elevators business wise and I might add, Salesforce wise, do you see adding on to what you have?

Chip Boeneke:

Yeah, so it’s interesting you ask that Mike, because that was our first wave, if you will, or our first phase of the Salesforce transformation from our old mature system. The second phase of that was our CPQ transformation. So we started off with our field service side for the first year, and then our second year was moving our sales and production side over to the Salesforce platform. And that was the CPQ, the configure, price, quote, as well as our production facilities for producing the elevator and approving the measurements and doing all the things around that process, building and shipping and delivering, that whole process. And we worked hand in hand, again with AdVic on that project. And that was our second phase or our second wave of the project. And then moving forward, it’s a continual evolution of adding more feature functionality to continue that digital transformation for us.

Mike Boyle:

Your business is growing, why shouldn’t the technology?

Chip Boeneke:

Absolutely.

Mike Boyle:

Chip, I want to thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on Residential Elevators’ recent digital transformation, and wish you good luck with everything in the future. I’m sure those who are contemplating a digital transformation have a little bit better feel for what to expect, especially in the manufacturing industry as they continue to plan there. So thanks again for joining us Chip, really appreciate it.

Chip Boeneke:

Absolutely. Thank you, Mike.

Mike Boyle:

And if you would like to learn a little bit more about Residential Elevators and what they do, just simply visit residentialelevators.com. And by the way, I’ll be putting some helpful resources about digital experience for the manufacturing industry in particular, in this show’s notes. Lastly, if you happen to be a podcaster and you’re looking for guests on your podcast who can talk about all things Salesforce and MuleSoft, you just contact us here at AdVic and we’ll hook you up with one of our experts. You just go to the contact us, page, which is on our website, advic.com, A D V I C.com and we will put you in touch with one of our experts. I’m Mike Boyle from AdVic, thank you so much for joining us for our latest Salesforce Simplified Podcast. As always, our next episode is just around the corner.

Speaker 1:

We’re glad you stopped by. You’ve been listening to Salesforce Simplified, the podcast from Ad Victoriam Solutions.

Ad Victoriam Solutions

Ad Victoriam Solutions helps companies bridge the gap between technology and business insights for greater efficiencies. We can turn even the most complex problems into smart solutions that help businesses perform better and achieve more. We’re cloud and data experts who work across a spectrum of leading-edge applications and technologies to help companies solve critical IT problems - quickly, simply and efficiently.