Full-fibre broadband provider Grain Connect reaches 500,000 premises using Zoho One
- INDUSTRY Telecommunication
- Key AppsCRM, SalesIQ, Forms, Desk, Pagesense, Analytics, Campaigns, and Vault
"The benefit of having everything in one place is huge."
The company
Grain Connect, headquartered in Carlisle, UK, is a growing broadband provider with ambition. Established in 2016, Grain is shaking up the telecoms industry with transparent pricing, flexible contracts, and fibre optic lines designed for the future. Building out its own independent network and infrastructure, its 200-strong team "passes on value to customers through low costs and a unique service," reveals Richard Fletcher, Chief Information Officer.
With a strong presence across the North of England and the Midlands, this tech-forward ISP is on a mission to connect communities across the length and breadth of the UK. So in 2021, Grain kicked off a £75 million investment cycle with the goal of scaling up its reach to 500,000 premises, and growing its customer base to 40,000 and beyond. And how did it achieve this impressive penetration in a market dominated by big players? With a little help from Zoho One and its implementation partner, Creative Analysis.
The challenge
When Richard joined Grain four years ago, he was tasked with bringing harmony to its tech stack. The team were using platforms from a variety of vendors, including Infusionsoft CRM, Zapier, DocuSign, QuickBooks, SendGrid, PowerBI, and LastPass. "We had a set of tools that had been stuck together through manual processes," he recalls.
Richard's goal was to get the business growth-ready by eliminating duplication, inefficiency, and disorganisation. He sought a scalable CRM solution to bring together asset management, customer service, billing cycles, tech support, field engineering, and more. "The approach that we wanted to take with the new CRM stack was to consolidate everything into a single platform so that we had better control, with the end goal being to launch a full self-service capability."
After evaluating and discounting CRM systems from Salesforce and HubSpot, as well as vertical solution from Netadmin, Richard discovered Zoho CRM, and was immediately impressed with its flexibility, low-code customisability, and potential to scale. "The appeal for us about Zoho was that we could design exactly what we wanted," he explains. He engaged Creative Analysis, a UK-based Zoho partner, to hold process mapping workshops, provide a proof of concept, build out the platform, handle the data migration, and deliver employee training. It was during the early stages of that process that Creative's team suggested that the Zoho One bundle could provide the end-to-end solution Grain were looking for.
The solution
"The core requirement was the CRM capability. But it became fairly clear that the benefit for us would be to take the Zoho One product as a business operating model, to...solve different problems the business had."
Discovering the Zoho One bundle threw the scope for Grain's transformation wide open - and Richard was sold. Onboarding the platform, the team quickly adopted a range of applications across different functions of the business, including CRM, SalesIQ, Forms, Sign, Desk, PageSense, Analytics, DataPrep, Campaigns, and Vault. Quickly, Richard realised significant cost savings by switching from several third-party apps to Zoho, enjoyed the consistency of its universal coding script Deluge, and harnessed the power of its centralised admin panel for onboarding, user permissions, and profile management.
Let's explore some of the Zoho One products Grain uses the most!
Zoho CRM
Grain uses Zoho CRM extensively to manage premises, payments, sales, switching, and surveys.
- A series of connected custom modules map out Grain's complex asset structure, from 'Premises', to 'Projects', to 'Build Regions', showing users at a glance whether an area is in planning, under construction, or connected.
- All live premises are pushed via an API into Grain's 'postcode checker' tool on its website, showing potential customers whether Grain's broadband is available in their area or not.
- Router installation jobs from the engineering team are pushed from Simpro into Zoho CRM, triggering the router to be activated and a new billing cycle to be created automatically.
- Zoho CRM's nightly bill run feeds into GoCardless and Stripe to collect payments from customers.
- Website enquiry form completions and SalesIQ chats sync automatically with the leads module to be qualified by Grain's sales teams.
- Grain's field sales team places new sales orders in the CRM via a connected mobile app as they knock on doors in newly connected neighbourhoods.
- A custom widget guides the desk sales team through the process of applying discounts and selecting products for new customers.
- Zoho CRM sends automated emails to offer renewal deals to customers 60 days, 40 days, and 20 days before a contract ends.
- The One Touch Switching process is orchestrated via a widget in Zoho CRM, mapping contracts from alternative providers to new Grain contracts and preventing overlaps.
- Automated NPS surveys are sent to customers monthly, with the results captured and reported in a custom CRM module.
- TrustPilot comments are pushed into a separate CRM module via a web API to track feedback on the external platform.
Zoho Desk
- Grain's customer support team employs Zoho Desk to manage inbound customer requests, from billing queries, faults, technical support, and sales advice.
- All customer tickets are pushed into the corresponding record in Zoho CRM to give Grain's sales team complete visibility of a customer's interactions.
- The purchasing team logs requests via Zoho Desk internally.
- Grain's finance team manages accounts payable and receivable via Zoho Desk tickets.
- Blueprints are used to assign tickets to the most appropriate team members based on the supplier it relates to, or the type of payment query.
Zoho Campaigns
- Highly personalised email campaigns are sent to Grain's customers based on the status of their premise. From a "coming soon!" message, to a "we're live" notification, Zoho Campaigns helps Grain's marketing team target the right customers at the right time.
- SMS messages are also sent to customers from Zoho Campaigns. As well as promotional messages, reminder texts are sent to newly signed up customers who have not yet booked an installation.
Zoho PageSense
- Zoho PageSense is used to test and refine Grain's website content. Using the heatmap functionality, the marketing team can understand which areas of the site successfully convert visitors, and which segments pose stumbling blocks or have poor interaction.
Looking forward with Zoho One
From the outset of Grain's growth project, Richard sought a long-term software solution that would scale with the business as it expanded. He also wanted a long-lasting relationship with a Zoho partner that deeply understood Grain and its goals for the future. With both Zoho and Creative Analysis, Richard has achieved his aims. "I'd definitely recommend Zoho, we've had a great experience...and we'd definitely work with Creative again, and we will continue our relationship with them," he enthuses.
With his sights set firmly on further growth, Grain has even more exciting plans to explore, including
- Open a portal in Zoho Desk so customers can view their ticket history.
- Explore Zoho's instant messaging capabilities with WhatsApp integrations.
- Trial Zoho Assist to enable remote router configurations.
- Onboard Zoho Contracts to manage legal documents.
- Introduce Zoho Learn to smooth out the employee onboarding process.