"[Vitally] is very sexy. The platform is fun to play with, it’s very self-service and very quick to onboard. The ease of use sets Vitally apart.”

Who is Salesfloor?

Azelie Pouliot, Director of Client Services @ Salesfloor

Salesfloor is an award-winning customer engagement platform for retailers. With their Virtual shopping, Clienteling, and AI-Assisted Selling capabilities, Salesfloor is trusted to deliver seamless retail customer experiences across online and in-store shopping—trusted by renowned enterprise retailers, Bloomingdales, Saks of Fifth Avenue, Macy’s, and many more across the globe. 

Check out Salesfloor’s Customer Story

Pinpointing Customer Needs: The Challenges

• Lacking a standardized handoff process from Customer Success Manager to Customer Success Manager. 
• Onboarding for Customer Success Managers was long without a centralized platform.
• Difficulty monitoring customer data over time - particularly changes in customer health, product usage, and stakeholders.

Before Vitally, Salesfloor had a limited view of its customer base and needed to find a more sustainable process for tracking and updating customer data. 

“Prior to Vitally, we were using Google Slides and Google Sheets to keep track of our customer information and health,” says Azelie. “That was all we kept track of. We had JIRA for tickets, but in terms of the customer-specific information and performance, it was a tedious and error-prone process.”

Without a way to properly track customers, no process could give Salesfloor an accurate understanding of product usage or customer health. Lacking customer tracking, CSM onboarding was a lengthy process as they struggled to fill in their customers' missing information, and Customer Success Manager and Sales handoffs were inefficient. 

“The biggest issue prior to having a comprehensive Customer Success tool was not being able to track the historical view of customers. We were limited by a single snapshot and did not have visibility into prior customer conversations. New CSMs lacked the data they needed to onboard quickly and efficiently. ” says Azelie. We didn’t have “a comprehensive view of product usage over time, health over time, change in customer stakeholders; so altogether, we had limited information, and it was hard to keep track.”

One of the biggest frustrations for the Salesfloor Customer Success team was their inability to serve their customers adequately. The lack of historical data prevented them from better understanding the needs of their customers and servicing them properly. 

For Azelie’s team, “the biggest frustration before Vitally was being powerless over certain situations, like not having all the information you need to make the right decisions and accompany the customer to the best of your ability. That one-time snapshot didn't give us enough contextual information to properly service [our customers].”

Comprehensive Customer Lifecycle View: The Solution

• Bridging the gap between disparate sources and tools with a Customer Success platform that could display a holistic view of their customers’ historical data. 
• Ability to input product usage data through automation to give CSMs a better historical view of their account.
• Providing CSMs with a quick and effective onboarding with all account information they would need to better understand and serve their customer's needs.

When Azelie was brought on the team, there was no question that they needed a CS tool that allowed them to utilize a historical view of their customers. The original CS processes weren’t going to cut it. 

“I joined the team about a year and a half, almost two years ago.As soon as I saw the prior process with Google spreadsheets and slides, I said to myself, “there is no way,” recalls Azelie. “One of my very first action items, when I started in my role, was to launch the right  [Customer Success] tool.” 

Working with Vitally in a previous role, Azelie knew Vitally could tackle their issues with historical customer data. It wasn’t long after she settled into Salesfloor that she brought in Vitally to resolve their challenges. 

Shopping around for Customer Success Platforms, “[Vitally] was the one that really caught my eye in terms of usability. I knew it was something we really had to bring on to add value in serving customers better.”

Vitally was able to open a lot of doors for the Salesfloor team. The tool gave Azelie’s team full visibility of the customer lifecycle, allowing them to get up to speed quickly and gain value right off the bat. 

“Vitally is a tool that allows all of our CSMs to have full visibility into the customer lifecycle,” says Azelie. “From the signature of the contract, onboarding, pilots, rollouts, and launch, all the way to tracking product usage data, meeting minutes, and tickets in Zendesk.” Tracking the entirety of the customer relationship with Vitally gave Salesfloor “a 360 view of the customer lifecycle from kick-off to renewals.” 

Bringing on Vitally also improved the cross-functionality of teams at Salesfloor. Vitally is used by more than just the Customer Success team, adding value to the work of other teams. 

Vitally has allowed “[Salesfloor] to work cross-functionally with other teams,” Azelie says. “Marketing uses it to segment verticals, and sales uses [the platform] to get valuable customer information such as health scores. It’s the one source of truth about our customers.” 

When bringing Vitally onboard, Salesfloor had an existing tech stack that needed to be integrated into the platform. Integrating their tech stack was a major priority for the team, but the ease of integration within Vitally was a highlight. 

