A unified customer experience provides insight and efficiency for CrossFit

Becoming a worldwide health and fitness movement does not happen overnight. Over three decades, CrossFit has built a loyal following, with over 5 million athletes in more than 14,000 locations globally. However, the organization’s leadership recognized that proactive investments in technology would help serve clients better, providing actionable data while future-proofing operations with a scalable foundation for continued growth.

CrossFit maintains operations in three categories: affiliate owners, games participants and education students. An individual “CrossFitter” is often a member of all three groups. However, the customer service function was managed differently for each group, with multiple technology applications in place and varying user experiences. An issue submitted by a CrossFit athlete or practitioner could have an impact across all three categories, but the customer support representative for one group didn’t have an easy way to share it with agents from the other groups. CSRs used three different logins and search methods to gather information and support the customer, and metrics were inherently inconsistent across the legacy systems.

CrossFit stakeholders understood that this process was inefficient and resulted in less than stellar customer service. Furthermore, the three disparate sources of data could present problems as growth continues, and a more streamlined and efficient solution was necessary to gain a 360-degree view of customers and continue providing them with a world-class experience.

“Our lines of business were traditionally siloed, and they ran customer support out of their own tools,” says Ben Poirier, CrossFit’s enterprise systems specialist. “So, we began an effort to consolidate systems and implement an enterprise tool—Salesforce Service Cloud—for customer support.”

Creating a more effective view of the customer

The RSM US LLP team was initially brought in to evaluate CrossFit’s quote-to-cash processes and to perform an information technology assessment. That engagement was very helpful for CrossFit and resulted in several recommendations.

Crossfit’s sales group was already using Salesforce Sales Cloud extensively - but with only that group using Salesforce, RSM advisors felt that the system was underutilized. One of RSM’s key recommendations was for CrossFit to take advantage of Salesforce Service Cloud to address process inefficiencies and data challenges and gain better insight into customer activity.

CrossFit leadership saw the potential of expanding the usage of the Salesforce platform into the customer service realm, and agreed with RSM’s recommendation to implement Service Cloud to replace the multiple legacy systems currently in place. In addition to bringing all the customer data together into one system and increasing overall visibility, the Salesforce solution would also save CrossFit on licensing and maintenance costs by consolidating two of their redundant applications.       

“Not having the 360-degree view of the customer was the biggest risk that CrossFit leadership saw to the organization moving forward,” says Steve Myers, an RSM business development manager. “So, once we outlined a Salesforce solution, they were eager to get started.” 

The RSM team worked closely with CrossFit stakeholders to gather requirements and design the expanded Salesforce platform. The process was not a lift-and-shift, but a full transformation of the organization’s service operations.

With Salesforce Service Cloud, the customer service function is now consolidated into one central platform, giving CrossFit a unified view into customer activities that the organization has never had before. In the past, each team had its own specific reports and procedural steps—now, stakeholders can see all activity across categories and project customer needs, and their customer experience processes are consistent.

“The most important change has been the cross-team collaboration and the capacity to assign tickets to another team within the same tool,” says Poirier. “In the past we had to utilize time-consuming workarounds because teams were on disparate systems. Now, we can simply reassign a ticket to the proper person or team in Salesforce.”

RSM has assisted CrossFit in developing several reports and dashboards that help the organization understand its customers better and adjust processes as needed. From information that is “nice to know” to direct insight into key performance indicators and service level agreements, CrossFit now has a significant amount of real-time data to better understand performance and guide decision-making.

“There has been a lot of data work, and now we have all of our several million CrossFit customers in the system, plus the affiliate records—and we have full visibility across teams,” Poirier adds. 

Eliminating overhead and enhancing communication

With an international presence and continued expansion on the horizon, CrossFit employees need to communicate effectively with users in multiple countries on a daily basis. One challenge frequently emerged when CSRs worked with some international clients. 

Often in interactions with these clients, CSRs would have a live chat pulled up on one screen and Google Translate on another. This process was not very efficient, and a lack of accuracy frequently resulted in communication breakdowns.

The Salesforce platform has allowed these communications to be transformed and strengthened. By using Language I/O, a Salesforce AppExchange product that RSM has experience implementing, conversations are now translated in real time, with considerable increases in overall accuracy—all without leaving Salesforce. By decreasing overhead and streamlining communication processes, CSRs can deliver services more efficiently and spend more time on value-added processes. 

“Salesforce gives us language capabilities that our team does not natively have,” says Poirier. “It’s cool. People can write in and they will know that they will be supported in their localized language, and that can help us grow.”

Even though CrossFit is a large, global organization, RSM implemented its support processes within Salesforce with an eye toward maintaining a personalized customer experience.

“When customers are interacting with CSRs, they still feel like they are only interacting with one person,” says Xuan Jin, an RSM supervisor. “But it is actually the system that is doing the hard work.”

The road ahead

RSM is providing ongoing Salesforce support for CrossFit, as well as guidance toward creating additional efficiencies and improved customer experience. CrossFit is well positioned to use the Salesforce platform for future enhancements. As the company consolidates more customer data and implements additional platform features, operations will only become easier, and the Salesforce system will deliver even more return on investment. For example, CrossFit currently maintains additional internal systems within spreadsheets—prime targets for automation within Salesforce.

“The first step was just moving everybody into Salesforce,” says Jin. “Now that they are all using the system, a lot of questions are popping up about whether other processes can be automated and streamlined. They are already looking forward to phase two.”

With a unified service foundation now in place with Salesforce Service Cloud, CrossFit has completely transformed a critical area of its operations. The organization now has more consistent support and more visibility into customer needs, and has been able to reallocate resources to other areas of the business due to the increased efficiency. Team communication has been greatly enhanced on the new platform, and an already strong customer experience has become even more so.

“Some of our nuances were hard to address before,” says Poirier. “For example, a gym owner can also be a customer. Someone could write in as a customer for a games issue one week and then write in as an affiliate another week. In the past, we did not have visibility to connect one another, but now we do."

By no longer having to manage disparate sources of data, CSRs have more visibility into multiple user classifications and can serve clients better by getting them the help they need faster. The move to Salesforce Service Cloud ensures that CrossFit will continue to provide a world-class experience globally and keep its loyal, connected fan base engaged for years to come.