ENSO is an urban winery based in Portland, Oregon. Started out of a garage in 2010, their handcrafted, old-world style wines have now brought them global acclaim.
To CEO Ryan Sharp, winemaking is an art that is perfected over years of practice and experimentation, and each bottle of wine is a time capsule that embodies this heritage. His passion towards the craft transformed ENSO from a small venture into a thriving winery that is loved by customers and press alike. ENSO has been interviewed by The New York Times, Yahoo! News, and numerous other news outlets for the unique experience they offer.
Within a year of starting his business, Sharp grew to know many patrons who loved ENSO for their offerings and wanted to continue supporting the organization. This prompted the idea of a wine club membership.
In its early days, ENSO did not use any dedicated software to manage their new membership program. But as the business scaled, Sharp and his team noticed that their manual billing process took up too much of their time and that it was difficult to keep track of everything, from fetching their customers' credit card details to manually running each card on a POS terminal.
Before Zoho Billing, we were using a winery-specific subscription software. The application had a lot of features but it was convoluted and expensive. It took us two weeks of training just to get started and then a whole day to process orders.
- Ryan Sharp, CEO, ENSO
After that, they started looking for a recurring billing tool that's simple to use and easy to deploy.
"We looked for a subscription billing tool that's dead simple and gets the job done without too much complexity. When we found Zoho Billing, it was a huge relief! We set up our entire account and got started in just a couple of hours," Sharp said.
ENSO uses a flat-rate subscription model in which they offer six bottles of wine every quarter for a fixed subscription fee. When a customer approaches them for a subscription, Sharp's team collects their contact details and the first payment is processed right there using a POS system.
Next, they enter the customer's details into Zoho Billing and create a subscription set to renew once every 3 months. When it's time for the first renewal, Zoho Billing generates an invoice automatically and sends it to the customer. The customer can pay for this invoice online and even save their payment details securely if they like. Zoho Billing, using the Stripe payment gateway integration, then automatically processes subscription payments and renewals from then on, without the need for any manual intervention from Sharp's team or the customer.
The team at ENSO also set up automatic email alerts, which sends notifications emails to customers about payments and renewals, along with an email when their shipment is ready.
Zoho Billing' ability to process recurring payments and recover failed renewal payments are its two biggest advantages, according to the ENSO team.
After creating a customer's subscription with Zoho Billing, we don't have to worry about anything! During the renewal, it sends out reminder emails, collects payments, and recovers lost revenue without us even touching the computer.
ENSO has customers that have remained loyal for 10 years. Zoho Billing helps them save time on busywork and instead, enables ENSO to create more meaningful, long-lasting relationships with their customers.
