CUSTOMER CASE STUDY

Cars.com Grows Business With Improved

Agent Productivity

Managing cases and communications in the Service Cloud

makes a huge difference in our business productivity.
Industry
Online Media

Geographies
United States

Challenges
::: Limited visibility into workload, capacity,

and activity metrics to enable support

supervisors to better manage the
workforce and plan for growth
::: Exclusive dependence on email for

assigning owners to incidents, escalating,

and tracking progress
::: Reliance on limited technology resources

to maintain and improve support

applications
::: Coordination of customer data across

disparate systems
::: Low percentage of incidents resolved by a

single owner

Solution
With help from consulting partner Model
Metrics, the company deployed Salesforce CRM
Service to its first 90 users within three months,
increasing customer visibility, productivity, and
efficiencyand providing more flexibility in
case management processes. With the initial
rollout a success, Cars.com extended Salesforce
CRM companywide, doubling the user base
within the first 12 months.

Results
::: Increased support agent productivity by

as much as 50 percent, from six cases per

hour to nine; decreased case-handling
time by 26 percent
::: Enhanced the efficiency of the customer

support team by as much as 33 percent,

from 600 dealers per agent to a peak of 800
dealers per agent, while cutting response
times by more than 65 percent and
consistently beating SLAs by more than
50percent
::: Created greater visibility into support

metrics for motivating agents, allocating

resources, and calculating staffing needs
::: Significantly increased percentage of cases

resolved by a single case owner

::: Improved overall customer service experience

with quicker single-owner resolution

David M. Corken
Operations Director

Partnered with more than 200 leading metro newspapers, television stations, and their Web sites,
Cars.com is the most comprehensive destination for those looking to buy or sell a new or used car.
The site lists more than 1.8 million vehicles from 12,000 dealer customers, classified advertisers,
and private parties to offer consumers the best selection of new and used cars online, as well as the
content, tools, and advice to support their shopping experience.
Cars.coms spectacular growth has included its share of challenges, of course, including difficulty
managing a highly dispersed workforce, learning how to efficiently process hundreds of thousands
of transactions each year, and gracefully revamping existing business processes to accommodate
differences between business-to-business and business-to-customer interactions.
We didnt have a real case management program, so when it came time to upgrade our CRM
software we went through the typical discovery process for any young company, recalls Operations
Director David M. Corken. We were already using Salesforce CRM SFA and immediately
recognized that an integrated CRM solution from salesforce.com would provide the most
comprehensive solution for managing both cases and our sales process.
Cars.coms decision to implement Salesforce CRM Service paid off and customers arent the only
ones who have noticed the companys dedication to providing quality service and support. In 2007,
Cars.com was honored with a Service Elite Award from CRM magazine, a leading publication that
serves the CRM industry.

Revving up with Salesforce CRM

Salesforce CRM Service wasnt the only choice available to Cars.com. The company shopped around,
researching other case management programs and selected the cloud computing solution for its
affordability, accessibility, and flexibility.
Soon after, Cars.com deployed Salesforce CRM Enterprise Edition and Salesforce CRM Service
to more than 180 employees across the United States. The implementation process began in March
2005 and concluded three months later, thanks to the expert assistance of Model Metrics, a CRM
consulting firm and salesforce.com partner specializing in on-demand solutions.
Overall, the experience with Model Metrics was fantastic, says Corken. They were very knowledgeable
with the Salesforce CRM product and had a great understanding of the implications, benefits, and
consequences of each step of the implementation process.

Collaborating across the organization

For Corkens growing staff, such a painless implementation process provided an important boost
toward achieving an effective case management program. His division features a 23-person dealer
support team, a five-person customer support team, a quality assurance team, and a production
staffin addition to a two-tiered product management, finance, and technical support team. All 41
members of the staff obtained Salesforce CRM licenses, enabling each to navigate the many facets of
interacting with customers in a cohesive way.
We use dashboards to communicate with our agents now, Corken explains. We tell them where we
stand as a team, we track their turnaround times, and we monitor the case volume in the queue. We
also use dashboards to note how many inquiries an agent has handled and how many are still open.
Using dashboards is a great way to get everyone functioning as a team and lets each member of the
staff know how he or she is doing individually.

The Service Cloud

lets us focus our
resources on whats
really important:
making sure our
customers are
happy.

David M. Corken
Operations Director

In order to field the more than 25,000 inquiries the company receives each month, Cars.com
now uses Salesforce CRM Service to unify its business processes for responding to customers
from multiple channelsprimarily by phone and email. Tight integration of sales and service
processes yields more accurate information about each customer, increasing efficiency throughout
theorganization.
With Model Metrics help, the company integrated Salesforce CRM Service with an Oraclebased data warehouse, as well as with custom-built applications for order entry and fulfillment. By
leveraging the Force.com API, which accommodates many types of data formats and programming
languages, it was easy to get the data into Salesforce CRM. System administrators also created
parent-child relationships for managing complex cases, allowing agents to track cases by issue type.

Integrated CRM drives business results

Since implementing Salesforce CRM Service, Cars.com has revolutionized the way it does business.
The company is more efficient, with agent productivity climbing from six cases per hour to nine cases
per hour, even as case-handling time has fallen from 13 minutes to 9.5 minutes per request. Similarly,
the peak agent capacity has jumped from 600 to 800 dealers per agent and from 8,500 to 14,000 forsale-by-owner customers per agent.
Not only has the teams effectiveness soared in recent months, but Cars.com has also enjoyed a new
level of flexibility in its case management processes. With Salesforce CRM Service, whether a dealer
calls their sales rep or the support center, all of the case details are captured and stored in a consistent
way. In addition, agents now have the flexible business processes they need to accommodate
differences between business-to-business and business-to-consumer transactions.
On the dealer side, we have established long-term relationships, says Corken. As a result, we want
to make sure we track every nuance of these relationships. Salesforce CRM Service streamlines the
workflow and delivers the reports we need to monitor customer satisfaction.
The email-to-case capability of Salesforce CRM Service allows agents to send and receive messages
from within the Salesforce CRM environment without ever having to open Microsoft Outlook. An
internal knowledge database simplifies training, makes it easier to document solutions to common
problems, and speeds up resolution of common issues.
Corken and his team are now evaluating additional ways that they can use CRM technology to
automate Cars.coms rapidly growing business including integration of Salesforce CRM Service with
computer telephony integration (CTI) software and IP phones to simplify call handling and improve
responsiveness to customer requests.
Based on its past success with Salesforce CRM Service, Cars.com anticipates a smooth ride into the future.
Read more about Cars.com and why it was chosen for CRM magazines 2007 CRM Service Elite award at
www.destinationcrm.com.

For More Information

Contact your account executive to learn
how we can help you accelerate your
CRM success.

Corporate Headquarters
The Landmark @ One Market
Suite 300
San Francisco, CA, 94105
United States

Latin America
+1-415-536-4606

Japan
+81-3-5785-8201

Asia/Pacific
+65-6302-5700

Europe, Middle East & Africa

+4121-6953700

1-800-NO-SOFTWARE
www.salesforce.com

Copyright 2009, salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce.com and the no software logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, inc.,
and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

CS_cars.com_082709