The popular Swiss travel company knecht reisen AG was looking for a high-performance customer relationship management system (CRM) in order to manage its more than 200,000 customer data more efficiently. The company has been offering its customers an enormous variety of destinations and types of travel for over 60 years. The travel specialists are committed to providing excellent quality and expert advice, outstanding service, flexibility, reliability and security for their customers. To ensure optimal customer service and support, it is essential for travel companies that different departments have access to a complete, consistent and well-maintained database.
THE CHALLENGE
The data was to flow from various systems and Excel spreadsheets into the CRM and be synchronised automatically in future. The TO Online and Agent Online booking systems, in which important (customer) data was previously maintained, were to be integrated into a CRM in order to obtain a bundled and cleansed data basis.
The aim was to implement a user-friendly, easy-to-maintain CRM that records, consolidates and clearly displays all important data from the booking systems in order to use this data basis for targeted and personalised marketing campaigns in the future and to obtain meaningful reporting. Mapping (mapping and assigning) the various properties (data or characteristics) such as e-mail, name or currency between the systems posed a particular challenge.
THE SOLUTION
The first step was to find a suitable CRM. The shortlist included Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and HubSpot as CRM providers. HubSpot won the race due to its excellent price-performance ratio and the software's wide range of functions as well as its attractive expandability. As a HubSpot Platinum Partner, the W4 teams have the experience and expertise required for such a complex software integration.
Our software integration team was provided with an interface for transferring data from the TO Online and Agent Online tools. W4 created the corresponding workflows required to map the properties from the different systems. We implemented these with the help of n8n, a powerful workflow automation tool that enables users to link different applications, services and data sources with each other. The particular challenge here was designing and structuring the mapping so that knecht reisen had a clean data basis that could be used effectively for future measures. The setup of the booking system was unfavourable for a consistent data basis, as it created duplicates or different customer numbers for one customer due to repeated bookings in different currencies, for example. To ensure a customer-specific, unique allocation of data, we defined the e-mail address as a unique identification criterion. This will enable the company to reach customers efficiently and in a targeted manner and personalise content, especially in digital marketing. The travel dossiers of the TO & AO tool are also synchronised with HubSpot via an interface and created in this tool as so-called "deals" - for optimal traceability of potential sales through the sales process.
As other important data had to be synchronised, the workflows have become quite complex. Among other things, the so-called "primary key" is synchronised. If both the email and a primary key do not exist, a new contact or data record is created. This ensures that neither data is lost nor duplicates are created. If it transpires during the initial import that two contacts have the same e-mail, this is only assigned to one contact and assigned to the other contact as a custom property, as "additional information" so to speak. This creates a comprehensive data backup and avoids duplicate addressing.
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Example Workflow
THE IMPLEMENTATION
To test all workflows, we started with a "pilot group", carried out an initial import and started the automated workflows. Starting with Africa and Arabia, we imported or migrated all customer data into the new HubSpot CRM based on the various travel destinations.
The company's almost 150 sales employees can now link their inboxes to HubSpot and process enquiries quickly and efficiently in one system. Thanks to dedicated workflows, those responsible are assigned corresponding "tasks" or enquiries.
To make the transition between working in one tool and the other as pleasant as possible for employees and to ensure that no enquiries are lost, we have set up a kind of "backup": For example, when customers fill out a HubSpot form on the website, this information is automatically sent to the email inbox of the relevant sales employee. To do this, the Cockpit content management system first had to be adapted accordingly so that HubSpot forms could be integrated into the website. In future, all enquiries via the website will arrive directly in the all-rounder tool HubSpot, where they will be stored and processed in one consolidated location. This centralisation provides an adequate overview, saves resources and time and enables more efficient processing of enquiries.
HubSpot also leaves nothing to be desired when it comes to comprehensive reporting. Our software experts have created dashboards for the individual destinations to provide knecht reisen with a comprehensive overview of the most important KPIs. Comprehensive tracking of important data is now possible, allowing detailed reports to be created and making the efficiency of the sales team more transparent. This also makes it significantly easier to evaluate optimisation potential.
Advantages thanks to HubSpot CRM integration at a glance:
- Automated assignment of requests or tasks to employees
- Creation & integration of forms in the CMS
- Automated notifications about requests in the email inbox
- Comprehensive tracking possible
- Detailed reports & dashboards
- Set up custom properties
- Excellent integration and expandability
- Consolidation of data from different sources in one system
- high-performance & dedicated workflows for comprehensive data migration
- and much more.
AN OUTLOOK
The company's almost 250,000 contacts can now be addressed more effectively for marketing measures as cleansed data records. knecht reisen is planning to use HubSpot as a marketing automation tool in the future. The CRM now offers the ideal basis for creating, sending and analysing personalised campaigns automatically and transparently from an all-rounder tool.
Thanks to consolidation in one tool, employees do not have to switch between different systems, but instead receive an optimal overview of their (potential) customers and the performance of campaigns. This also allows lead generation to be driven forward more effectively, ultimately maximising the company's success.
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