Everyone loves a good success story. When a company uses technology to effectively solve its business challenges that’s one thing for celebration. The successful coordination of field service teams rapidly and efficiently in hospitals across the United States to install hand sanitizing stations—during a pandemic.
Now that’s a next-level success story.
At EMPOWER’21, we had the chance to catch up with Lisa Zido, Technical Systems Analyst, and Lenny Cumberledge, Field Services Director from GOJO Industries/Purell. They shared their experience in how they take advantage of ProntoForms (now TrueContext) and Salesforce to support their field engineers and drive business efforts.
Purell’s history with ProntoForms (now TrueContext) & Salesforce
Over eight years ago, Purell created its field services department, which was essentially a team of one. Back then, Lenny Cumberledge used to go out to large hospitals and manually count how many soap dispensers they needed. We’re talking literally opening every single door in a hospital to check. Lenny describes the process as, “We would use a piece of paper, and I would put a little tick mark on that paper. I would take some pictures with my phone, but it was very difficult to put them back together.” He’d spend days at the hospital, adding tick marks, and then stay at the hotel for several days afterward, typing up information into an Excel spreadsheet. After this time-consuming data entry process, the information would then be emailed to others and stored in SharePoint.
It was clear that the paper method wasn’t scalable. It was frustrating and inefficient. Lenny felt there had to be a better way.
Enter ProntoForms’ (now TrueContext’s)’ best-in-field mobile forms app solution. Purell now has 50 direct deploys and about 200 contractors using ProntoForms (now TrueContext)to scale up to the level of efficiency the company is at today.
How Purell uses ProntoForms (now TrueContext) & Salesforce
Lisa Zido attests to Salesforce’s excellent CRM capabilities, stating, “…all of our customer contacts, opportunities, contracts, basically everything that [Purell] needs to remember about our customer’s lives in Salesforce.” Lenny illustrated how the two platforms work together, noting, “…if it happens at a desk, we use Salesforce. If it doesn’t happen at a desk, we use ProntoForms (now TrueContext).”
Purell’s main driving force was to find a way to get valuable information back into Salesforce. Being able to capture information with ProntoForms and then store and retrieve this data in Salesforce has dramatically helped the company become more efficient. According to Lisa, “It was awesome to have the first step of having a way to have forms and to not be writing it on paper but be able to connect the two was a huge timesaver for us.”
Use case #1: Site assessment form
When a field engineer is sent to a hospital or facility, they’re able to capture information in ProntoForms (now TrueContext) unit by unit. There can be as many as two or three hundred units to account for to give you a sense of the magnitude we’re talking about here. As soon as a technician opens the door to a room, they can create a row in ProntoForms (now TrueContext) with information such as what’s being added or changed and add pictures of that unit.
Lenny believes the site assessment form sets Purell up for success and says, “… one of our main goals is flawless execution, and it’s really enabled us to make sure that all the information that we get from a project planning standpoint while we’re on-site when it actually comes time to put the holes in the wall, it’ll make sure that everybody’s aligned from the customer to our project managers, to the installers and the sales team.”
The field service representative can go into their Salesforce Service Lightning app and dispatch the site survey to be filled out once they arrive on site. After filling out all their account’s logistics information, they can either submit the work as done or transfer it using ProntoForms’ (now TrueContext’s)’ Teamwork feature. Once submitted, the information returns to the original work order and populates the fields. The team can see exactly what and how much was installed, and a PDF is posted on the work order, as well as a chatter post is created.
Use case #2: Installation completion form
Prior to Purell developing their installation completion form, the installation company (either in-house or third-party) would fill out the number of dispensers they installed and then try to find the champion at the hospital to provide a signature confirming the work was done. The technician then either used a fax machine to relay this information or if one wasn’t available, they’d put the document in an envelope and mail it back to their main office. That person would then fax a copy over to Purell. Purell would get the completed form 3-5 days later if it didn’t end up lost along the way.
Fast forward to today. Lisa demystifies the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting the form does, saying, “We have a field on our work order that when you put in the company name that’s going to be installing it, that’s what dispatches them their form straight to their ProntoForms (now TrueContext) inbox so they can enter their information on what was installed, any areas missed or areas that were inaccessible while they were there, reasonings for that, any accessories that were installed, and then champion’s approval and signature at the end of the job.”
Once the form is submitted, the information on what exactly was installed goes back into the work order, and their account is populated. A Chatter post summarizing the visit is made, and the PDF is sent to the champion and also posted on the work order.
When thinking back to the old days of paper, Lenny says, “It was very archaic compared to where we’re at today where basically all of our third parties have ProntoForms (now TrueContext). They get dispatched a ProntoForms (now TrueContext) just like anyone else would get a ProntoForms (now TrueContext) sent to them. They actually will capture that information from the time they get there… in addition to giving the champion how many dispensers they installed, it gives them a list of all the places where their maintenance staff needs to go to finish up the things that we couldn’t do. It’s worked out really well.”
Use case #3: Customer feedback forms
In the past, to gain insight into how Purell is performing from a customer satisfaction standpoint, they had dedicated back-office people hurrying to call the customer when a job was completed. Sometimes, they’d call two or three times to get an answer, obtaining a response rate of about 10%. If there was a complaint, the customer would usually call their distributor. The distributor would contact the seller, and the seller would call Lenny’s boss or four or five levels up, where it would eventually work its way down to him for a response. This process would take about 3-4 days.
Now, the company leverages customer feedback forms, eliminating all of Purell’s back-office touchpoints. When an installation completion form is submitted, a customer survey is dispatched through ProntoForms (now TrueContext). Lenny noted, “Now the customer can check that box, and as soon as they hit send, sometimes even 5-10 minutes after we got done installing, I’ll get a text message that I need to call this person… we are responding to them a whole lot faster.” The bonus? The company is getting about a 50% response rate back on their customer surveys!
When the installation completion form is submitted, the Customer Feedback Form gets sent to the champion’s email. At the same time, a case on the work order is created. When the customer inputs their feedback and submits it, the case is then updated with their feedback and closed. Lisa exclaims, “We’ve automated so much with that process. It’s great!”
Conclusion
We’ve only scratched the surface of the many insights that Lenny and Lisa provided in their ultra-informative EMPOWER’21 session. Trust us when we say that if you’re looking to learn more about how to maximize your use of Salesforce and ProntoForms, you’ll be inspired by what these two pros had to say. We invite you to watch the free, on-demand session when you have a moment. And don’t forget to share your use cases, expertise, or questions with other citizen developers in the ProntoForms (now TrueContext) Community.
