Using Salesforce to make service more personalised—and more efficient.
Client Background
Set amongst 400 acres of lush Gold Coast Hinterland rainforest, Eden’s Wellness Retreat is famous for their ultra-personalised approach to guest wellbeing and experiences.
Imagine every staff member knowing your name, wellbeing goals and the names of your pets, from the moment you arrive? That’s the Eden difference.
Over the years, it’s earned them a cult-like following.
At Eden, even the reservation process is a personalised affair, with the resort team qualifying every enquiry through an in-depth phone conversation, exploring their potential guests’ needs— and whether their mindset is a good fit for the Eden ethos.
All these questions have a purpose, with every luxe experience — from spa treatments to nutrition — tailored towards your unique health and wellness goals.
And every Eden staff member will be ready to anticipate them.
The Challenge
But with a growing fanbase of repeat guests and a move to centralise the sales team in Brisbane, Eden recognised that upholding their famed level of personalisation would take a more precise approach to customer data management.
A key problem was that their current CX1 (phone) and NewBook (booking management) systems weren’t integrated. This meant staff in all roles were burning hours double-entering data— leading to an incomplete and sometimes incorrect picture of their customers.
In addition, staff in each hotel department were keeping records of first-hand experiences with each guest in different locations, resulting in lost opportunities to deepen the experience or promote relevant services.
And while the NewBook software was doing an excellent job managing guests’ experience on site, it wasn’t able to connect their repeat guests across visits. Which meant Eden was asking their best customers to share their preferences again, and again, and again.
And no one loves starting their luxury wellbeing weekend with a form they’ve already completed.
Our Solution
As a client already so deeply invested in their customer service, Eden came to us with a clear idea of their problems and what their ideal system looked like.
Working in lockstep with Eden’s project lead, Danny Smith and Salesforce AE Hugh Delaney, we were able to scope and deliver the project’s first phase in 8 weeks.
Here’s what we did:
1. New Salesforce Implementation
To create a centralised ‘home’ for Eden’s rich treasure-trove of customer data and sales activity, we implemented a new, configured Salesforce CRM.
Based on their needs, two Salesforce products were implemented in our phased plan:
- PHASE 1: Sales Cloud — tools for lead tracking and opportunity (booking) management
- PHASE 2: Account Engagement (Pardot) — lead generation and marketing automation
Implementation focus: System Design.
Early in the scoping phase, retreat staff made it clear that NewBook was working well for on-the-ground guest management. So, we paid careful consideration to preserving their current workflow when deciding which data to represent in each system.
Ultimately, we landed on a phased approach to selecting which data should move into Salesforce, and which should stay put.
For the initial implementation, we focussed on giving the sales team visibility of just the most critical accommodation data —with phase two focussing on real-use patterns and eliminating the office team’s need to dig around in a NewBook window, ever again.
2. Custom integration with 3 existing systems
We then built a custom 4-way integration that allowed data to flow back and forth between Salesforce and Eden’s existing NewBook, CX1 and website systems.
Integration focus: Data Accuracy.
A key focus of the integration was to make sure the data synced across both systems remained accurate. Although the data moving between sales-centric Salesforce and accommodation-centric NewBook was simple, there was a lot of it.
And because more moving data means more room for errors, we in-built several processes to both automatically detect and resolve inaccuracies as they occur — like the fact that bookings can often contain 2 guests and 1 of those guests may have stayed at Eden before. How do we ensure that everyone feels like a “Primary”? By ensuring a single source of truth for guest data and experiences, mastered now in Salesforce.
3. Cross-system automations to streamline workflow
With all four systems integrated, we turned our attention to points of friction and repetition in the process, using Salesforce’s automation capabilities to streamline multiple steps into a single click of a button.
Automation example: An example of this was the pre and post stay experience, now completely automated and overseen by Salesforce. The pre-automation ensures guests arrive at Eden with a complete profile and the post-automations capture valuable insights for next time and prepare Eden, and the guest for their next visit.
The Results
1. Seamless experience for new & repeat guests
For customers, their Eden booking and check in experience now perfectly matches the seamlessness and relaxation they’ll experience during their stay.
With Salesforce now safely holding any information a customer shares through website forms, qualification calls, follow up emails, staff notes and any data Newbook records during their stay, Eden better anticipate each guest’s needs with every return visit.
And most importantly, they don’t have to waste precious relaxation time filling out forms and answering questions.
“If a customer mentions they want to improve their fitness during a massage, that data goes straight into Salesforce. Which means the fitness instructor can find that customer and open the conversation from a more personal place.”— Danny Smith, Eden Project Lead
2. Richer data and frustration-free workflows for staff
With Salesforce now managing the entire sales process from lead generation to initiating the Newbook reservation process, and automatically syncing back data from every stay — Eden now has a complete, 360 view of their customers in the one CRM.
Data that will be used to plan and automate future marketing activities, or target specials based on preferences when Account Engagement is implemented as part of phase two.
The new automated processes also mean the service team no longer wastes time and mental energy double-entering data or searching for customer records. Which leaves them more time to ask deeper questions.
“Our callers often don’t give you their name or booking number, they’ll start with a big story.
But now, CX1 now brings up the customer’s Salesforce profile automatically. So, by the time they’re finished, we’ve already got their profile up, we’re in the booking, and we’ve made half the changes— and we can open with “It’s Judy, isn’t it?”. That’s a massive impact.”
— Danny Smith, Eden Project Lead
3. Unlocked fresh opportunity for business growth
Ultimately, implementing Salesforce has given Eden the customer management firepower to handle its expanding roster of returning guests more efficiently. This clears the way for future expansion, without the risk of losing the personalised service that has earned them a cult following.
As well as growth, Salesforce has also unlocked new opportunities to build deeper personalisation into their services in the upcoming second project phase.
“We’re greeting every guest with “Hi Danny. It’s been 6 months, welcome back! How’s Mary going? How’s Julie? How’s your shoulder?”. And we want even more of that experience in phase two “
— Danny Smith, Eden Project Lead
This will include streamlining the pre-arrival process for guests and staff—redesigning the process, and automating more steps.
“We’re ready to improve guest profiling and targeted, enhance our data at booking communication. And as a long-term goal, we’re potentially working towards moving all operations into Salesforce for a truly unified system”
— Danny Smith, Eden Project Lead
No need to switch between software, ever again? Now that’s true relaxation.
