ResearchG00231087

3 February 2012

Case Study: Tackle Customer Service to ExpandMarketing Initiatives Using Social CRMJenny Sussin

Bonobos, an Internet-based men's retail clothier, wanted to jump intosocial media, but needed a way to manage the influx of customerservice inquiries prior to beginning a social marketing initiative. Inplacing customer service and marketing for social CRM hand-in-hand,the company saw a decrease in customer support response timesand an increase in revenue.

Key Findings■ Bonobos did not need to hire additional staff to deal with social customer service and support; all

staff is able to access a shared workload and view customer support history case by case.

■ Customer service agents working from the Desk.com dashboard handle customer service andmarketing inquiries and commentary coming in from Twitter and Facebook, but can forwardrequests for assistance to other employees for additional support.

■ Engaging with customers via their medium of choice grows customer advocacy.

Recommendations■ With the state of the social CRM marketplace being immature, it is best to go with a niche

solution that directly addresses a business need rather than try to integrate a complete CRMsuite to get a foot in the door.

■ Balance experimentation and rapid adoption with integration requirements for delivering broadersupport for multichannel customer service solutions.

■ Execute social CRM strategies for customer service and marketing in tandem with a singleplanning unit and shared work space.

What You Need to KnowBonobos implemented a social CRM solution for its customer service initiative that allowed

employees across the organization to pitch in with customer service and support, establishing a base

for social marketing initiatives that led to a 65% increase in revenue. The retailer chose to invest

1-189F469

specifically in a customer-service-centric solution and engage in marketing initiatives via free dashboarding tools

such as HootSuite.

Case Study

Introduction

Bonobos is a privately held men's retail clothier based in New York City. It sells directly to consumers via its

website, Bonobos.com, and has grown its business selling directly to customers who look to the company for

style-conscious shopping convenience. The business started small, but as detailed within this Case Study, is

rapidly growing and currently has 50 employees.

The Challenge

Bonobos was in a position similar to that of many organizations in feeling the need to get involved in social media

not only because of the hype, but also because of the community development and revenue opportunities. In

developing a social strategy, the Bonobos team recognized that social CRM is a give-and-take relationship, and

knew they needed to provide customers the support they wanted via Twitter and Facebook before running

contests, promotions, asking questions of the day, etc.

The social CRM work Bonobos was undertaking was overly manual and the company was already resource-

strapped. Bonobos needed a way to manage the new influx of customer service support inquiries and marketing

opportunities that were becoming available while working with the staff it already had.

In looking for a customer service and support tool, the Bonobos operations and experience team sought a former

best-in-class solution that turned out to be expensive to update and unable to incorporate social media. The

solution was implemented in a few weeks, but it was unfeasible for Bonobos to upgrade or even make minor

tweaks to the solution because of the cost. Many of the CRM processes were manual, and Bonobos's customer

service and support agents were having issues handling case management with the application. The director of

operations and experience knew it wasn't working, and the jumping-off point for the social strategy would be a

different technology combined with having a coherent customer service dashboard in place that could integrate

with social channels and allow for shared workloads.

Approach

Bonobos needed easy integration, usability, flexibility and adaptability in a customer service and support tool.

The director of operations and experience at Bonobos tried software as a service (SaaS) provider Desk.com

(formerly Assistly) while shopping around for a different customer service platform. He was able to integrate the

offering in one night while watching TV. Recognizing the minimal time to value, Bonobos made its purchasing

decision. The company was able to configure and customize the platform without any technical involvement and,

in the year and a half since the initial integration, it hasn't booked a single hour of development or technical work.

2

With Desk.com, customer service and marketing inquiries could be escalated based on rules so that all inquiries

were handled in a timely manner. The operations and experience team, referred to as "ninjas," could click a

button and add a rule that says, "Any tweets with derogatory words get escalated." The dashboard is intuitive

enough for employees in departments outside customer service and support to take a break three to four hours a

month to assist with service and support. These employees are referred to as "white belt ninjas." All ninjas are

working off the same queue of Twitter, Facebook and email inquiries, but have a personal dashboard so that

when they log in, the inquiry dashboard displays those inquiries that most align with their area of expertise.

At the end of the day, ninjas are the primary gatekeepers, and other departments provide additional support on a

necessary basis. White belt ninjas are still meeting the requirements of their primary roles, so as business picks

up, additional resources will be needed all around. White belt ninjas are rewarded with an invitation to a monthly

happy hour after work and intangible professional credibility among peers.

With primary customer service and support concerns out of mind, Bonobos was free to ramp up its marketing

outreach beginning 1Q11 with tactics like short-term promotions advertised via Twitter, contests and

crowdsourcing new names for new products. The Bonobos team uses the free iteration of HootSuite for

campaign management, allowing for shared corporate account access, scheduled tweeting and posts to

Facebook, and simple URL click analytics (see Table 1).

3

Table 1. Bonobos Customer Service and Support Evolution in Five Tasks

CustomerService Task

Pre-CRM Tools With Initial Tool With Desk.com

Assigning cases Manager printsscreenshots of serviceinbox and highlightssubjects on copies ofscreenshots as a way toassign tasks to differentemployees.

Shared inbox allowed forcases to be marked ascomplete, but did notdenote once employeeswere inside to respond, somultiple responses werebeing sent.

Shared queue, allowingemployees to see opencases. Once a case isopened and is occupied byan employee, otheremployees can see it andmove on.

Setting up afollow-up for acase

Employee creates an eventin his or her individualemployee calendar andenables email alert.

