U-Store-It Opens Call Center

U-Store-It Trust, a nationwide self-storage company, has announced the opening of a company-owned call center in Wayne, Pennsylvania. To help ensure a successful launch and streamlined operations, the company has deployed the Service Cloud and the Sales Cloud, customer relationship management (CRM) from salesforce.com.

Until this opening, U-Store-It handled calls through an outsourced vendor. The company has now transitioned the majority of its call volume to its recently opened facility. With an in-house call center, the company can directly control the service level it provides to both present and potential customers.

With this transition, U-Store-It has increased the conversion rate of calls to reservations and appointments significantly during the month of May as compared to the first quarter of the calendar year 2009.

"Our call center is a vital element in our commitment to provide first-class service to our customers," said U-Store-It Chief Executive Officer Dean Jernigan, in a Wednesday statement.

"We are extremely pleased with the initial results of the center's operations. Our May results provide evidence that taking direct control of the call center has improved the customer experience materially."

The call center team currently consists of an experienced call center manager, five supervisors, 22 full-time agents and a number of part-time agents. All together the team has more than 125 years of call center experienced. In May 2009 alone, the U-Store-It call center handled more than 25,000 calls.

In an effort to enhance its sales and customer service activities, Salesforce.com (News - Alert) will provide U-Store-It with a consolidated view of customer activities and behavior through all of its customer touch points, including the call center, Web site and store systems through the Service Cloud and the Sales Cloud.

The Salesforce.com solution will cover all 386 company-owned facilities and roughly 205 network affiliate locations. U-Store-It expects that the integration will be complete by the end of the third quarter of calendar year 2009. When complete, the company will have access to a unified view of customer history and timely information on self-storage facilities and network affiliate activity.

"Salesforce.com is clearly the leader in CRM," said Jernigan. "We are extremely pleased to work with the best and look forward to enhancing our sales and service capabilities with its industry-leading technology. This deployment is another significant advancement in our commitment to provide our customers and network affiliate partners with superior service."

While this move was probably not well received by the outsourced vendor, the fact that U-Store-It is bringing its call center operations in-house will help to better position the company in the eyes of customers. This move is also sure to boost the local economy, in Wayne, Pennsylvania, creating new jobs and driving economic growth.