Groupon’s Global Growth with Natterbox

Expansion into Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA)

The scenario

Groupon is a global leader in local commerce, making it easy for people around the world to search and discover great businesses at unbeatable prices. Launched in November 2008, Groupon enables shoppers to discover the best a city has to offer with Groupon Local, enjoy vacations with Groupon Getaways, and find a curated selection of electronics, fashion, home furnishings and more with Groupon Goods.

Groupon had initially rolled out the Natterbox solution in the UK in 2010. After identifying significant business benefits it decided to implement Natterbox into its offices across EMEA.

Business requirements

Groupon was going through a large global Salesforce migration which fundamentally changed the way it was going to use Salesforce. Groupon needed a voice integration solution that would be easy to deploy throughout EMEA in this rapidly changing environment.

The company was endeavouring to increase customer-focused sales tools to improve its customer experience as there was potential for expansion in this area.

Groupon had a fundamental requirement to generate business intelligence from call activity. With a rapidly increasing volume of business calls, it needed a solution that could populate call information into Salesforce. This would enable them to analyse customer preferences and sales trends and therefore increase business efficiency. Groupon needed improved oversight and reporting of data in Salesforce to enable it to continue to develop effective business planning at all levels.

Why Natterbox?

Groupon’s exceptional growth meant its telephone customer interactions were multiplying at an astonishing rate. Using Natterbox voice integration within Salesforce, Groupon improved its telephony experience for all users. Natterbox has helped to provide Groupon with the ability to generate business intelligence from call activity. This has contributed to improved reporting, greater levels of data integrity and increased employee productivity.

Key benefits

  • Remote deployment and training As a Software as a Service (SaaS) provider Natterbox has been able to deploy its system and train staff in the majority of sites with no need for onsite visits. Natterbox has been installed at a rate of three offices per week.
  • Unification of call metrics EMEA wide With Natterbox, data from all European offices is fed back into a single set of Salesforce analytics. This data can be reported in a standardised way, at user level, country level or as one Groupon EMEA unit.
  • Ease of use End users continue to use their same desk phones or mobiles, with no changes to local telecoms infrastructure required, with minimum impact for both administrators and end users.

The Natterbox solution

Groupon UK was already using the Natterbox solution prior to the EMEA project being initiated. As Groupon across EMEA was using the same Salesforce system as Groupon UK, with the Natterbox deployment it simply meant activating the user licenses for the agents across the European offices and then providing the necessary training

It takes Natterbox just as long to deploy the system in a company with 10 or 10,000 users. It’s simply a matter of pressing buttons to activate an entire company or region.

“Natterbox is at the forefront of voice technology. Their team is dynamic and innovative, and always respond to what we need. Throughout our expansion into EMEA it was essential to find a solution that had the flexibility to meet our demands. We needed a system which would make calling easy and give us vital information about call activity. Natterbox provides the ideal solution.”
Tommaso Romagno, Groupon SER Salesforce

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Groupon vital statistics

  • Groupon is growing globally and has over 11,000 employees worldwide.1
  • In December 2013, the company recorded its biggest four-day weekend of sales in North America (Black Friday through Cyber Monday) since the website was founded, with transactions reportedly up 30 percent from 2012.2
  • The company is expanding rapidly throughout EMEA and revenue over the last four quarters from this area was $743M for the year 2013.3

“Natterbox is always one step ahead of the game. This is a long-term relationship. They make voice work for our business.”

Key challenges

  • Deploy a system in a rapidly expanding workforce without impacting their day-to-day activity and whilst keeping track of the many Salesforce users.
  • Implement a solution in a compressed timescale – Groupon needed the solution to be rolled out across all of EMEA within several months (23 countries).
  • Each EMEA office had unique telephony infrastructure, there was no global telephony solution at the time so any system would have to work with many telecoms providers.

“Call activity is automatically populated into our CRM system and logged against the correct contact, opportunity or account, significantly improving the integrity of our data. Natterbox automatically analyses key data points from calls to build detailed reports in the CRM, providing us with a 360º view of our call activity.”

Key success factors

  • Fast deployment. Natterbox has been rolled-out at a rate of three offices per week, over 23 countries so far.
  • Limited on site support required. During the deployment only two onsite visits were required, these were simply to provide training and support to the largest offices.
  • Zero downtime was incurred by the agents. Employees were able to pick up the phone and make calls even during deployment and training phases.

References

1 Investor FAQs. Groupon. 30 November 2013
2 L. Lazare. Groupon reports record Black Friday weekend sales. Chicago Business Journal.
3 December 2013 3 Groupon 3Q13 Earnings. November 2013. Available at: http://files.shareholder.com/ downloads/AMDA-E2NTR/2891416825x0x704836 /3f006dcf-649a-4fa1-adfd-140540d6b720/3Q13_ GRPN_Earnings_Slides.pdf