Delays in Order Fulfillment
“When it takes days to deliver on the purchase of an e-commerce product, you get a lot of emails from people asking where their product is,” says Eric Wulf, CEO of International Carwash Association (ICA).
One of ICA’s e-commerce revenue streams is a research study of U.S. car owners and their car washing habits. Customers buy the report online and ICA sends a link to the report via email.
Unfortunately, Eric and his team received a lot of emails from customers due to the company’s lengthy payment processing and fulfillment process.
“Our payment and fulfillment paths were disconnected,” explains Eric. “We had to verify payment before manually sending out the study, so it took some time.”
Time-consuming reporting
Not only were the payment and fulfillment processes time consuming and lengthy, but reporting on those purchases was labor intensive as well.
“We had to manually assemble and aggregate information to get a complete picture of a contact’s total spend and then manually connect that activity to our CRM,” says Eric. “This took valuable hours away from the team that they could have used for prospecting and connecting with customers.”
Implementation of the HubSpot CRM Platform
At the time, ICA had recently implemented the HubSpot CRM Platform, including Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, CMS Hub, and Operations Hub, to bring sales, marketing, and content onto one platform.
“We didn’t fully realize how herky-jerky our previous tech stack was until we implemented HubSpot,” says Eric. “We immediately saw the power of integrating sales and marketing across the entire lifecycle of a contact or company.”
However, payments remained outside of that ecosystem, with ICA using Stripe as its payment processor. As a result, Eric and his team had to manually aggregate payment data.
“We would have to jump into Excel to add up product totals for contacts,” says Eric. “Those sales weren’t automatically added to the contact record.”
So when HubSpot introduced HubSpot Payments, Eric and his team took interest.
Managing Payments in the HubSpot Ecosystem
“We were really intrigued when HubSpot Payments came out,” says Eric. “We were one of the first companies to sign up for it.”
Eric and his team immediately understood the benefit of bringing payments into their HubSpot CRM ecosystem.
“With payments on the same platform, we’d have visibility across the board,” says Eric. “That would help us understand the behavior of our customers so we could better meet their needs.”
Consequently, Eric decided to use HubSpot Payments to receive and manage payments for ICA’s consumer research study.
Streamlined revenue collection
Today, with HubSpot Payments, ICA’s payment collection and fulfillment process is fast and efficient. Orders are typically fulfilled in an hour instead of days.
Because payments data is stored as an object, ICA can tap the power of the HubSpot CRM Platform to build workflows and reports. Once a customer places an order via the HubSpot payment form, an email with a link to the product is automatically triggered.
“We no longer have two separate paths for verification of payment and order fulfillment,” says Eric. “It all happens seamlessly.”
Streamlined reporting
Just as importantly, information about every research study sale is automatically updated in the HubSpot CRM Platform.
“The moment a study is sold, it’s associated with an individual and a company,”says Eric. ”We can see who’s buying what within the context of every other piece of business they have with us.”
Eric and his team no longer have to use a separate tool, such as Excel, to get a complete picture of their customers.
“Everything rolls up to the contact record, so you can create dashboards and track KPIs in one place,” says Eric.
New customer insights
By having complete information in one place, Eric and his team have new insights into customer behavior.
“We can see how quickly they access the document, how much time they spend perusing it, and who they share it with,” says Eric. “This is information we never had before.”
Eric also credits HubSpot Payments with helping his team fully leverage this revenue stream.
“We used the HubSpot CRM Platform to generate demand for this study. With HubSpot Payments, we can capitalize on that demand,” says Eric.
In short, ICA is using the HubSpot CRM Platform for the entire customer journey.
Payment links for organic conversions
Because payment links are so easy to create, Eric and his team are finding new and innovative ways to use HubSpot Payments.
“If we’re having a conversation with a customer and the research study comes up, we can just send them the payment link instead of a formal invoice,” says Eric. “It feels much more organic than pushing them down a separate payment path.”
Eric believes this flexibility in accepting payments has helped drive sales of the research study by removing friction from the payment process.
“It feels more natural for the customer, which helps conversions,” says Eric.
Plans for future implementation
ICA’s experience with HubSpot Payments has been so successful, Eric hopes to eventually convert subscription payment processing to it as well.
“We still have some payment systems outside HubSpot and use Zapier to bring that information into the HubSpot CRM,” says Eric. “We’d love to not use Zapier and have everything native in HubSpot with HubSpot Payments. It’s something we’re looking into for the future.”
Excellent HubSpot support
Eric couldn’t be happier with the support he’s received from the HubSpot CRM team when implementing the HubSpot CRM Platform and HubSpot Payments.
“With other platforms I’ve worked with, you have to talk to an engineer and wait for a response,” says Eric. “With HubSpot, I just use the chat function. Nine times out of ten, I’m immediately put in touch with someone who can help me.”
For Eric, that level of accessible support means a lot.
“HubSpot’s support is a massive differentiator against any other platform we’ve used,” says Eric.
4X Increase in Sales
With HubSpot Payments, ICA increased sales of its consumer research study by 400%.
ICA also fulfills products faster and more efficiently. What took three days before now only takes one hour—a 98% improvement.
This quick turnaround has also improved customer satisfaction.
“We never get ‘Where’s my thing?’ complaints anymore,” says Eric.
Given this great experience, it’s no wonder Eric describes himself as HubSpot’s number one fan.
“Second only to the wheel, HubSpot may be our favorite invention ever,” jokes Eric. “It’s the best tech decision and maybe the best operational decision we’ve made in years.”
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