Salesforce is helping US office furniture maker Herman Miller deliver a more cohesive omnichannel shopping experience, making it easier for its customers to furnish and design their space at home, work and beyond.

Californian CRM company Salesforce is working with Herman Miller, a more than 100-year-old pioneer in furniture design, to transform its online store and business strategy.

With more people re-furnishing and redesigning their homes during the pandemic, Herman Miller saw a dramatic spike in online demand for furniture that supported remote work and lifestyles.

It has redesigned its ecommerce experience from the ground up, based on more than 110 hours of customer research and user testing from over 200 participants. The new site has been developed to deliver a consistent, user-friendly experience with additional content that answers common shopper questions.

Added features include enhanced storytelling content and an improved customer-centric navigation designed to provide easier access to popular categories such as gaming. In addition, expanded product filtering and a new Shop the Room feature lets users browse products displayed in lifestyle images with the click of a button.

To meet expectations, speed and scalability needs, Herman Miller teamed up with Salesforce to redesign its ecommerce experience with more functionalities, making shopping more convenient and personalised for customers.

“For over a century, Herman Miller’s purpose has been rooted around creating the best designs that improve peoples’ lives,” said Ben Groom, chief digital officer at Herman Miller. “Our customers need a richer, more informative, more visual online experience that can give them the confidence to make highly considered furniture buying decisions. With Salesforce, we have become more integrated across all of our brands and our online shopping experiences now mirror the same quality as our products.”

Herman Miller teamed up with Salesforce to manage the entire customer experience for both B2B and B2C businesses. Delivering a consistent experience across multiple brands around the globe is no easy task but with Salesforce, speed, scale and consistency were found to be possible. 

“Delivering a consistent and immersive experience is key to driving customer loyalty,” said Lidiane Jones, executive vice president at Salesforce. “With Salesforce, Herman Miller will be able to do just that, meeting their customers where they are, surfacing products that are most relevant and doing it all on a single platform.”

Relaunching Herman Miller’s ecommerce web sites, including both Store.HermanMiller.com and DWR.com, on Commerce Cloud has resulted in increased conversion rates, simple add-to-cart functionality and faster site speed. Shoppers can now browse and buy products more easily with features including tailored product recommendations, streamlined checkout that allows customers to click on any product image to purchase the product, as well as a chat feature that allows shoppers to video chat with associates seamlessly from the web site.

Herman Miller is using Marketing Cloud Journey Builder to develop complex customer journeys and email campaigns. By leveraging Interaction Studio, Herman Miller is also able to understand customer preferences across digital touchpoints, use those data to help better personalise customer interactions, and understand the impact of their strategies across channels.

By using Sales Cloud, Herman Miller can better manage sales leads and opportunities across brands, monitor team performance, track sales insights, and automate manual tasks through a single dashboard. With every sales user on the same platform, Sales Cloud will provide a single source for Herman Miller’s customers.

Covid-19 has increased the demands on customer service teams as case numbers multiply. Herman Miller has managed this increased case volume with the help of Salesforce Service Cloud. With Experience Cloud, Herman Miller can quickly manage and collaborate with dealers on projects such as store openings and new product lines, making it faster and easier for each dealer to sell their products.

Herman Miller says it is committed to making a positive impact on the environment. With Sustainability Cloud, it can track its carbon footprint and other climate-related initiatives it has in place to achieve its 2023 Earthright goals.

Since its inception in 1905, the furniture maker’s innovative, problem-solving designs and furnishings have helped people live, work, learn, heal and play. In 2018, Herman Miller created Herman Miller Group, a purposefully selected, complementary family of brands that includes Colebrook Bosson Saunders, Design Within Reach, Geiger, Hay, Maars Living Walls, Maharam and Naughtone.

Salesforce has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange.