The YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap Counties was looking to replace their membership management database, and reviewed many of the solutions available in the industry.
“The main problem we were seeking to solve is integration,” said Kim Schulz, the senior digital experience director at the YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap Counties. “We had several disparate databases, platforms and processes that have prevented us from true customer relationship management and personalization. We were seeking a solution that would integrate with our website, meet our staff and members’ needs, and provide us with the ability to connect and build deeper relationships with our members.”
Bruce Caudill, the chief information officer at YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap Counties, said Salesforce and Traction Rec were the solution they felt gave them the ability to consolidate and integrate with many of the applications in their environment.
Below, Caudill and Schulz share how Salesforce has been a great partner for their Y:
What features of Salesforce’s software have provided the most benefits to your facility?
BC: Although we are still in our implementation phase, the feature we are most excited by is the ability to streamline our business processes, which will allow us to centralize functionality. This will allow our front-line staff to focus on serving our members. We are also extremely excited about the advanced analytics capabilities allowing us to have much better visibility to our data, which we did not have previously. The open application programming interfaces have allowed us to work with partners to create integrations with several of our internal applications and with our mobile app.
KS: We have implemented two modules of the Salesforce Suite: an email marketing platform, Pardot. and a social marketing platform, Social Studio. While both implementations were completed in advance of our customer relationship management software, we are reaping several benefits. With Pardot, we now have campaign automation, improved analytics and analysis, flexible email templates and testing capabilities. We were unable to achieve these with our previous email marketing platform. Social Studio met all of our requirements including management and monitoring of multiple social accounts, secure user account management, ability to review and respond to all comments within the platform, and seamless integration of video.
Why is it so important to have such a reliable management software partner like Salesforce?
BC: This was another big factor in our decision. Knowing Salesforce’s reputation and seeing the continuous development of the platform was important to us. Salesforce’s commitment to supporting nonprofits is big as well. They worked with us to come up with a solution that was affordable for us.
KS: In my nonprofit experience, quite often management software partners do not provide the same level of support and care as their for-profit clients. Salesforce is committed to nonprofits no matter what their size and truly cares about their success.
How would you describe Salesforce’s customer service?
BC: It has been fantastic. Our representative was heavily involved in working with us through the vetting process and getting all the contracts in place. He was also instrumental in getting our instance set up and online. As we have gone through the implementation process, he has kept in constant contact and made quick turnarounds on any requests we have had.
KS: Outstanding. Both our representative and engagement specialist are working with us every step of the way and has been very responsive to our needs. The Salesforce online customer service support from training to the self-service portal and live chat is excellent.
Why should other community rec professionals consider working with Salesforce?
BC: I would recommend Salesforce to any of my counterparts. The flexibility of the platform, the scalability and the support received are second to none. As we see more and more YMCAs across the country come on to the platform, I feel Salesforce can be a leader in the membership management space.
KS: I highly recommend Salesforce for the integration capabilities with other platforms, marketing cloud products, a plethora of features, ease of use and customer service.
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Taylor Brown is the assistant editor of Community Rec Magazine. She can be reached at taylor@peakemedia.com.
