ElasticHosts, www.elastichosts.com, is a cloud hosting company that is feeding the fast-growing market for storing and handling information remotely, rather than on local company servers and office computers. By allowing clients to buy cloud computing space in a flexible way, ElasticHosts appeals to companies large and small, and its business is currently growing at a substantial rate.

ElasticHosts provides a virtual computer server, accessed through any web interface. Clients can configure their own virtual hard drive to store their own files, and to run any software they wish – with secure access to it from anywhere in the world.

Going for Really Simple Systems

The solution ElasticHosts decided on was Really Simple Systems, not least for the elasticity of the CRM solution. “When buying a CRM system, you cannot expect it be to exactly what you want off the shelf, but it was easy to tailor and we didn’t have to change what we do to fit a system,” says ElasticHosts’ Anna Griffiths. “We could have gone open source and developed something ourselves, but that would have taken time, which we didn’t have, and taken effort to build and maintain, which we didn’t want.”

“Cases are automatically created from incoming emails”


Anna Griffiths
ElasticHosts

For ElasticHosts, the big issue was how to create and manage the customer experience off the back of an initial enquiry, integrating information from emails. The Really simple Systems Customer Service and Support Module proved ideal for ElasticHosts needs:

“Cases are automatically created from incoming emails, and emails are automatically routed to the support person who is handling that case” said Griffiths, “giving us a fantastic way to ensure accuracy, speed of response and efficiency.  Cases are automatically closed when an email resolving the case is sent, and re-opened if the customer sends an email back saying that the problem is ongoing.”

It was this degree of email integration into the Customer Service and Support module that was key in the choice of Really Simples Systems ahead of an alternative from Salesforce.com.  Really Simple Systems CRM was able to meet the specific needs of ElasticHosts with some modifications to its existing customer service and support functionality.

Additionally, ElasticHosts was keen that the system they chose allowed for really fast logging of any communication with the customer. Many enquiries are quick and easy to deal with, and Really Simple Systems was the only CRM system which enabled queries and enquiries to be recorded quickly: in contrast, tests suggested it would take longer to log the customer call in other systems, than the time spent to handle the actual call and the issues themselves.

Richard Davies, CEO at ElasticHosts adds, “One of the great things about RSS is that Customer Service and Support is integrated with the Sales functionality, rather than using a separate CRM for sales and ticketing system for support.

This means that our sales people can see the pre-sales tech support going on and that our support people can see the value of the leads that they are working on.”

Growing pains

ElasticHosts have successfully used Google Adwords, and a free trial for potential clients, to promote the growth of their business. But with inquiries ever rising, they needed an efficient way to handle prospects, to track those taking the free trial, and to manage customer sales and support from a central database. With inquiries coming from the internet in the form of initial emails from those interested, this had to be the route for generating customer contact details on any CRM system.

Additionally, ElasticHosts expanded the sales team to proactively follow up with potential customers who were trialling their hosting solution. A CRM system was going to be essential to enable opportunities to be spotted, calls to be made and customers to be efficiently communicated with.

The right decision

“The speed of being able to record what has been done and what needs to be done is fantastic,” says Griffiths. “Being able to just log in and have record of all customer communications is great. Each morning we just have a list of things which need to be done, with all the info on the page and no fuss. We use for sales and technical support, to ensure customers’ queries are dealt with properly and efficiently. And loads of stats are available for both sales and support, and email marketing campaigns.”

Final verdict

“It’s quick to record the communication, and the web based system is fast,” says Griffiths. And users from around the globe are testament to the value of cloud-based access. “We love the fact that it’s externally managed, and that you can log in from anywhere and it just works.”