Overview

For 40 years, the Laurastar Group has been bringing together innovation, ambition and excellence in the care and purification of textiles and interiors. As the exclusive owner of a powerful sanitizing steam technology, Laurastar has become the world leader in the very highest quality steaming systems. With eyes for the future, they identified the need to refresh their digital strategies to meet consumers who expect a more robust digital experience and partnered with Merkle to deliver this.

The challenge

Despite the majority of their sales happening in brick and mortar retailers, Laurastar has offered a strong digital presence since launching its online store in 2011. Planning forwards, they began adopting Salesforce into their digital infrastructure in 2019 - so when the world economy was shaken by a global pandemic, Laurastar was ready to adapt and grow their direct-to-consumer (D2C) business.

While physical product demonstrations were traditionally a key touchpoint in their sales journey, Laurastar believed they could build the same levels of trust and rapport with the right digital tools and experiences. To achieve this, Laurastar approached Merkle to advise on strategy, implementation, and optimisation of their now-critical D2C sales channel.

The approach

We began the project by conducting workshops with Laurastar’s key stakeholders to identify pain points and potential solutions, analysing the current systems and processes with an eye for scalability given the increase in online demand. The team employed an agile methodology in developing, testing, customising, and implementing five cohesive Salesforce solutions.

One of the most important upgrades for Laurastar was implementing Salesforce Commerce Cloud to strengthen the performance of the ecommerce website. A web infrastructure that reliably delivers a smooth, quality experience for online shoppers is a major win for Laurastar and by also upgrading their customer service portal, leveraging Salesforce Service Cloud, Laurastar can more efficiently process customer order inquiries and issues.

By integrating with Commerce and Marketing Cloud, Laurastar’s customer service team now have a 360-degree view of customers who reach out for help or information about their orders. The customer’s complete profile can be easily accessed on one seamless platform, which displays both their order history and previous interactions with customer service. A new, robust live chat functionality for Laurastar’s website provides another upgrade to the online customer experience. The live chat includes shortcuts for communicating via WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger as well as a typical contact form.

The outcome

With the right tools in place to streamline operations and maximise each digital customer experience, Laurastar increased online sales in a matter of months. Salesforce Marketing Cloud has become a powerful way to grow their D2C business by sharing relevant offers and promotions on the platforms their customers are using most. From online chat via WhatsApp to social media and email, Laurastar is creating seamless, frictionless experiences at every stage of the sales journey.

The changes are driving a new sense of consistency between the quality of their products and the quality of their digital interactions. And the benefits of these new systems aren’t just for customers. Laurastar employees are also saving significant time and operating costs by automating previously manual processes. With a 360-degree view of their customers, they now have more data than ever to personalise customer journeys and plan and scale for future growth. Laurastar’s end-to-end enterprise platform has empowered significant progress on modernisation and created an ecosystem that is agile, allows for fast innovation, and will continue to foster business growth.

To download this case study as a PDF, please visit the Salesforce website.