SONOS Found Overnight Success by Rethinking Their Business Model | Success Anywhere | Salesforce

So I love the examples Neeracha shared because it shows how companies of all industries and all sizes can use Salesforce to be successful. And we're about to highlight two more customer stories where service is a very critical component. Let's talk about Sonos. They make beautiful wireless speakers that allow you to stream anything from anywhere. But like many, they had to rethink their business model from box retailer selling to direct to consumer sales. And they had to scale their support accordingly. Let's learn more in this film.

This is my favorite soundtrack ever.

I've really found that music creates a soundtrack to your life. You know, as I think about memories in my past, I always think about the music that accompanied those. I just felt being able to do something in music and take my passion and expertise in hardware, software, technology was an amazing opportunity. And so that's why I'm at Sonos. At Sonos, we're all about the experience and the experience. Sometimes people will look at simplistically as what does the app look like? Or what does your product do? But really it's the encapsulation of the way that any customer interfaces with your company. And one important part of that is service. One of the things I've always said is that our customer service team is a secret weapon. In March of last year, 90% of our business shut overnight. All of the physical brick and mortar retailers were closed. And so we were faced with a real challenge. How do we keep the business going? And thankfully we had done a lot of work with Salesforce in advance and we were able to pivot our business to direct to consumer. We grew our DTC revenue 84% year over year. It was absolutely incredible. It went from 12% of our business to 21% of our business almost overnight. Many years of growth in one year. And we were able to support that thanks to all of the work with Salesforce. Service cloud really enabled us to provide service from anywhere in the midst of the pandemic. And that helps us as we think about how we provide service in the future. If you would ask me a year ago if we could have transitioned to having all of our customer service people at home and addressing all of our customers needs, I would have thought you were crazy, but we were able to do it thanks to Salesforce. I think it helps to be able to make sure that people are on the same page. That's probably what we strive for every single day. And Certainly the Salesforce 360 helps us in terms of being on the same page and being aligned on what's happening with our customers. The thing that I've learned through this period, we never are quite sure what people are capable of and I've just learned that people are capable of so much. And I'm so proud of the way that our team rose to the occasion to serve our customers and drive our business. It is absolutely incredible and I'm just so grateful for everybody's work.

So as you saw last year, sonos saw an 84% year over year increase in revenue for direct e commerce sales. So they needed to scale support quickly while maintaining quality. And that's where the Sonos360 came in. They were able to use Commerce cloud to power intelligent e commerce at scale. And with increased revenues and increased customers came the need for fast and easy service. So Service cloud allowed them to personalize their service experiences. And with new innovations like service cloud voice and workforce engagement, they were able to accurately forecast demand and use telephony to save hours for their agents. You heard Neeracha talk about the power of partnerships and they were able to extend their success by using partners like Neuraflash for Best in class telephony integrations. Here to tell us more about this is Product Marketing Director Alison Johnson. Bryan. Alison, take it away.

Thanks Ebony. Today I'm going to show you how Sonos is succeeding from anywhere with Service Cloud. And here to help with this visionary demo is Katrina. Katrina is getting ready to host a patio party with her vaccinated podcast. She just got home with a bunch of supplies, including a new Sonos Roam portable speaker and she can't wait to use it. Sonos is expecting this speaker to be super popular. Let's see how they are preparing to engage with their customers by empowering their employees with Service Cloud. They use Service Cloud to empower their planners and agents from anywhere. Anna, a planner, uses workforce engagement to forecast demand for customer service, making sure the contact center is properly staffed. This dynamic graph shows work volume spikes to date and what she can expect in the weeks ahead. She's ready for anything. Anna can see demand across all customer channels and she can filter by any Salesforce object helping Sonos hit on all channels. Say goodbye to stressing out over your forecasting spreadsheets and say hello to accuracy in just a few clicks. Now let's take a look at the Omni Channel Capacity Plan. Long name easy concept. This graph makes it simple for Anna. It shows her how many agents are needed, when they are needed, and what skills they should have. Uh oh. It looks like Sonos has a skill Gap. They need more product experts for the roam. But the contact center is heavily staffed with agents handling billing and payments. Let's hit adjust and find a solution. Aha. In the plan comparison, Anna sees a better suggestion. She chooses to cross skill agents to help with demand. Now service supervisors can skill up agents and assign personalized training. With my trailhead, let's see what this looks like for one of the cross skilled agents. Meet Toby. Toby is assigned a new learning module and he's pumped to learn new skills and be able to grow in his career. What's even better is that Toby doesn't need to sit through an all day training. He has a single place to learn and manage cases. And now with service cloud voice, you can use the telephony partner of choice. Now a customer call is coming in. Remember Katrina? Her friends are coming over and she needs a quick assist getting her tunes moved outside. As Toby accepts the call, he has all the context he needs to help Katrina. He can see relevant information that's been pulled in from third party systems. Like all of Katrina's details, her purchase history and the steps she's already taken to troubleshoot on her own. What you're about to see is some of the latest innovations across service AI. Suggestions will be sent to Toby based on the call transcript with Katrina. Let's listen in and see the magic.

