Customer Story

Piramis: Connecting TLC with clients from north to south with a more personal touch

Piramis implements Google Workspace to encourage collaboration and reduce the need for travel around Italy thanks to Meet, increasing productivity and saving 30% on travel costs.

A leading TLC company, Piramis sells and distributes Vodafone products as well as other communications software and services.

Italy
https://www.piramisgroup.com/

Features used

Sheets

Docs

Google Meet

Vault

Piramis implements Google Workspace to encourage collaboration and reduce the need for travel around Italy thanks to Meet, increasing productivity and saving 30% on travel costs.

Google Workspace Results

Up to 3 times more clients a day serviced over Google Meet

• Reduces the need for travel for both management and agents with Google Meet, bringing travel costs down 30%

• Enables a collaborative work environment with Sheets, Docs, and Slides, helping to save time and support GDPR compliance

• Facilitates new ways of customer interaction over video calls, increasing potential daily sales visits by up to 300%

By focusing on building loyalty as well as acquiring new customers, telecommunications distributor Piramis has become a leader in the TLC market in Italy. It has more than 350 resellers, 38 headquarter offices, and 42 shops located across 18 regions. "We have been one of Vodafone's primary Italian partners for 16 years," says Davide Possi, CEO at Piramis. "As well as Vodafone devices and hardware, we offer advanced management and administration solutions. Our products range from sim cards, smartphones, and alarm devices for the elderly to broadband and productivity software."

"We want to evolve with our customers, and really understand the challenges they are facing. Technology and new ways of working can help us to listen to our customers, and take care of them." - Davide Possi, CEO, Piramis

Piramis has adopted a long-term vision based around social investment and customer trust, with 70 percent of its income coming from repeat trade with its established base of customers. "We have to adopt the best technologies in order to keep pace with our existing customers, as well as to advance business growth. At the moment, we are gaining an additional 1,000 clients a month and in 2017, we grew by 30 percent."

Because its network operates across Italy, Piramis was facing high transport costs and needed to hire additional agents to support its growth. It looked for a solution that could help foster employee collaboration to reduce costs and optimize processes, as well as help Piramis become General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant. Its employees were using various email providers, which made oversight difficult. Migrating to Google Workspace was the answer.

"We want to evolve with our customers, and really understand the challenges they are facing," says Davide. "Technology and new ways of working can help us to listen to our customers, and take care of them."

Increasing collaboration and system oversight

Travel can be a significant drain on time and money if your network of employees and distributors is located across a wide geographical area. "We have more than 40 locations around Italy, with offices in the north located 1,000 km from the offices in the south," says Davide. "Visiting those locations to oversee employees means a lot of travel, and in addition to that, our employees carry out 5,000 client visits a month."

To reduce the need for travel and optimize its processes, with the help of implementation partner Go Reply, Piramis migrated its 1,000 employees to Google Workspace accounts. "Google Workspace is an integrated solution that helped us address many aspects required to become GDPR compliant," says Davide. "That includes better device management, an integrated email system with Gmail, and an improved data archiving system thanks to Vault. As G Suite Business Edition includes unlimited storage on Drive, it has eliminated the need for hard disks and USB keys to transfer files. As a system, it's easier to manage and supports our data safeguarding protocols."

"Whilst the collaborative benefits are important, the biggest transformation has been using Google Meet. It's now no longer necessary to travel for a meeting, and it's also enabling us to develop new sales strategies." - Davide Possi, CEO, Piramis

Before, Piramis agents were using various free email services, whereas now they have a unified email system. "Gmail not only helps with data oversight, it has also enabled our employees to work more flexibly, as they can access their emails whenever they want, from whatever device they want," says Davide.

In terms of collaboration, the Google Workspace productivity tools have improved communication between the sales and back-office teams. "With Sheets, Docs, and Drive, file sharing is much more straightforward. The sales team no longer needs to email attachments in order to get a product provisioned for a customer, and they can also collaborate on their monthly sales record using Sheets. This means the process is faster, and less error-prone."

"Whilst the collaborative benefits are important, the biggest transformation has been using Google Meet," says Davide. "It's now no longer necessary to travel for a meeting, and it's also enabling us to develop new sales strategies."

Face-to-face telesales for better customer engagement

Piramis employees carry out 5,000 client visits every month, to upsell new products or resolve invoice queries. Rather than traveling 30 or 50 km to visit customers, agents are now consulting with their clients over Google Meet. That means an agent can deal with a specific query within half an hour, without incurring any transportation costs or wasting time, and can also visit up to three times more customers in a day.

"We are also starting to use the same technique for new customer acquisitions," explains Davide. "It's easier to build a connection with a customer over Google Meet than over the phone, especially as they can see the products you're talking about. It's more straightforward to build trust that way, so negotiating times tend to be shorter. Moreover, it's much easier to understand and communicate the advantages of using an advanced tool like Google Workspace when you're using the product yourself."

"The goal is to continue growing at our present rate of 30 percent annually, but without hiring additional staff. Thanks to the optimizations we have achieved with Google Workspace, that will be possible." - Davide Possi, CEO, Piramis

As well as 350 sales agents, Piramis also has a team of 15 specialists who support customers with more in-depth technical knowledge. "Those specialists can now carry out training sessions with agents over Google Meet, rather than traveling to provide training," says Davide. "And in terms of customer support, they can also provide remote support to the sales agents during customer appointments, so a single specialist can be responsible for 50 salespeople."

Maintaining growth, optimizing costs

By conducting meetings over Google Meet instead of traveling, Piramis has been able to reduce its transport costs by 30 percent. "And not only have we reduced costs, we've also increased productivity," says Davide. "Before, an agent could make 5 visits a day. Now, agents are able to complete between 10 and 15 appointments a day. Moreover, as CEO, I previously had to physically visit each location every 3 months. Now, I check in every fortnight over Google Meet, which enables me to be more present, and to address and resolve issues faster."

Now, Piramis is working with Google and Go Reply to provide additional training and support for the company’s employees. "The idea is to develop employee skills beyond Gmail, so they can really make the most of the tools. We would like to extend our use of Google Meet to all our manager presentations, to save even more on travel," says Davide. "We are also experimenting with Forms to gather feedback from clients on their product requirements, service satisfaction, and so on. We would like to roll that out to our entire client base to gain further insight."

"The goal is to continue growing at our present rate of 30 percent annually, but without hiring additional staff," says Davide. "Thanks to the optimizations we have achieved with Google Workspace, that will be possible."

About the partners

Go ReplyGoogle Cloud Managed Service Provider, Go Reply helps customers solve challenges by using Google Cloud.

Vodafone ItaliaVodafone Italia is one of the world's largest telecommunications companies, with mobile operations in 25 countries and fixed broadband in 19 markets.

Learn More

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*Google Workspace was formerly known as G Suite prior to Oct. 6, 2020.