An architectural audio company improves customer communication with Jotform and Salesforce

Industry: Professional Services/B2B

Company size: Medium

Use cases: Project design request forms, RMA processing and troubleshooting, lead generation and warehouse management

About

A company that has been widely recognized as the creator of and leader in architectural audio, Sonance has been in business for 40 years. Based in San Clemente, California, Sonance believes that technology can and should blend in with architecture and great design. The equipment the company manufactures — everything from speakers to sleek docks for mobile devices — reflects that ethos.

With four brands and thousands of products (including customizations) to support, Sonance engages with customers through design inquiries, technical support, new dealer prospecting, and more.

Challenge

When Brian McCullough, technical services manager, first arrived at Sonance, the organization was using fax machines to send return merchandise authorization (RMA) information back and forth.

McCullough implemented digital forms, but the team still needed to streamline customer communication and design service requests from dealers.

Working with so many partners — and such a large product database — meant that when support calls came in, it was critical for McCullough to quickly identify the customer, their product affiliation, and their RMA needs.

Like many growing companies, Sonance had to quickly process all new partner leads and opportunities from existing dealers by gathering accurate design request details such as job site description, budget, and material size and dimension.

Solution

To efficiently handle customer issues, Sonance built a process using Zendesk on the front end. Based on the customer information collected, the team determines if an RMA is required. When it is, a Jotform is sent to the customer to collect all the information needed to process the RMA.

The automation occurs when the Jotform is completed. Not only is the data logged in Salesforce, but there’s also logic built into the form to determine who at Sonance is assigned the job, based on the data received.

With an assist from Zapier, the submitted Jotform also updates the Zendesk record, ensuring that the customer stays engaged throughout the process.

Whether it’s a solved technical issue or a completed design, Sonance sets customer expectations with the help of a sophisticated software suite.

Results

“Now that we have Jotform — and ticket tracking ability — our reporting on customer data is much better. We’ve improved our support mechanisms by building tools around the most discussed Sonance products: the ones that need fixing or are the most consistent.

Our combined workflows allow our team to virtually help customers with videos and/or go into the field and train people on the best practices we see on a regular basis. So the solutions have changed the turnaround time…. That’s huge.”

Brian McCullough, Technical Services Manager, Sonance