Tip Top has been a staple in Australian homes for generations. Driven by its purpose, “Everyday Moments of Goodness”, the company produces a range of baked goods which are distributed through supermarkets nationwide and a growing foodservice business providing daily fresh and frozen bakery items to cafes, restaurants, schools, and aged care facilities.

Like many other iconic businesses, Tip Top has moved with the times to stay relevant and meet the changing needs of its customers. This has included adopting new ways of working to improve the quality and efficiency of customer interactions.

“It’s about creating a three-way win - wins for our customers, wins for consumers, and wins for our business,” said Andrew Rogers, Head of Digital Transformation at Tip Top.

Salesforce is a partner in the company’s evolution which has included digitising sales and service.

Tip Top first partnered with Salesforce in 2016 to increase the efficiency of Field Sales. At the time, Field Sales typically met with bakery or store managers in a back office and spent most of the time filling in an order form. There was little opportunity to discuss new products or promotions. Also, orders were not processed until after store hours, when Field Sales went home and entered the data online.

A custom app, built on Salesforce Platform, helped turn things around. Known as Daily Dough, the app let Field Sales pre-populate customer orders and quickly complete them in-store. It also allowed Field Sales to surface information on sales performance and provide customers with data-driven tips on how to improve.

The app helped move conversations out of the back office and into the bread aisle, making it easier to discuss new products and promotions. It also boosted efficiency by 20%, shaving minutes off each store visit.

Tip Top has since moved the Daily Dough app off Salesforce Platform and onto the Consumer Goods Cloud, taking advantage of its native functionality. The company has also deployed Sales Cloud for lead management for Foodservice, helping the sales team better track and convert new opportunities. Having all customer leads in one location is a major benefit.

Tip Top has since rolled out Service Cloud to modernise customer engagement. The company’s legacy case management database was written 25-years ago, lacked basic functionality, and was no longer fit for purpose. This provided an opportunity to reimagine the service experience for consumers, customers, and employees.

In the past, Tip Top’s Customer and Consumer Service and Quality teams relied heavily on spreadsheets and paper-based processes to manage enquiries and complaints. This wasted time internally and meant customers and consumers sometimes waited up to two weeks for a response.

“Doing nothing was not an option. We needed to modernise our Customer and Consumer Service to address legacy technology issues, create efficiency and make it easy to do business,” said Jo Sheppard, National Customer Service Manager, Tip Top.

Tip Top has made progress towards their goals by replacing its telephony and case management systems with Service Cloud – deploying in just 12 weeks with help from Salesforce partner Media.Monks. This has equipped the team to manage cases from anywhere, at any time, from any device to improve the quality and efficiency of customer engagement.

With Service Cloud Voice and Amazon Connect, the Customer and Consumer Service team has visibility of who’s on the line before answering, providing more proactive and personalised service. Telephone conversations are also digitally transcribed direct to a specific case.

The team can now instantly create new cases and the information is immediately available for Tip Top Salesforce users to view and edit on their mobile device. Workflows and escalations are automated, and communication is streamlined to increase visibility of tasks and improve the speed of case resolution.

Cases that once took two weeks to resolve can now be resolved within hours or days. There’s also end-to-end visibility of case status, so if a customer or consumer calls to follow up they can receive an update right away. On top of these benefits, there’s been a positive shift in culture and an uplift in organisational capability.

“What we’ve done is empower our team to have quality conversations with our customers rather than wasting time filling in forms or entering data into spreadsheets,” said Sheppard. “And the team has developed new skills and shares ideas on how we can continue to improve.”

Reporting and insights provided by Salesforce and Tableau help Tip Top identify where to focus effort. For example, the right information is now provided to the right person, in real-time to allow management to better track KPIs.

Tip Top is now building on these results and making it easier for customers to self-serve and manage their orders online.

Tip Top has introduced online ordering via portals built on Experience Cloud. This offers a more convenient alternative to phoning or emailing in orders and has reduced inbound calls by 25%.

Tip Top is now elevating the customer experience even more by increasing the speed of onboarding and allowing customers to pay online rather than setting up a credit account. This will reduce customer onboarding time from 15 days down to hours and enable orders to be placed for next-day delivery.

Rogers shared that Tip Top has purposely taken an incremental approach to its digital transformation, prioritising projects and technologies that provide the best return on investment.

“In a consumer-facing low-margin business, we need to be very considered and strategically invest every dollar,” said Rogers. “When it came to modernising our Customer and Consumer Service, we had no option but to replace our legacy systems so we chose a solution that would provide maximum business value for the long term.”

Tip Top will continue to extract value by streamlining more processes and automating as much as it can. “Salesforce provides the platform for us to automate where possible, enabling us to target our efforts towards value-add services and lowering cost to serve,” said Sheppard.