ONE Business Solutions uses Zoho to foster company culture and improve efficiency

The Challenge

Every company wants to feel like one community, no matter how many offices they are divided into. ONE Business Solutions is no exception. An answering service and call center provider with 125 employees, ONE Business Solutions is scattered across multiple offices, with many workers entirely remote. Before Zoho, ONE Business Solutions wanted to feel that community just as much as any other company. Information was scattered and the employees had no visibility, so it was difficult for decisions to get made in an efficient manner. Before Zoho, ONE Business Solutions felt like it was a series of offices—now, it feels like one business.

"Having Zoho allows me to see all 125 of them with the click of a mouse," said CEO Janet Livingston. When Livingston decided to unify multiple branches of the company, it was an immediate priority to create a sense of unity. Since this could not be accomplished by putting everyone in one room, they looked to achieve unifying communication, collaboration, and data.

Introducing Zoho

ONE Business Solutions adopted Zoho Connect to foster a new company culture, Cliq and Mail to facilitate communication, and others such as Campaigns, Marketing Automation, CRM, Projects, Sign, Forms, People, Sites, Creator, and more to improve efficiency and collaboration. "Having all of these tools allows me, as a remote employee, to really feel like my basement is the office, literally right next to everyone else," said Marc Fishman, director of sales and marketing.

The first steps ONE Business Solutions took to unify communication were transitioning to Zoho Mail for email and Zoho Cliq for chat. Rather than pushing everyone to use these tools at once, they were offered as an available resource and eventually, everyone at the company naturally adopted them. "Using Cliq, we are able to coach our agents in real time," said Livingston. By implementing technology to enable collaboration, in combination with their regular video meetings, ONE Business Solutions created a communication network that's entirely unified. Users can now chat each other at any time, no matter what application they're using to do their work. "Everything I need for my job is at my fingertips. All of the people I need to collaborate with are a Cliq chat away," said Fishman. The next step was to centralize their data and processes. By moving their files to Zoho WorkDrive, they were able to unify their data from the bottom up. Files are now all in one place, so processes all flow the same way and it's easy to control access.

Benefits and ROI

By giving every employee more access to the information and decisions central to the company, ONE Business Solutions has empowered its employees to do their work more efficiently, with less roadblocks in the system. According to a study by Atlassian, "89% of employees say transparent decision-making boosts team achievement." With the unification that Zoho brought, employees know why decisions are being made, what their numbers actually look like, and how customers are feeling at any given time. "We have been able to close 12% more business, as well as grow services with our largest client exponentially going into the new fiscal quarter and beyond," said Fishman.

As a part of their effort to create a truly personal experience for their customers, ONE Business Solutions even created a method to discuss and try to support customers who were not receiving what they needed. Livingston said "we have a channel in Cliq called 'at risk' so every day people know where our customers are at. The employees now have more insight into why everything is happening. We've never had that before!" This means that customers feel more supported, improving customer retention.

Not only can their employees get more value out of their workday with Zoho, but they can also find more fulfillment in their job. Livingston says that using Zoho Connect, Zoho's intranet, "we don't have a water cooler, but they're able to talk to their colleagues and say 'goodbye,' 'goodnight.' We never had that before." Offering this space where employees can chat about both work and non-work related topics means that employees feel more connected to each other. Instead of only focusing on the productivity aspect of communication, ONE Business Solutions recognized the value of social communication. Now, though their employees are scattered, ONE Business Solutions not only has increased productivity because everyone has the information they need and can easily communicate, but even more importantly, they have a sense of community that spans the entire company.

This means that everyone, across departments, truly feels like they are working as part of one company. This shift in company culture has been accompanied by access to information that empowers employees to make decisions as they come, instead of waiting for information to trickle down to them. Users at all levels also have a clearer understanding of their efficiency and productivity numbers. This has allowed Livingston to take a step back from the day-to-day and put more trust in her employees. Now, decisions get made faster, people are more productive, and ONE Business Solutions feels like a single company with a unified culture.