The Company

ProDoula is a certification agency for the modern doula. They provide the necessary training, guidance and mentorship to its members so they can successfully complete the coursework involved in becoming a certified doula.

The Challenge

The ChallengeSince 2013, ProDoula has been dedicated to guiding birth workers and elevating their role to a professional doula level with extensive training, mentoring and certification support. They help doulas develop career paths and set goals for professional advancement, while encouraging and teaching doulas about the various types of practices so they can make the most satisfying career choice. With such emphasis on their relationships with their customers, ProDoula found that their prior CRM, BPM Online, presented numerous challenges in supporting these relationships and their overall business objectives.Customer data, for example, was not well-managed by their previous CRM, which translated to missed sales opportunities. “We had incomplete customer profiles, customers with redundant data, missing data and completely incorrect data regarding their previous purchases or the dates of their purchases. The operations group was constantly cleaning up reports that had duplicate entries and data that was entered using abbreviations that were clear to one department but not used at all by another department,” replied Vesna Radojevic, Operations Manager, ProDoula LLC.

Vesna further explained that various phases of the sales process were compromised with deficiencies, such as a lack of tracking potential customers requesting contact at a later date or a lack of accurate inquiry tracking for converting non-members to members. Inaccurate purchase data made it difficult at times to distinguish between customers that made a purchase versus those that had not. “This caused the office to unknowingly give away freebies to customers who actually never made the initial purchase. Or, our sales team pitched to customers who had already made that particular purchase. All of this incorrect data made follow-ups impossible and the in-house staff very slow to respond to certain inquiries as they were unclear on how to proceed,” responded Vesna.

Regarding how their CRM’s deficiencies also compromised company revenue, Vesna noted, “Customers would receive ‘freebies’ to compensate for not receiving an order on time or not receiving their order at all, which also ties in to the additional shipping costs and our need to use expedited shipping instead of other, more cost-effective methods. The inability to effectively track purchases caused us to miss opportunities to sell other like items or accompanying items to those customers.”And given the issues regarding inconsistent customer data records, this ultimately had a negative impact on customer service. “Our customer service looked second-rate as we were unable to correctly determine classes they had taken with us and dates of exam purchases. We frequently had to take messages and call customers back in order to further investigate routine and common orders that should have been easy to look up,” added Vesna.

The Mothernode Solution

ProDoula made the transition from BPM Online to Mothernode CRM Sales and Marketing Edition, completing deployment and implementation in 2017.

Mothernode CRM has immediately and dramatically addressed the prior challenges of entering, communicating and tracking accurate and consistent customer data. Immediate improvements were seen in critical company areas including Marketing, Sales and Customer Service. “Mothernode allowed us to easily track customer data in a clean way that all departments can understand. All departments are now entering data in the same, consistent format. Our marketing team is easily able to run searches and send email blasts and our sales team can then track and follow up as needed. We now have the ability to efficiently assist customers on the phone with their inquiries,” replied Vesna.

In addition to using Mothernode CRM to accurately share and track customer, training class, certification and membership data, ProDoula has implemented the Event Registration function that seamlessly integrates into their website, providing course details and registration forms. Prospective attendees simply select the desired class, review the trainer biography, hotel information and course curriculum, and complete the registration, all from the same page. The registration data is immediately visible to all ProDoula departments, maintaining accuracy and efficiency. The Marketing function also enables them to easily produce and send email including event reminders, post-event follow-ups, ongoing training topics, certification renewals and membership fee reminders.

Benefits and Results of Using Mothernode

ProDoula’s challenges dealing with internal collaboration, sharing of data and customer service are all a thing of the past, which has created significant time-savings for employees that can now spend more time working toward company growth. “The in-house staff spends significantly less time searching for specific information because it’s all housed in the same place for each customer. No more wasted time interpreting other user’s abbreviated notes and comments. All of our data is displayed in a clear, concise manner. The Customer Management feature has vastly improved our customer service skills and abilities. We are able to track all types of purchases (merchandise to workshops) in real-time and have the ability to confidently tell our customers when they call, their exact status with us,” noted Vesna.

ProDoula has realized a 75% increase in overall productivity and 50% improvement to their sales process and sales conversions since deploying Mothernode CRM Sales and Marketing Edition.
Vesna also adds that Mothernode’s Marketing function has had one of the largest impacts on improving ProDoula’s internal business processes. “The Marketing dashboard is a fantastic tool that has allowed us to track our users and marketing effectiveness in ways we were not able to before,” replied Vesna.

Benefits and Results (Recap)

• 75% improvement in productivity
• 100% improvement in internal collaboration
• 100% increase in information accessibility
• 50% improvement in the sales process
• 50% improvement in sales conversions