Hi, this is Tobi. I see that you need help setting up your roam speaker. Can you share your surroundings with me through video chat?

Sure. So I need help passing the music from my surround sound speakers to my new roam.

Could you show me where your Sonos speakers are playing inside the house?

Yeah. Okay. They're playing right here.

Great.

Let's set up your new speaker. Since you're at home, you can use the sound swap feature to shift the music from your sound system to the roam. Hold down the play button at the top of the speaker.

Yeah, I can hear it. Rock and roll. It worked.

Why don't you go outside right now and give it a test?

Woah.

Can you hear all this? It's so loud up here.

Well, we can optimize the sound outdoors using trueplay to tune your speakers automatically. Would you like help setting that up?

You know I would love help setting that up right now, but I gotta run. I got guests coming real soon. Can you send me an article?

Of course, I can send it through SMS right now.

Great. That was so simple. Alexa Play Sonos Radio.

Katrina had an incredible customer experience. This was just a glimpse into how companies like Sonos have reimagined customer service and are finding success from anywhere with service cloud. Hey, everyone. Wave goodbye. Ebony, is that the Sonos Roam speaker with you in the SOFI stadium?

Thank you, Alison. And yes, it is the new Roam speaker, and it's just what I needed to keep my music and my audio books with me at all times. But the roam is not all we have here from Sonos today. We also have Sonos CEO Patrick Spence live via Zoom to tell us more. Patrick, welcome.

Thanks, Ebony. Great to be here.

It's great to have you here. Tell us, how did technology drive transformation and help you scale your service operations?

Well, you know, it was quite a shock that almost overnight we lost 90% of our distribution last year. And that was a harrowing moment. But thankfully, we'd been working with Salesforce for a while, so we employed marketing Cloud to launch a program called At Home with Sonos and reach our customers. We use commerce cloud to quickly pivot our business to direct to consumer. And we even had 300% growth in that first quarter in direct to consumer and commerce cloud, powered that and stayed up and was reliable. And then we use service cloud to really continue to deliver that high level of customer service from all our agents going home. And then we used, with the spike in service calls, we actually use chatbots and we employed chatbots for the first time to help address that spike. And we also used the next best action. So using some of that Einstein AI to help our agents be able to address all of the calls that were coming in. And we reduced service call times by about 10%. So it was a key part, probably just next to how awesome our people did during this time. Salesforce played a huge role in helping us really pivot our business overnight.

That's great. Tell us how your priorities have shifted as a leader and also tell us what's top of mind.

Yeah. So, you know, we threw out the entire playbook when this all hit and it really became down to supporting our people, bringing joy to more people through the products that we have. We could play a small role in bringing joy to people at home and then getting ready for the future. And you see that today in what you see with Roam, because we had actually shifted our product roadmap and said, what's going to be the right products? You know, we always have a bunch of products underway, which products are going to be the right ones to bring out as we exit the pandemic and Rome is the perfect product. You know, as I think about that joy, we really used, as I mentioned, you know, Commerce cloud and marketing cloud to reach our customers and bring joy to more people that we're so proud of. But the number one, and I think this is very fitting, you know, given your culture as well, was supporting our people and making sure that they could do their work from home. And we supported them as much as possible with care days and care time, which is time they could take care of their family, their friends and do things that they needed to do in the community as well. And so it's been a challenging time, but it's also been a very inspiring time. And I'm just super grateful for the way that our team and partners like Salesforce have stepped up.

Patrick, thank you so much for bringing the joy. I love that you brought that in. Congratulations to you and your team for all your success. We love the roam and thank you so much for being here.

Thanks, Ebony.