At a glance
A smart home technology provider serving more than one million customers needed a way to convert satisfied customer interactions into new business. Agents had no structured way to offer a referral incentive at the end of positive calls. SoftServe designed and delivered a referral service solution in phased releases, starting with a module for agents to create and share referral codes. Within the first few weeks of use, the program generated 43 new customer sales and an estimated $22 million in annual value.
Client background
The client is a leading smart home technology provider that serves more than one million customers throughout the United States and Canada. The company offers home security, energy management, home automation, local cloud storage, and high-speed internet solutions. Its Customer Care and National Inside Sales (NIS) teams handle thousands of customer interactions daily, many of which end on a positive note.
The client wanted to convert these positive interactions into new business, targeting an estimated $22 million in additional annual value through a structured referral program.
Business challenges
The client's customer-facing teams generated many positive interactions each day but had no structured way to turn that goodwill into new sales. No formal referral program existed to capture the value created by these moments.
Specifically:
- Agents had no offer to extend at the end of satisfied customer calls
- No system existed to generate, share, or track referral codes
- Referred friends had no clear path to redeem an offer and become customers
Activities & Solutions
SoftServe analyzed the client's existing sales and service processes, then designed and delivered a referral service solution using a phased release plan aligned to business value and technical effort. The client's managers gained a way to define referral offers and monitor performance, while agents gained a simple way to act on positive calls.
- Completed a four-week discovery phase to analyze current processes and define the future state
- Built a web-based referral code creation module for agents and customers
- Built a web-based referral offers management module for administrators to create offers and view analytics
The rollout followed a numbered release plan to manage scope and priority:
- Release 1 (MVP): Delivered core functionality for a minimum viable product (MVP), letting agents create referral codes through application programming interface (API) and database (DB) integration, and letting referred friends redeem codes.
- Release 2: Added administrator tools to create and manage referral offers, reporting and analytics, bulk code sending, and social media sharing.
- Release 3 and beyond: Planned advanced functionality for all user roles.
Value delivered
SoftServe delivered a tool that let the client's customer care team convert satisfied customers into new sales, producing measurable financial and customer-acquisition gains within weeks of launch. The new capability turned everyday customer service interactions into a repeatable acquisition channel for the client's sales organization.
Before the referral program, agents had no formal referral offer to extend, and the effort produced no new sales or measurable value. After launch, agents could offer the referral at the end of every eligible call. Within the first few weeks, that single change generated 43 new sales, worth an estimated $22 million in annual value.
