Salesforce.com, the technology and market leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM), today announced that Convio, Inc., a leading provider of on-demand software and services to help nonprofit organizations use the Internet for driving fundraising, advocacy and other forms of support, has added Salesforce Service & Support to its existing Salesforce SFA application. Using the AppExchange platform, Convio has been able to customize the solution to automate workflows as prospects transition into customers, ultimately improving internal processes as well as customer response times.

Convio is one of the 20,500 companies of all sizes, industries and geographies that comprised the salesforce.com customer base as of January 31, 2006. Revenue and subscribers will be recognized as the service is delivered.

Convio has used the AppExchange platform to build a Web form for customers, enabling them to easily enter a service request and supply information about their specific needs. The request initiates an automatic case within Salesforce Service & Support which appends customer data, account history and recommended solutions, giving Convio’s customer support team the information they need to quickly resolve the customer request.

“Salesforce Service & Support enables our customer support team to provide faster and more accurate service to our customers,” said Dave Hendrix, Vice President of Services at Convio. “It has been a natural extension from our successful deployment of Salesforce SFA a few years ago, allowing us to continue improving our business processes.”

Before implementing Salesforce Service & Support, Convio’s sales and service teams were using separate applications for managing prospect and customer information, and communication between the teams was not optimized. With the combined Salesforce solution, Convio now has a single, central system for managing and sharing information throughout the customer lifecycle. Looking forward, Convio plans to use the AppExchange platform to manage its reference and referral program, further streamlining its business processes.

Convio used the AppExchange platform to develop custom tabs to optimize sales and service operations, including:

— Hand Off — allows sales to automatically pull information from the
opportunity record into an electronic document with all the pertinent
customer information gathered during the sales cycle. The sales
representative can then simply attach the finalized contract to the
opportunity within Salesforce SFA and, with a single click, notify the
services team and initiate the process of having an account manager
assigned.
— DataSync — tracks and helps manage Convio’s data integration projects
with customer databases, ensuring customers have the most accurate,
up-to-date donor information available.
— Enhancements Requests — tracks and manages product enhancement
requests from customers. This custom application allows account
management instant access to the status of customer requests and
ensures that development efforts are properly prioritized.

“Using the AppExchange platform to customize our Salesforce solution has allowed us to further automate processes and has given us tremendous time and cost-savings,” added Hendrix. “With the new system, we’ve been able to accommodate an increase in customer support interactions, as well as improve our efficiency allowing us to serve our growing customer base.”