Titan gets phygital with Salesforce

Play Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 for just about any Indian, and chances are they’ll instantly recognise it as Titan’s signature tune. That’s how well-known Titan is. 

Since revolutionising the watch industry 30+ years ago, Titan has evolved into a true colossus with market-leading brands in multiple lifestyle categories—including jewellery (Tanishq), eyewear (Titan EyePlus), and clothing (Taneira). 

What differentiates the company, apart from its legendary spirit of innovation, is its memorable customer service. The moment a customer walks into a Titan store, relationship officers are at hand to anticipate their needs, and personalise their shopping experience.

It’s no small feat to tailor the experiences of 20 million+ customers across 1,900+ stores, and 18 brands. But Salesforce is making it possible. And during the COVID-19 lockdown, when customers couldn’t visit the stores, Salesforce helped Titan take its stores to the customer. 

“Through Salesforce, we could replicate the entire offline shopping experience online,” says Sanjay Bhattacharjee, Titan’s Head of Customer Relationship Management, who led the company’s digital transformation. “Today, wherever the customer is—be it in our stores, or on our websites—we’re able to instantly recognise them, personalise our interactions, and deliver unforgettable experiences.” 

Before Salesforce, data on Titan’s customer data was scattered across various systems in different formats and spreadsheets. Relationship officers would manually capture customer information in their diaries—so, when they left the company, the data would leave with them. 

This made it difficult for stores to know the customer, and engage with them effectively.  

Sometimes, customers would receive multiple calls from the company in a single month because teams weren’t sharing information. This was neither a pleasant experience for the customer, nor an efficient use of the company’s time.

Additionally, management didn’t have enough visibility into customer experience metrics such as the number of calls to a customer, the details of those conversations, and customer satisfaction scores. 

“To delight customers, we needed a single source of customer truth across all our customers, brands, and stores,” says Bhattacharjee. 

“Salesforce gives us the ability to develop our own solutions, integrate with third-party systems, run analytics on the fly, and of course, build a 360-degree customer view to engage better with customers. It’s a complete package.”

Through Salesforce, the company now has a single view of the customer across brands. When a new customer enters a Titan store, relationship officers capture KYC data on their devices. This information is stored on Salesforce and accessed by almost 6,500 front-line employees through a partner portal built on Salesforce Experience Cloud.

By integrating its cloud telephony system with Salesforce, Titan ensures that every customer call is recorded, monitored, and measured for effectiveness.

So, the next time the customer walks into any Titan store, their details can be pulled up in an instant. Relationship officers can quickly check the customer’s past purchases, loyalty program tier, reward points, and more. These insights make customer conversations much more personalised and relevant. And happy customers translate into higher sales.  

“We’ve seen conversions increase by 3%-4% when our relationship officers have a complete view of customers,” says Bhattacharjee. “The top 110 Tanishq stores that actively use Salesforce have reported 12% more repeat customers than those that don’t.”

The platform also captures the contact details of non-buyers. By systematically engaging and nurturing these prospects, Titan EyePlus stores have reported a 7%-10% win-back rate. 

In addition, sales reps use Salesforce for Key Account Management. They can easily track and audit calls to the customer, thus minimising repeat calls.

Titan now offers customers a smoothly orchestrated experience across physical and digital touchpoints. 

Let’s say a customer from Ahmedabad is browsing the Titan website. A live chat agent instantly identifies her, understands that she wants to try on a watch, and zeroes in on a store close to her that stocks the product. The lead is transferred to the store manager who then uses Salesforce cloud telephony integration to call and invite the customer to the store. He even offers to organise a product trial at her house. 

“The whole customer journey from online to offline is frictionless, thanks to Salesforce,” says Bhattacharjee.

Meanwhile, cross-selling and up-selling have improved because brands can easily share information. If a bride-to-be buys an engagement ring from Tanishq, she can instantly be tagged in Salesforce as a hot lead for Taneira to market their wedding saris. 

“Einstein Next Best Action automatically recommends products to upsell to the customer based on their purchasing history,” says Bhattacharjee.

This customer-centric approach doesn’t stop at sales—it continues into service. Titan can consolidate customer queries from across touchpoints on Salesforce Service Cloud. At the click of a button, service agents can view the customer’s entire profile and history to resolve their queries faster and more meaningfully. 

“Customers are reporting higher levels of satisfaction across the business,” says Bhattacharjee. “In fact, our net promoter score increased 10 points over the past year.”

Titan’s transformation journey is enhancing the employee experience too.  

“Salesforce has made our employees’ lives simpler,” says Bhattacharjee. “They don’t have to waste time searching for customer information. Everything is available in one place, including their tasks for the day.”  

The MuleSoft integration layer stitches together data from over 17 third-party systems to provide a unified and real-time customer view. 

Rich dashboards built on Tableau offer instant visibility into the number of leads, conversions, open tasks, and opportunities at each store. The management team uses these reports to track and optimise sales performance across stores. 

“Salesforce is like our Bible,” says Bhattacharjee. “Any data needed by any of our teams—be it sales, marketing, merchandising, or ecommerce—can be found on the platform.”

Salesforce has already been rolled out in 350 Tanishq stores, as well as all Taneira, Titan EyePlus, and Titan watch stores. Now, driven by Bhattacharjee and his team, the solution is being implemented in Titan Dubai. 

“Our implementation partner, Deloitte, has done a fabulous job,” says Bhattacharjee. “They know the Titan ecosystem inside out, and their insights are invaluable. 

“The Salesforce Customer Success team has also been great in helping us solve adoption challenges and develop exciting new use cases.”

Titan is now focused on deepening the customer connect. “We want every Indian to have a touch of Titan in their homes,” says Bhattacharjee. “Whenever, we interact with customers or partners, we want them to leave with a smile. We also want to make all customer experiences truly hyper-personalised. Salesforce is helping us turn these goals into reality.”