I’m Luis Vasquez, the CRM Manager at Empresas ADOC.
Founded in 1953 by Don Roberto Palomo in El Salvador, ADOC boasts a rich history of employing high-quality materials and specialized techniques to craft exceptional products tailored to customer needs. ADOC operates with a strong customer-centric ethos, striving to enhance satisfaction and foster enduring relationships. Alongside its own branded footwear, ADOC collaborates with renowned international brands such as Hush Puppies, The North Face, CAT, Disney, and Steve Madden, offering a comprehensive shopping experience to a diverse customer base.
Achieving a 360-degree view of customers while delivering top-notch service remains a paramount objective for us, presenting a formidable challenge yet to be fully realized.
As a CRM Manager, my role revolves around leading the implementation of SugarCRM within our company. Starting as a CRM Specialist and progressing to this managerial position, I've been responsible for drawing roadmaps for various departments such as Customer Services, Sales, and the Loyalty Program. As such, Sugar is at the heart of everything I do. Our customer service system is centralized on Sugar Serve, enabling us to provide tailored solutions swiftly and effectively. All the areas within the company that provide services, like IT and our finance department, use Sell to track all interactions and incidents, and we also use Market for segmentation.
With five different store formats across multiple countries, Sugar is crucial for selling, email campaigns, and nurturing campaigns. We also use it to analyze customer desires and understand their buying behavior.
One of the most ambitious projects I led was tailoring Sugar to enhance our loyalty program, which we previously managed on a different platform. The system now seamlessly integrates international rewards across all brands. This was a complete overhaul designed to amplify customer engagement. By reviewing loyalty programs from similar companies, we developed a tiered loyalty system that allows customers to redeem points internationally, from wherever they are in the world. This has helped us improve retention rates by 10% and has significantly increased customers' lifetime value.
Customizing Sugar to manage the loyalty program has been one of our best decisions. In less than two years, over a million customers have been reached, and the seamless integration has significantly boosted engagement and retention efforts.
Understanding our customers’ behaviors and needs was another significant win for us. The visibility and clarity it brought us, along with its segmentation tools, has allowed us to run targeted marketing campaigns, like sending “Miss You” emails to reactivate dormant customers. It’s helped us more regularly pivot and change how we address service challenges and personalize communications.
Sugar has had a huge impact on our business metrics. Our customer retention rates have increased by 10% within a single year, moving from 35% to 45%.
Our Net Promoter Score (NPS) also rose from 80% to 85%, and we aim to reach 90% by the end of the year. These improvements highlight the enhanced customer engagement our CRM strategy has facilitated.
Integrating Sugar so that it seamlessly aligns with our complex operations doesn’t happen overnight. There’s no magic solution that's going to make it fit right in and yield results immediately. But, based on my experience with Sugar, here are six key tips that worked for us, and I think could help you too:
Before diving into Sugar, take the time to understand your business's specific needs. Analyze your current situation and document exact requirements helps customize Sugar effectively. Each move with Sugar aimed to carve out a niche and enhance efficiency, aligning with the company's goals and enhancing both customer satisfaction and business performance.
Make sure everyone on the team knows how to use Sugar to its full potential. Regular use and ongoing support help team members get comfortable with the platform. Comprehensive training sessions and ongoing support were crucial in making Sugar a part of our daily operations.
Stay informed about the latest updates and features in Sugar. Each update brings us new opportunities and enhancements to take advantage of and keep operations running smoothly.
Embrace a continuous feedback mechanism to support adoption. Conducting focus group sessions where users provide feedback helps us understand what’s not working and what can be improved. Ongoing dialogue helps refine CRM strategies, ensuring the system evolves with growing business needs.
Integrate Sugar into your daily workflows and processes to encourage regular use. The more your team uses it, the more comfortable they'll become with the platform.
Keep in touch with partners and vendors. Sugar has provided us with valuable advice along the way, and open communication was essential. Regularly reaching out to partners helps us improve current systems and processes and opens our eyes to what other companies are doing successfully.
Having a CRM is not just about possessing the system; it’s about using it to amplify the business’s unique strengths and overcome its challenges. For those looking to specialize in CRM or enhance their organization's customer engagement strategies, my advice is to think like a startup: be agile, be responsive, and always be prepared to pivot strategies based on real-time feedback and new opportunities.
As Empresas ADOC continues to grow and evolve, Sugar remains and will remain at the heart of our strategy, providing the insights and capabilities needed for us to succeed in a competitive environment.
If you’re interested in hearing more about our journey with Sugar, our CEO Javier Castillo was recently interviewed on Sugar’s Fuel Growth podcast. In it, he discusses the importance of understanding and responding to customer needs to achieve omnichannel success.
