German store chain uses Salesforce to perfect the customer experience

The client is a German DIY home improvement store chain. It is a forward-looking family-managed company with a clear system of values, such as honesty, credibility, reliability, clarity, and trust in people.
The company has a distinct B2B focus and wants to expand into the Dutch market aiming to open 15 locations there.
To achieve it, the company partnered up with Nextview.

Challenges of entering the Dutch market

The Dutch market is large and very competitive, so the company aims to create the best possible customer experience from the get-go. The company wants to base its client interactions on its core values.
That means implementing such requirements as:

• “all-in-one invoice” functionality;
• clear record of all purchases and payments;
• convenience of the purchase process;
• account transparency;
• payment reminders and control;
• easy signing-up procedure and onboarding;
• customer communication and feedback.

Signing up in the system

The sign-up system for registering new accounts uses a custom onboarding flow that checks beneficiary registration of the company and guarantees compliance with all GDPR rules:

• the system looks for a Chamber of Commerce registration code that indicates the company is real and then a separate package checks the company’s credentials at Company.info;
• IBAN validation of company accounts confirms whether those exist and if their owners are legit. When this process is complete, a confirmation email with login information gets sent. In total, the registration takes 6 steps. Within a few minutes, users can provide all information needed for verification. It takes a working day for a Hornbach employee to validate a new account. IBAN validation provides by the Company.info package.
• validate a new account. IBAN validation provides by the Company.info package.GDPR compliance ensures that all EU data protection rules are being followed. If a new account doesn’t receive a proper confirmation, it gets deleted. The biggest challenge is to implement all the features for guest users using components, flows, or packages without overextending access rights.

Invoice payments

It’s a big challenge to ensure that system functionality allows for easy, safe, reliable, and clear invoice tracking and subsequent payment.
A good choice to achieve this would be Package FinDock – it’s a payment service for buying products online.

The advantage of this package is the ability to issue a direct payment link on Experience Cloud. It can support two payment options:

• instant online purchase. The system generates a direct payment link and sends it to the client’s account as soon as their order is placed.
• paying bills altogether once a month, instead of making multiple transactions. Numerous clients would actually prefer such a payment option. It would require collecting data from all open invoices within the system and transferring it into a package that launches payment processes.

All-in-one invoice

A single invoice is designed to help customers buy everything they need with one transaction. Depending on the client's financial credibility, the company sets them a certain spending limit. Once a month the system calculates the total worth of ordered goods and makes a single charge to the client's bank account.

This feature is useful for large construction companies with projects in multiple cities and locations. Location managers can place their orders in the course of a month and by the end of it, the client company receives one overall invoice. The company has to register an account, attach employee contacts to it, and issue their employees special payment cards for work-related purchases.

Tech implementation of the all-in-one invoice

The implementation of the all-in-one invoice concept was made possible with Heroku. Heroku is a cloud platform that helps companies build, deliver, monitor, and scale apps while reducing any possible infrastructure issues.

It can transfer files and send weekly or monthly reports. The absence of prerequisite limits allows for better performance. It also enables beneficiary registration, validation, and financial viability checks during sign-up.
In this particular case Heroku’s apps perform 3 main functions:

• web service;
• sending archived XML (transaction data) to an SFTP server in Germany;
• creating cards by sending relevant data to a department responsible for card issuing.

Introduction of Pardot

There are two completely different, but quite interesting ways of introducing Pardot (now - Marketing Cloud Account Engagement) to this case: payment reminders for clients and user communication during the sign-up procedure.

Payment reminders

When a client's invoice is pending the system can send them recurring reminders to make sure the payment is made on time.
Salesforce can keep track of unpaid invoices, combine them into a single document, and then use Pardot-enabled logic to send out emails with relevant information about due bills.

Sign up communication

At the onboarding flow stage clients are not Experience Cloud users yet. When a new client gets validated, they receive an email asking to confirm their email address. In order to provide the best possible user experience, it’d be a good idea to use Pardot’s Engagement Studio to check whether the client has opened the email and clicked on the confirmation link.
If they did not open the first email in 24 hours, the system sends another email.

If the second one remains unopened as well, the temporary account along with the user data gets deleted after 30 days according to the GDPR rules.
If the client clicks the confirmation link, they become a new user and receive an Experience Cloud email saying their registration is complete.
Experience Cloud creates a unique link that cannot be forwarded through Pardot or transferred to other systems. However, the UI makes it unnoticeable to the user.

Pardot is well-suited for the second purpose. As for the first one, it may cause delays. It is also impossible to track emails sent to clients because company’s employees could not access those (there’s a trick, though, the staff can be put on CC for each email).
Sometimes, there could also be sync issues between Salesforce and Pardot. A good alternative would be a separate package for sending an unlimited number of emails.

Key results of Salesforce implementation

The company's values and desire to provide best-in-class service demand a transparent, functional, and secure system.

The system also allows them to provide proper feedback, which is a valuable part of the experience. The solution works at the other end just as well, enabling sufficient access for internal users to the relevant information.

The system also allows them to provide proper feedback, which is a valuable part of the experience. The solution works at the other end just as well, enabling sufficient access for internal users to the relevant information.

This case is a good example of building a sustainable and innovative ecosystem.