Auto parts, smartphones, or sneakers take long journeys across the globe before they land on store shelves. As shipping containers carry all this cargo around the world, they’re helped on their journey by companies like Contecon Manzanillo.
Service brokers and direct customers come to Contecon Manzanillo for specialized shipping container services like weighing, consolidation, deconsolidation, and inspection. A subsidiary of International Container Terminal Services, Inc. (ICTSI), Contecon Manzanillo operates in the port of Manzanillo, which connects shipping lines across Mexico, Latin America, and Asia and handles about 48% of all cargo entering the country. Contecon Manzanillo is one of 34 terminals ICTSI operates across 20 countries on five continents.
Contecon Manzanillo is no stranger to high volume. The port of Manzanillo is one of the busiest harbors in Mexico. On its 2.5-acre share of the port, Contecon Manzanillo handles up to 1,000 shipping containers every day with a team of 8 customer services agents and 2 supervisors.
When it became clear that their current systems for managing their massive amount of customer inquiries weren’t cutting it, Contecon Manzanillo turned to Webex by Cisco for help streamlining their customer service.
Solving myriad disconnected systems, long customer service resolution times
For a decade, these 8 customer service agents have managed the influx of requests from their customer base with disparate systems including phone calls, emails, and WhatsApp messages. Each issue comes in without context, requiring agents to go on the hunt for more information or forcing them to ask customers to repeat themselves. Inquiries took hours to resolve. This led customers to report the same issue on multiple channels to try and find the answer more quickly.
Contecon Manzanillo knew there had to be a better way to communicate and resolve customer issues. With the help of Mexico-based Cisco partner Unified Networks, they embarked on a digital transformation initiative to modernize their workflows, connect information, empower their people, and smooth out the customer service experience.
Contecon Manzanillo leveraged the power of the Webex Platform to integrate their Salesforce CRM with Webex Calling. This shift provided agents with a display of the customer’s Salesforce record, including any open issues, right on the screen when a call comes in. As a result, they had what they needed to resolve customer issues much more quickly.
Connecting the dots and empowering agents with Webex App for Salesforce
The Webex Calling integration was part of a larger transformation effort that sought to connect the numerous systems required to run Contecon Manzanillo’s business. To resolve customer issues, Contecon Manzanillo agents often need to consult information from their terminal operation system, web platform, SAP instance, and other sources. With Salesforce, they were able to unify all this data and the Webex App for Salesforce integration helped make sure it was always at their fingertips.
The Webex App for Salesforce integration brings the powerful capabilities of Webex Calling (and/or Webex Messaging and Meetings) right into the system agents use daily, minimizing context switching as they work to provide the best customer experience possible. Salesforce administrators can download the app from the Webex App Hub, install it in their Salesforce instance, and create a layout of standard or custom objects by adding Webex Calling, Meetings, and/or Messaging. Contecon Manzanillo chose Webex Calling to build the foundation for this integration.
“The Webex Calling integration was the easiest way to enable the flow of customer data between systems,” said Martin Orozco, CIO of Contecon Manzanillo. “It took six weeks to implement Webex but only two days to migrate to Webex Calling and the implementation was seamless.”
Once they’d set up the integration, the Webex Calling API passed the phone number of each incoming caller to Salesforce. The system then uses the number as a key to retrieve the customer record if one exists. This means that as soon as a call is received, customer service agents can access customer account data, contacts, recent issues, issue history, container tracking, billing details, and channel engagement all in one place, allowing them to resolve customer issues more quickly.
Shortening wait times, reclaiming hours thanks to Webex Calling + Salesforce
The streamlining efforts have not gone unrewarded. By connecting the information from these disparate systems into a single source of truth and using the power of Webex, Contecon Manzanillo shrank the typical turnaround time on an issue by 75%.
And customers and agents are not the only ones reaping the benefits. Other business functions can easily be pulled in to help resolve issues, like finance addressing concerns with billing. The integration makes it straightforward to share the customer record between team members, further reducing the time spent on a given issue hunting for more details.
Looking ahead, Contecon Manzanillo has ideas for how they might further transform their business. They are starting to explore where they might deploy the agents’ newly liberated time with other important tasks. They also plan to use metrics they collect from their newly integrated system to identify opportunities for automation or process improvement.
Additionally, they are considering an expansion in their business, investigating whether the sales workflow can be enhanced as dramatically as the customer service experience. This expansion would allow Contecon Manzanillo to leverage additional object types like leads and opportunities or different tools in the Webex toolkit like Meetings and Messaging to shorten the quote-to-cash cycle.
Whichever road Contecon Manzanillo pursues, the power and extensibility of the Webex Platform will be there to support them.
To learn more about how the Webex Platform can empower your business get in touch with us.
