Teamwork CRM gives eSkillz sales insights without the complexity

eSkillz is a leading provider of comprehensive support solutions for talent development, learning management systems, and web-conferencing platforms. Their wraparound expertise covers three core divisions: end-user live support, professional services, and media & production services.

eSkillz’s Vice President of Operations is Chrissy Zehr, Chrissy started with the company seven years ago and has worked in multiple roles as she has progressed her career within the company. As eSkillz grew and developed their services, Chrissy along with other senior-level managers kept an eye out for new software that could help them keep pace with the expansions and offer improvements for customers.

eSkillz selected Teamwork as their work management system in 2013, then added Teamwork Desk in 2018 to help them manage client queries and client communication. In 2019, soon after Teamwork CRM launched, eSkillz transitioned away from their complex CRM software in favor of another Teamwork solution.

High-maintenance custom tools

Before the adoption of a CRM tool, spreadsheets were the tools of choice for managing sales at eSkillz. Every detail was entered in Excel: customer data, follow-up conversations, and client location within the sales pipeline. Team members had to become expert Excel users, making spreadsheets for every need and even creating custom formulas to automatically link and connect all of the data. It did the job for a while, but quickly became difficult and unwieldy as they scaled.

“The problem with building custom solutions is that you need to maintain them,” Chrissy said. “You get exactly what you want, but they don’t automatically update themselves. They don’t adapt to changing technology, and then you spend a lot of time updating them. That additional labor takes time, and it costs money.”

Taking advice from several of their senior-level managers, eSkillz jumped to a leading CRM software in the hopes that they could have all of their data and reports in one location — and leave the hassle of manual software maintenance behind. But the new software just seemed to make things more complicated, not less: it required a lot of onboarding time and training, it wasn’t intuitive, and it was overly complex for eSkillz’s needs.

Sales, simplified

A core team at eSkillz started prepping for the changeover to Teamwork CRM in April, rolled it out to the whole company in May, and soon, everyone was using it with ease. Senior managers were giving Chrissy excellent feedback. Teamwork users within eSkillz found it easy to use and when they needed a little assistance, Teamwork CRM support was there to give them the advice they needed.

Suddenly, they had all of the best parts of the previous software, without the overwhelming complexity. Instead of hunting through menus or spreadsheets to locate data, Teamwork CRM gave them a single source of truth for client interactions, visibility over the entire sales process, precision reporting tools for quick analysis, and opportunities for upselling services or client care.

Giving up their carefully crafted spreadsheets for Teamwork CRM has been a good trade-off, too. “It feels like Teamwork developers are basically working for us. Instead of spending time updating spreadsheet formulas, we can work on more crucial things. We’ve reclaimed so much time. It really is remarkable,” said Chrissy.

Extra time, extra resources

How much extra time has eSkillz reclaimed since using Teamwork CRM?" “It’s like having an additional person on our team,” said Chrissy. “It has allowed us to keep up with growth, maintain the systems we have, and take on more responsibilities.” Along with the freedom to focus on client needs and billable work, team leaders no longer have to think about maintaining all of the systems, allowing them to devote more time to building customer-focused sales relationships.

When they have feature requests or suggestions they’d like to see implemented in the product, they reach out to our team to discuss the CRM roadmap and make a feature request, or check in with our Support team to see how they can optimize their workflow or make the most out of existing features.

Team members are discovering more efficiency and increased autonomy with Teamwork CRM, too. Decisions are easier to make and next actions in lead nurture are obvious. They can review and take action throughout the pipeline at every single stage without having to consult with managers first.

Having a clearer picture of lead generation and management is also giving everyone a better idea of areas where their process can be refined. They have more time to analyze what they’re doing and pinpoint areas for improvement instead of just reacting to the next urgent task. Now they’re focusing on fixing problems instead of working around them.