Praxis pioneers a seamless retail experience across channels with Salesforce

Praxis Home Retail Limited helps customers make their homes beautiful. Founded in 2007, the company runs a chain of retail stores, popularly known as HomeTown, that serves as a one-stop destination for home furniture and decor.

Praxis’ vision is simple – meet customers where they want to be met. This means personalising customer engagement and bridging the gap between physical and online channels.

However, translating this customer-centric vision into action was a challenge with their existing CRM system.

Praxis’ existing CRM system offered limited functionality, integrating only with its IVR customer support system. The data from the company’s other systems, such as logistics management and ERP, remained in silos.

“While our CRM system was focused on customer service, it didn’t talk to our other systems,” says Sujoy Mitra, Business Head – IT.  “For example, the solution captured leads, but it didn’t capture customer conversations and interactions. This led to a lack of visibility into the prospect journey.”

The company needed one platform capable of consolidating data and integrating processes.

“We wanted a solution that would provide both sales and service teams with a unified view of customer data so we could uniquely identify a customer across interactions,” explains Viraj Didwania, Chairman and Managing Director, Praxis. “We also wanted more disciplined follow-up processes for the sales team, with data to help track conversions.”

The end objective: to offer a seamless customer experience across channels.

“Salesforce checked all the boxes,” says Didwania. The deployment of Salesforce helped Praxis address customer needs at every stage of their journey.

Every customer interaction is captured in Salesforce – whether this happens in the store or on social media. So, when any customer walks into any one of their stores, the Praxis sales team has a record of all their previous interactions with the company, online and offline; enabling sales reps to personalise conversations and deliver smarter service.

Once a lead is converted successfully, all data related to the customer’s order and its shipping status flows into Service Cloud. “This provides the service team with full visibility into every order, helping them respond to customer queries, faster,” explains Mitra.

Praxis also uses Salesforce for omnichannel management of customer cases. A single screen that gives agents a consolidated view of queries across channels, without having to toggle between windows, boosts agent efficiency. This unified view has led to faster case resolutions, reducing average customer call time by 40%.

“We also use Knowledge Base, which, along with the 360-degree view of customers, helps our service agents speedily deliver the right answers to customers,” adds Mitra.

Further, to create an effortless customer experience, Praxis integrates logistics data with Salesforce to offer customers a self-service feature. Customers are now able to track the journey of their products themselves on hometown.in, and have full visibility into order and delivery status at any point of time.

“This self-service feature has led to a 30% reduction in call traffic, freeing up service agents’ valuable time to focus on resolving cases that require manual intervention,” says Mitra.

Delivering a delightful experience through the entire customer journey has led to an eight to 10 percent increase in Net Promoter Score.

Praxis has also deployed Salesforce Marketing Cloud to nurture customers, pre- and post-purchase. With a holistic view of the customer journey, the marketing team can personalise customer engagement at scale.

This use of granular customer data to develop a deep understanding of customer needs ensures that Praxis customers have a delightful and smooth experience from start to finish.

Speaking about the customer-centricity that the Praxis team brings to every process, Didwania credits the management’s commitment to drive change. “Far from something esoteric, we wanted a solution that would tie into every aspect of the business in a real way – including sales commissions, conversions, service call minutes, etc., so that internal stakeholders can use the tool effectively”.

To strategically implement Salesforce and drive adoption, the team changed their operational KPIs and aligned their processes to match the platform’s strengths.

“Initially, the percentage of sales orders through Salesforce was around 50%. But within a short period of time, the adoption rate went up to 95% as the sales team realised the solution’s benefits,” says Mitra.

“Now, several regional teams are asking us to include more modules after having worked with the solution.”

The management team is also leveraging the power of Salesforce data to make more informed decisions.

“The transparency of data helps us track performance with greater accuracy. We know exactly where each lead is in the sales pipeline and how many conversions we’ve achieved,” says Mitra.

“We track data at a granular level – down to the number of customers who have expressed interest in a particular piece of furniture. This is helping us take subjectivity out of the picture and make only data-driven decisions,” adds Didwania.

The Salesforce solution was implemented by Salesforce partner Compro, of whom Mitra has only good things to say. “Their business consulting perspective coupled with their tech expertise helped us build a solution perfect for our needs.”

In line with its vision of delivering customer delight, Praxis continues to focus on making omnichannel interaction smoother.

“Salesforce has helped us make significant headway in that journey,” says Didwania. “Before Salesforce, data from our physical and online channels did not speak to each other the way they do now. We only want to dive deeper to ensure even smoother conversations.”

Praxis wants to next experiment with Salesforce Einstein to explore analytical capabilities that will enable the company to serve its customers better.

As for the future, Didwania wants to evolve the business to meet the needs of the changing times. Translating the value proposition of its brick and mortar stores to its online stores will help Praxis adapt to the ‘new normal’ of lesser walk-ins and lesser impulse purchases.

“We are all set to tackle the new consumer psychology, to adapt, and continue providing the best experience to our customers,” concludes Didwania.