When your business needs to capture various types of data online, the most obvious solution might be to hire a full-time developer to build online forms and manage digital data collection. But the obvious solution is not always the best solution. YETI® knows this firsthand.

Jill Zeimann, Manager of Customer Service Systems and Processes at YETI, is responsible for boosting productivity among the company’s customer service and sales teams. This means she’s often a key decision-maker when it comes to adopting technology solutions. When YETI decided to transition its website to Magento in an effort to scale its ecommerce presence, it ran into several data management challenges. The proposed solution? Hire a full-time developer. This was not the most cost-effective or efficient solution, so Zeimann found a better path: Formstack Forms.

By implementing Formstack Forms, YETI eliminated the cost of a full-time developer’s annual salary—which would have been $60–80K. It also streamlined a cumbersome customer support workflow process, which shaved off two minutes from each of its 3,000+ monthly support tickets—saving at least 100 hours a month.

Challenge

YETI made the decision to move its website from WordPress to Magento in order to scale its digital commerce presence. But this presented data management challenges in a few key areas:

1. Collecting dealer applications and routing the information to Force.com
2. Collecting key information on customer service warranty issues and routing it to the Force.com service desk
3. Collecting consumer information for surveys, sweepstakes, and other marketing activities

To tackle all of these challenges, YETI needed an easy way to embed online forms onto its new Magento website. To make this happen, a Magento consultant recommended the company hire a full-time developer to manage form building and digital data collection. For YETI, this was a costly solution considering the $60–80K annual salary of a developer, so Zeimann and other key decision-makers sought other options.

Solution

Formstack’s versatile data management platform was the perfect solution to YETI’s three main challenges, and Zeimann put it to work right way. YETI now has a dealer application on its website that allows interested dealers, or distributors, to easily submit their information. The information is then automatically passed into Force.com via Formstack’s Salesforce integration.

YETI put a warranty request form on its Warranty Information page. This form also makes use of the Salesforce integration to pass submitted information to the Force.com service desk for a more streamlined customer service workflow process. Before using Formstack, YETI was managing warranty customer support via back-and-forth email exchanges, which significantly slowed the process of solving warranty issues. With the warranty information form, YETI can now collect key information up front (including images of damaged products), which helps customer service reps address warranty problems much faster.

Additionally, YETI uses Formstack online forms to collect marketing leads via sweepstakes entries and surveys. These forms are connected to Formstack’s Google Analytics plugin for deeper insights and marketing campaign optimization.

Outcome

Implementing Formstack Forms has been a game changer for YETI. The company is not only saving $60–80K a year by using a simple data management platform rather than a full-time developer, it is also saving time and effort on three crucial business functions:

1. Dealer management: It’s now easier for YETI to get in touch with potential dealers because key information is collected during the application process.
2. Customer service management: YETI support cases can now be addressed much quicker since important case information is submitted via the warranty form. In fact, YETI is now saving around two minutes per case, which amounts to at least 100 hours a month with the 3,000+ cases that are submitted.
3. Marketing campaign management: YETI’s marketing team can now collect leads in an efficient manner and gather key insights to improve their campaigns.