Express Glass differentiates itself with a commitment to service and safety

Founded in 1984 offering emergency glazing in Sydney, Express Glass now provides a range of glazing services to customers across Australia. These customers include insurers, strata managers, and national corporations who’ve come to rely on Express Glass for quality and timely service.

The strength of Express Glass’s service depends not only on its network of highly experienced glaziers, but also its robust systems and processes. Adrian Grocott, Managing Director of Express Glass, shared that the family-owned business had developed a service offering well suited to those with multiple sites and complex requirements.

This offering includes efficient field service and high safety standards supported by Salesforce.

“There are a lot of ticking clocks and requirements on how we manage the life cycle of a job, especially in areas like facilities management,” said Grocott. “We’ve become really good at these things and a lot of this is down to our systems and reporting.”

While Express Glass’ systems and processes are now a key differentiator, six years ago they were creating friction. The business had an on-premise ERP which it used for everything from scheduling to financial management. However, it was overly customised, costly to maintain, and unable to support the business’ continued growth.

Express Glass needed a new solution to manage workflow and, at the same time, it wanted to streamline field service. In the past, case details were handed to glaziers on a piece of paper or relayed by phone or text. There was also limited visibility into the field which made it difficult to report back to customers.

Reece van Vliet, General Manager of Express Glass, shared that the opportunity to solve both challenges with one solution solidified the choice to adopt Salesforce.

“We felt the path Salesforce was on in relation to their capabilities and investments in field service were miles ahead of everyone else,” said van Vliet.

Express Glass implemented Salesforce with support from ProQuest Consulting and the business has since transformed its ways of working. Service Cloud and Field Service have streamlined case management and reporting and helped the business become more data-driven.

For example, Field Service takes the emotion out of scheduling and assigns cases based on an individual’s skills and location while balancing the distribution of overtime. This has helped to reduce weekday overtime by around one third and contributed to a 50% reduction in contractor management costs.

Field Service, including the Field Service mobile app, also provides a line of sight into what’s happening in the field. This includes basic information like arrival and completion time for each case as well as broader performance insights, like first-time fix rate and the cost to serve each customer.

Express Glass has leveraged this information to identify and solve common issues and improve first-time fix rate by 28%. For example, the business identified that some return visits were due to glaziers not having the right size glass sheets. A simple change in the sizes stocked in each truck was all it took to resolve this issue and therefore improve the customer experience.

With all case information centralised in one place, Express Glass is able to measure and report on service Level Agreements (SLAS) using real-time dashboards rather than spending hours to compile data in spreadsheets each month. This has been especially valuable in reporting to customers who require granular and regular updates on case milestones.

Express Glass has its own branches in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane and services the rest of the country through a network of contractors, including professional glaziers. To provide all customers with a consistent service, Express Glass has created a community on Experience Cloud where it can collaborate with contractors on cases.

The community surfaces data from Service Cloud so contractors can benefit from a single view of the customer. They can also update case status in real-time, live chat with agents to solve problems, access tools like safety templates, and monitor performance against SLAs.

The community has led to substantial efficiency gains as Express Glass no longer needs to chase contractors for things like case updates, photos, or invoices. The self-service environment has also helped to transform the relationship between the business and key partners.

Express Glass uses Slack to collaborate internally and it has become integral to the way that teams work and communicate—halving the business’ email traffic. Leveraging Slack integration with Microsoft Outlook, the business is also able to automatically alert glaziers to job requests that are emailed after office hours. The alert includes job details and related safety requirements, helping glaziers prepare and respond within a tight SLA which, for urgent jobs, is usually a one hour response time anywhere in Australia. In fact, thanks to the Slack notifications, glaziers are often already on the road when they receive a call from the service team.

Express Glass is deeply committed to the safety of its employees and contractors which is why it’s using  Salesforce to ensure it’s not just meeting its safety obligations, but exceeding them. Express Glass has created an innovative safety management application that is used to manage everything from job safety analysis to tracking of incidents and the return to work for injured employees.

The safety management application is also embedded into the Field Service mobile app, strengthening the focus and management of safety in the field. For example, onsite risk assessments can now be completed in minutes, with glaziers using the app to answer five simple questions to classify risk. High risk jobs trigger an automatic alert to the safety team, prompting them to contact glaziers immediately and ensure the right safety controls are in place.

Through all of these capabilities, the safety management application has helped to drive a four-fold improvement in safety compliance.

“Looking across the spectrum of what we’ve done with Salesforce, the safety management application is what’s made the biggest impact. It’s there in the hands of our workers when they need it, making them feel supported and helping them stay safe,” said Grocott.

“It’s really shifted the culture, from ‘more paperwork, it’s too hard do we even need it?” to ‘let’s get the job done safely’,” added van Vliet. “At the same time, we’re collecting a lot of data to inform improvements and manage compliance.”

A Learning Management System (LMS) built on top of Experience Cloud reinforces Express Glass’ work safe culture. Built with support from Appinium, the LMS has replaced a system with predominantly text-based training materials with a library full of engaging and interactive learning—including customer-specific induction and safety training.

The LMS has made it easier to track course completion, ensuring employees and contractors have fulfilled all requirements related to their role and the customers they work with. This is critical for safety and compliance and is part of the value proposition Express Glass brings to the industry.

The LMS has also proved to be a key asset during COVID-19 and helped the business navigate extremely challenging circumstances by facilitating the rapid, efficient, and consistent rollout of changing instructions from government departments and customers across different jurisdictions.

In its first two years of using Salesforce, Express Glass’ business grew by 20% and it has been extending its use of the platform ever since. It has two internal Salesforce admins who help drive innovation and solve new challenges as they arise. In a recent example, the team developed an automated workflow within hours to ensure jobs were booked in accordance with COVID-19 restrictions.

“One of the benefits of Salesforce is that instead of trying to mold our processes to the platform, we can mold the platform to our processes. It gives us the flexibility to do things quite quickly,” said van Vliet.

The business is now in the process of implementing Tableau which will help it surface new insights from all of the data its gathered in Salesforce. One immediate priority is to compare the number of projected jobs for each customer with the actual number completed. The gap represents leaked revenue and, in the future, will be addressed by using Pardot to nurture customer relationships. For example, targeted campaigns to building managers will help to ensure Express Glass is top of mind in the event of any glass breakage.

Express Glass is also continuing to optimise its systems and processes in response to customer needs. As the business has matured, so have its customers and it’s won new customers in more challenging markets. One of these is a national fuel company with complex requirements for service, safety, and compliance.

Grocott said the ability to support these types of customers was a testament to the capabilities it’s established using Salesforce.

“Our customer needs have changed a lot and we’d have no chance of meeting them if we’d not made the switch to Salesforce,” said Grocott.