Shaklee Corp. Keeps in Touch with On-Demand CRM

Over the course of half a century, Shaklee Corporation has grown into one of the largest natural nutrition companies in the United States by building its brand and growing its direct-sales business model.
  
Shaklee's business is built on the relationships between its more than 750,000 members and distributors. Members get discounts on products and receive useful nutrition and wellness information, while distributors are independent agents who sell Shaklee products and participate in a variety of loyalty programs. The longevity of these relationships helps set Shaklee apart from other nutritional supplement companies. In fact, the average active tenure of a member is more than six years.

But, increasing competition and the rise of the Internet posed a challenge to Shaklee's brand and its ability to sustain relationships.

"In today's Internet-driven economy, it is imperative to provide the right information in an easily accessible format," says Ken Harris, senior vice president and chief information officer, Shaklee Corp. "Our distributors rely on our Web site to get information, make buying decisions and communicate with each other. So, we wanted a way to maintain high-touch relationships even as the use of online channels intensified."

Shaklee chose to partner with RightNow Technologies, a provider of on-demand customer relationship management software and solutions, in an effort to maintain customer relationships by delivering a consistent experience across both its Internet and traditional touch-points.

"Today, Shaklee is using RightNow's technology for all of our customer interface applications, mass mail marketing, call center, telephone order entry and Web knowledge content capabilities," says Harris, who mentions that Shaklee has been using the on-demand solution for three years and just recently upgraded to the RightNow February '08 release.

Reinforcing Relationships
The implementation of an on-demand CRM model has led to improved productivity and efficiency across its marketing, sales and service operations. Shaklee members and distributors can now get the information they need from the company Web site. The company can manage e-mail and phone communications with its contact center in a common manner. The company can also ensure that it continually improves its responsiveness across all channels.

For example, Shaklee implemented topic-based routing that directs callers to subject-matter specialists based on the nature of their questions. This improves the quality of service that members and distributors receive, while also eliminating the inefficiencies that result when contact center staffers have to ask each other for answers. It also eliminates instances where callers keep asking different staffers the same question until they get the answer they want.

Equally important, Shaklee managers now have full visibility into what kinds of questions are coming into the company via phone, email and the Web, so they can take appropriate action.

Open Communication
In addition to enhancing its responsiveness to incoming questions, Shaklee has significantly improved its outbound communications. Before deploying the solution, it was a struggle for Shaklee to pull together appropriate lists, create effective content and transmit that content to large numbers of recipients. These struggles inhibited the company's use of email as a proactive medium for marketing and relationship reinforcement.

Using campaign management tools within the  solution, the process has been streamlined. Shaklee can now flexibly select and combine appropriate recipients from multiple databases. It can accurately manage opt-out and opt-in requests. It can design attractive email messages with variable content and appropriate embedded hyperlinks.

Within a hosting environment, the company can blast out high volumes of email in roughly one-tenth the time it took when it used its own servers. And it can closely monitor the progress and success of each mailing.

"As a result, campaign turnaround times have been reduced by as much as 90 percent and increased the ability to proactively and cost-efficiently communicate with any targeted market segment," reports Harris.  

Shaklee can also send out periodic newsletters tailored for specific market niches-as well as "one-off" special promotions to take advantage of new market opportunities. The company can also quickly set up special "microsites" to support promotions with specially prepared Web content.

In addition, new analytics capabilities provide Shaklee with the granularity it needs to measure campaign effectiveness -- including the tracking of delivery rates, abandonment rates and click-through rates. It also allows them to track and compare those statistics with industry averages.

More to Come
Shaklee is currently widening the use of the on-demand CRM solution to support other business functions. This includes extending the solution into the distribution warehouse for RMA support, expanding into other call centers, including international support, and building a business solution to satisfy new FDA requirements for data capture and reporting. 

"To sum up, the biggest impact on our business is delivering the right information in an efficient manner across multiple customer-facing business functions," says Harris. 

This feat prompted Gartner to recently name Shaklee as a CRM Excellence Award finalist -- an award given to a company that most clearly demonstrates excellence in their  CRM initiatives.