Case reopens at a date setby employee and re-entersqueue. Includes note aboutwhat to do with the case forthe next employee seeing itin queue.

Same as previous. Casereopens at a date set byemployee and re-enters thequeue. Includes note aboutwhat to do with the casefor next employee seeing itin queue.

HandlingTwitter- andFacebook-basedinquiries

Log in to @bonobos and@bonobosninjas Twitteraccounts or Bonobos onFacebook to look formentions. Employees usebest judgment in figuringout which are new andrequire responses, ormanually pair incomingmentions with outgoingposts.

Same as previous; log in to@bonobos and@bonobosninjas Twitteraccounts or Bonobos onFacebook to look formentions. Employees usebest judgment in figuringout which are new andrequire responses, ormanually pair incomingmentions with outgoingposts.

Twitter and Facebookmentions flow into queue,similar to email. Everythingis handled within the sameworkflow.

Addressingcustomer painpoints withmerchandise,site oroperationsteams

Employees email membersof these teams directly, orforward relevant emails. Noautomated way to trackstats on frequentlymentioned pain points.

Same as previous;employees email membersof these teams directly, orforward relevant emails. Noautomated way to trackstats on frequentlymentioned pain points.

Each case has a check boxasking if the case is a painpoint. Employees cancheck the box, selectwhich team it applies toand finish the case.Department teams stillreceive email alerts aboutpain points, and canchoose to view casesindividually or log in toDesk.com to see pain pointstats per department byweek.

Updating theadministrativesystem

There was noadministrative system,other than printing the

System needed vendorassistance to update,

Initial administrative setupwas done by one Bonobosemployee. New agents and

4

CustomerService Task

Pre-CRM Tools With Initial Tool With Desk.com

screen shots and passingthem out to employees(see the first task:assigning cases).

requiring consultation anddevelopment time.

new rules can be createdimmediately.

Source: Gartner (February 2012)

Results

Customer Service, Marketing and Sales Success

Bonobos is handling inquiries and cases that not only are customer-service-specific, but also expand to

marketing and operations.

Bonobos went from having 10% of its staff involved in customer service and support to having almost 50% of its

staff certified as white belt ninjas.

Visibility into a shared queue allowed a level of automation that resulted in:

■ Going from 50% of inquiries handled in under an hour to 75% handled in under an hour, just by changingplatforms.

■ Going from 75% of inquiries handled in under an hour to 90%-plus based on tweaks done followingDesk.com-administered survey results.

New customers were acquired via social media, and current customers who had never given feedback to the

company were beginning to reach out through their channel of choice:

■ In two months, Bonobos doubled fans and followers on Twitter and Facebook.

■ Interactions via Twitter increased from 5% to 14% in six months.

■ Interactions via Facebook increased from 5% to 11% in six months.

■ Web traffic from social channels increased 215% from 1Q11 to 2Q11.

■ Revenue increased by 65% after the Desk.com adoption.

This is a case where the increase in active fans, followers and engagements via social media directly correlated

to an increase in Web traffic. Since the Bonobos website is the sales vehicle, its opportunities subsequently

increased.

Persistent Issues

Bonobos now faces these issues:

5

■ The order management system is not merged with the customer service and support record. Due to limitedtechnical bandwidth, Bonobos elected to work around the issue using an administrative rule withinDesk.com, which enables employees to pull a link from a customer's sales cart into the Desk.com window.The process is manual, but Bonobos is looking to upgrade its cart before integration so as not to duplicatework.

■ Transferring customer information from the initial CRM tool to Desk.com. Bonobos decided to archive thedata so that it could be accessible, but started fresh with Desk.com mainly due to limited technicalbandwidth.

Critical Success Factors

■ Bonobos, a rapidly growing organization, has an adaptive culture by nature. It is an organization willing to trynew things.

■ Bonobos recognized that, in social CRM, the ability to provide customer service is a necessary foundationbefore marketing initiatives can be successful.

■ Desk.com's ease and practicality of use has allowed for the expansion of customer service assignments toBonobos employees outside the customer service and support team.

Lessons Learned

■ Know your company's pain points before searching for vendors. Just because an offering has won a seriesof accolades doesn't mean it is the right solution for your organization.

■ The changes in social media are rapid, and you need to be prepared to change with them. Be sure to ask avendor what future costs are associated with tweaking a solution so that you don't go bankrupt stayingmodern.

■ Customer service comes first. Don't try to market to a constituency if you're unable to handle their inquiriesin return. With a trusted customer relationship comes the ability to grow the customer base and market toincrease sales.

■ Customer service and marketing go hand-in-hand when it comes to social CRM.

© 2012 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates. This publicationmay not be reproduced or distributed in any form without Gartner’s prior written permission. The information contained in this publication hasbeen obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of suchinformation and shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in such information. This publication consists of the opinions ofGartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. The opinions expressed herein are subject to changewithout notice. Although Gartner research may include a discussion of related legal issues, Gartner does not provide legal advice or servicesand its research should not be construed or used as such. Gartner is a public company, and its shareholders may include firms and fundsthat have financial interests in entities covered in Gartner research. Gartner’s Board of Directors may include senior managers of these firmsor funds. Gartner research is produced independently by its research organization without input or influence from these firms, funds or theirmanagers. For further information on the independence and integrity of Gartner research, see “Guiding Principles on Independence andObjectivity” on its website, http://www.gartner.com/technology/about/ombudsman/omb_guide2.jsp.

6