Case Study Shows How Sally Beauty Shifted Business Online During Pandemic
Salesforce and Sally Beauty recently shared a case study about how the retailer is using technology to create “contactless beauty experiences” as well as services for the brand’s customers and for salon professionals.
The context of the report is based on how beauty salons across the U.S., Europe and elsewhere were closed during the onset of the pandemic, yet there was a surge in demand for DIY nail care, hair coloring and hair care products.
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“With Salesforce, Sally Beauty was able to quickly move its business online — launching new digital shopping options, educational experiences to help prevent DIY disasters and support for its professional stylist community” via several cloud-based, Salesforce platforms, the company said in a statement.
Mary Beth Edwards, senior vice president and chief transformation officer at Sally Beauty, told WWD that during the height of the pandemic, “in [the third quarter] of [fiscal year 2020], Sally Beauty Holdings saw a strong e-commerce growth of 278 percent stemming from an unprecedented demand for DIY beauty products as everyone learned to do more from home.”
“We expanded our omnichannel shopping options and implemented Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud to better target Sally Beauty customers based on their interests and purchase behavior, and provide them with applicable DIY-focused content,” Edwards said. “In addition, Salesforce’s Service Cloud has enabled us to improve our customer service team’s response time by implementing service bots on our website.”
With Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Sally Beauty said it was able to quickly scale its online store, “to accommodate the surge in demand from both consumers and its professional stylist community.” Salesforce said in the case study that Sally Beauty was also able to launch “new shopping options and help distributor sales consultants transition to virtual consulting.”
Salesforce’s Order Management solution allowed the beauty company to have “real-time visibility over store inventory to prevent customers from purchasing items that are already out of stock and can send notifications to customers/partners when their products are ready for pickup.”
Sally Beauty also used Salesforce Marketing Cloud during the shift in business to stay “connected with their customers through social media and email to provide updates around store statuses, curbside offerings, alternative shopping options and inventory.”
By integrating Marketing Cloud with Commerce Cloud, Salesforce said Sally Beauty’s customers received “automated emails on the DIY process products purchased.” And with Salesforce Service Cloud, Sally Beauty was able to manage a spike in customer service requests via “service bots” on the company’s website.
“Within one month, Service Cloud fielded tens of thousands of customer inquiries and improved the customer service team’s email response time by 60 percent, decreasing it from 72 to 29 hours, due to real-time visibility over email response times, case details and more,” the case study stated. “Service agents also logged 90 percent of calls, compared to just 10 percent previously.”
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