One of the first tools integrated with Vitally was Zendesk. “It was fantastic to be able to track all the [Zendesk] tickets within the same view as everything else about that customer,” says Azelie. All in all, “Zendesk was a two-click process, super easy, super quick, and we didn't have to involve anyone from other teams to do that.”

Gaining visibility of product usage with Vitally was a huge feat for Salesfloor. With the ability to now automate the input process for product usage data, Customer Success Managers have more time back in their days to better serve their customers. 

“For the product usage data, we actually don't have a data lake yet, so we integrated it through the CSV option.” For inputting product usage, “we used to do that manually. All the CSMs would enter their [product data] manually. Now we're able to automate that, and it's a dream come true. All the CSMs can access that data and see trends over time for their accounts.” 

The day-to-day tasks and actions performed by the Salesfloor team are now a part of Vitally, proving how the platform is their all-in-one tool for the Customer Success team. 

“All of the actions that we do on a day-to-day basis with customers are logged, either automatically or manually, into Vitally,” says Azelie. For instance, “we have Playbooks that automate alerts when performance metrics drop below a certain target set by customers. We get these little alarms in the form of tasks that let us know what to do for each situation.”

In addition to day-to-day tasks and actions, Vitally also automatically logs emails for the Salesfloor team.

“We log all of our emails [in Vitally], so anybody can go into each account and have a really good idea of what is going on and who the main stakeholders are.” Azelie also shares how much “we really love Segments [in Vitally]. We use Segments for everything, probably more than we should. [Segments are] useful for the marketing team, they have verticals in there, and they can see metrics per industry really quickly. We also user segments for [customer] tiering.” Ultimately, “the objective is to have them fully ramped up. [So all of these teams can] go into Vitally to get some of those insights for market Intel and product usage on different verticals.” 

All in all, Vitally has helped ensure that Azelie’s team at Salesfloor and their respective enterprise customers are reaching and surpassing the goals they have set out to achieve. 

“We use Vitally to track customer-specific goals,” says Azelie. By using Vitally’s ”playbooks, we were able to have that custom-level of targets and playbooks assigned to specific customers. We have alerts that are triggered once metrics are above or below targets, [plus] triggering opportunities and risk indicators.” Additionally, “in terms of our team's performance, it's all tied to renewals and upsells - so it's also tracked very closely to all the actions that they take daily in Vitally.” 

Why Salesfloor Recommends Vitally to Other Customer Success Teams

• Sleek UI style and ease-of-use of the platform. 
• Single source of truth and comprehensive view of customer data. 
• Quick onboarding for new CSMs. 

Since implementing Vitally, Azelie feels a lot of relief with a CS tool capable of doing so much more for their team and, ultimately, their customers. 

“We feel great and very relieved,” says Azelie. Originally, for the “CSMs to track all of this [customer data] manually, look at product usage data through CSVs was a really lengthy process. Now that we're on the other side,” says Azelie, “it feels fantastic. It's much more efficient and much more user-friendly. So I think overall, we're very happy. And there's no going back…that's for sure!” 

Everything the Customer Success team needs is now in one place because of Vitally. From onboarding to product usage data to viewing historical customer data, Vitally serves as the single source of truth for Salesfloor. 

One of the greatest accomplishments with Vitally “was reducing the time to onboard new CSMs,” says Azelie. “They now have everything they need in one place. [New CSMs] can find  product usage data, email conversations, and customer information all in one tool. The second thing is having one source of truth. Before, it was scattered in a multitude of different tools. It was very hard to coordinate cross-functionally [with] teams [because we didn’t have the] same level of information. Now we can have all of that in one place in Vitally.” 

The moment of truth! Does Salesfloor recommend Vitally? TL;DR – they do! 

“Totally, I love Vitally and totally recommend it! ” says Azelie. “I think [Vitally has] made a big difference in terms of demystifying how complicated a CS tool can be and how hard it can be to gather all the valuable customer information in one place. It was so easy and so quick to do [everything] with Vitally.” 

And if asked, “What sets Vitally apart from other CS tools?” Azelie had the best answer for us.

“Vitally is very self-service and very easy to onboard compared to other CS tools that I’ve used,” says Azelie. She also adds that Vitally “is very sexy. I find it looks really nice. ” For Azelie and the Salesfloor team, “the ease of use [is what] sets Vitally apart.”

See how CS teams use Vitally for their data-driven decision-making, plus how they are exceeding their customers' expectations and goals. Get an inside look at the Vitally platform with a free trial when you schedule a demo today.