Time is money, and in sales, any second spent on manual data entry cuts into the company’s bottom line.
Customer relationship management (CRM) app Close empowers sales teams to focus on closing with its integrated phone, email, and SMS messaging platform. But sales teams rely on tools besides their CRM to track and contact prospects, and Close needed a way to offer flexible, streamlined integrations with other apps.
To provide connections to the hundreds of platforms customers needed to fully customize and automate their sales workflows, Close partnered with Zapier. As a result, customers' experiences improved and they were more likely to stick with Close.
“Zapier's functionality has been a game-changer in lowering customer churn rate,” says Eric Engoron, Customer Support Executive at Close.
Improving the Close-Zapier integration with customer feedback
From the beginning of the partnership, the Close team prioritized improving their Zapier integration to best serve their customers. They've made dozens of improvements and additions to their integration.
The team uses [Zapier Issues](https://zapier.com/engineering/zapier-issues/), a tool for Zapier partners, to see categorized feedback collected from mutual customers. With built-in prioritization and implementation paths, Zapier Issues has made it easy for Close to see what’s important to users.
By pushing regular improvements to the integration, Close delights its customers by solving problems and expanding its offerings.
See what features your customers have requested. View the list by navigating to the "Issues" tab of your integration's developer builder.
Increasing usage by marketing improvements
Not only does Close regularly upgrade the integration; after every improvement, the team [promotes the new features on their blog](http://blog.close.com/automate-your-sales-workflows-with-zapier) to teach customers how to get even more value out of the updated integration.
On top of that, Zapier emails its users about the updated integration, which encourages even more people to try Close and Zapier.
This promotional process has worked well for Close.
“The number of people using the Zapier and Close integration has consistently increased 5-6% month-over-month,” Eric says.
Showcasing the personalization and flexibility of Close and Zapier workflows
In addition to promoting integration improvements, the Close team also puts time and energy into illustrating the ways that customers can create Close-Zapier workflows that are completely tailored to their business needs.
The team creates how-to articles for their help documentation that demonstrate how to set up automations for different use cases, such as how to use Close and Zapier to push daily activity reports to Slack or Google Sheets.
Publish your own Zapier help document. Copy this pre-made template, customize it, and publish it in your knowledge base within five minutes.
They link to the Close landing page on Zapier site's from their integration directory page to help Close users get started with the integration right away.
Add Zapier to your integrations directory. Just fill in this pre-made integrations listing that we've gotten started for you.
As the integration directory page demonstrates, Zapier’s flexibility is a selling point for Close to publicize and promote to potential customers looking to set up customized, automated processes.
“Our sales team uses Zapier in order to close deals," Eric says. "They frequently participate in calls with trial users to get them set up on Zapier and automate an actual workflow in Close."
From the number of calls completed on rainy days versus sunny days to opportunities containing specific terms, the team has found that every Close customer has unique goals they want to track and tasks they want to accomplish.
With Zapier, it’s possible for customers to tailor weekly reports and create email campaigns customized to their specific needs. When one customer recently reached out to Eric to ask about creating a custom email drip campaign, for example, Eric was able to build a tailored cadence for them using Close and Zapier.
“Zapier allows you so much flexibility that you can even change templates on the fly to make them more customizable,” Eric says. “The customer was thrilled at the level of control he had.”
With all of the possibilities for creating powerful and personalized automated workflows using Close and Zapier, it’s no wonder why churn has dropped for Close customers. For Eric, continuing to promote the integration makes sense — both for the business and for customers.
“Zapier has had such a profound impact because Zaps make our customers happy and solve some of their workflow-specific issues,” Eric says. “Zapier has revolutionized the way our customers see Close. It has helped us cut our churn rate in half over the last six months because the integration helps us solve customer challenges and meet feature requests more rapidly.”
