How Windstream scaled with a unified view of the customer

Highlights

• Complete Hierarchies was able to simplify Windstream Enterprise’s complex legacy data challenges by reducing duplicates from 4 million records down to 500,000
• Windstream Enterprise has increase revenue by uncovering new cross-sell and upsell opportunities

Overview

As an industry leader, Windstream Enterprise focuses on delivering voice and data network communications through it’s unparalleled pure-cloud infrastructure. With customers in 250,000+ U.S. locations, they support customers with rapid scalability, maximizing uptime, cloud migration, and managing complex call volumes. Identifying innovative ways to deliver exceptional customer experience is built into their cloud software, and their DNA.

The Challenge

Propelled by recent acquisitions and mergers, Windstream’s business was evolving. They needed confidence in knowing that their customer records were integrated and accurate in Salesforce.

“We had over 4 million customer records, and no way to accurately organize accounts or group service locations together.”

Account hierarchies had to be manually built and managed in Salesforce, a process that was enough to frustrate every part of the business. It was clear that if they continued down this road, it would be fuelled by unproductive time and money.

For starters, the Sales team needed a more informed view of the customer at their finger-tips. Instead, huge amounts of manual time and effort was required to search for contact or company relationships, and sift through duplicates.

This meant that managing complex, often evolving territories was nearly impossible due the disarray of messy, duplicated records. Let’s just say that accidentally having 4 or 5 sales people on one account was not appreciated by any party involved. As a result, there was no clear path for sales to grow their current accounts without stepping on other reps’ toes.

Revenue Operations further underlined the importance of having not only a complete view, but an accurate view of the customer as they planned to launch their new customer portal. Imagine quality checking 6 million records, without the years passing by. The bottom line? There was no possible way to tackle the messy, misaligned , and incomplete data with manual efforts.

This was not only overwhelming on a human level, but was equating to direct losses and missed opportunities for revenue growth. At the scale that Windstream was operating at, they needed a solution, fast.

Solution

That’s where Complete Hierarchies comes in – the first effortless hierarchies solution for Salesforce.

Windstream was able to automatically connect parent-child relationships, identify and clean up duplicate accounts, view related objects on associated accounts, and quickly spot and resolve rep overlaps.

“We’ve become infinitely more effective… We went from 4 million records in the database down to a little over 500,000. It’s helping to drive strategy for every side of our business.”

From an operational perspective, Windstream was able to create rules-based coverage for how territories were designed and developed. For sales reps, that meant no more confusion because there could be an organized method to account assignment that minimized internal conflicts.

“The world of sales operations is a tough environment. Any time you can find a tool that is intuitive to use, and solves some really major business problems, it’s really hard not to scream from the mountain tops about it.”

What’s another reason this is worth shouting about? Knowing where Windstream was already doing business in turn pointed to where potential gaps were. Where sales reps weren’t engaged turned into an opportunity to cross-sell, up-sell, and deliver a well thought account-based sales and marketing approach.

At last, their team could rest easy knowing that decision-makers could now see who their biggest clients were. Sales could focus on selling more. Operations could rest easy knowing processes are fuelling revenue. All while the Traction Complete team ensured they had a

The Final Word

Implementing Complete Hierarchies fundamentally shifted Windstream’s business by uncovering a single, unified view of their customer. Not only were they able to minimize manual efforts, they in turn maximized their untapped sales opportunities. This helped drive all aspects of the business, directly influencing revenue generation.

“There’s not a single person on my team who doesn’t sing the praises of what a powerful tool [Complete Hierarchies] is. Not a single person. It is so intuitive. It is so easy to use.”