A Canadian distributor of premium home and kitchen appliances had outgrown its CRM and was ready to make the move from HubSpot to Salesforce. As a distributor, the company sits between the brands it carries and the people who buy them, partnering with retailers, builders, and designers while running customer service for two retail brands.
That service function had grown alongside the business. Customers reached the team by phone, email, and web across both brands, and as volume increased, so did the complexity across CRM and service operations. Processes that had once been workable became fragmented, and the team was relying on workarounds to keep service running.
The move to Salesforce was meant to change that. Lane Four delivered Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Service Cloud Voice, and Marketing Cloud Engagement, with Amazon Connect integrated through Service Cloud Voice, giving sales, service, and marketing one environment to work from. For service, the ambition was to give agents one place to handle every customer contact, whatever channel it came through.
The plan was built to modernize how customers reached the service team. As it took shape, it also revealed what agents needed in front of them once a customer got through.
Workarounds Couldn’t Keep Pace With Growth
The company had outgrown HubSpot as its CRM. Processes had become fragmented, and the platform limited the business’s ability to scale.
Those limits carried straight into customer service. On the service side, communications ran through workarounds, call volume limits were affecting operations, and service capabilities were limited. Calls still ran through a legacy NEC phone system.
As complexity grew across CRM and service operations, the business needed a more robust, centralized solution. Replacing the CRM alone wouldn’t get it there. The service team needed a different way of working.
Designing Service Around One Workspace
That became the goal: bring customer service for both retail brands onto a single Service Cloud platform, replacing HubSpot and the legacy NEC phone system. Instead of switching between disconnected tools, agents would work phone, email, and web cases from one workspace.
The contact centre sat at the heart of that design. Amazon Connect, integrated through Service Cloud Voice, would bring calls, call recordings, and transcripts alongside every case, so phone contacts lived in the same place as email and web cases.
From there, each case would be routed to the right level of support (Core, Escalated, Advanced, or VIP) based on its complexity. The team’s service commitments would be written into the system as rules: a same-day response for cases received before 3 p.m., and next-day by noon for those after.
Success meant every contact, on every channel, would land in one place and move through one consistent process.
The Original Plan Put Channels First
With that design in mind, Phase 1 was planned as an MVP focused on Email-to-Case and Web-to-Case. Amazon Connect would replace the legacy NEC phone system, using an IVR to direct callers by brand and inquiry type and create cases directly from phone contacts. Historical customer and case data would migrate from HubSpot, so agents started with full context.
The EPASS integration, which would bring in order history and tracking, was planned for Phase 2, once the core service channels were stable. It was a logical sequence: get the channels right first, then build on them.
A Case Without the Order Is Only Half a Case
As Phase 1 took shape, that sequence started to show its limits. It became clear that most inbound cases were about orders: delivery status, missing items, and damaged or dead-on-arrival products.
That changed what phone-to-case could deliver on its own. It could identify the caller and open a case, but without order data in Salesforce, agents would still have to open EPASS to answer the question. Every switch between systems added handle time, especially while a customer was waiting on the line.
For a retail service team, order history isn’t an enhancement. It’s the core of the MVP. Agents can’t answer “where’s my delivery?” without it.
So the scope changed mid-phase. Instead of waiting for Phase 2, Lane Four brought EPASS order history and tracking directly onto the case.
Rescoping Worked Because the Foundation Was Built to Flex
Moving an integration forward in the middle of a phase can force a team to rework what’s already built. Here, it didn’t. Rescoping mid-phase worked because the foundation was already flexible. Case record types, routing tiers, and sharing rules didn’t need to be rebuilt to make room for order data, so the integration fit into the structure already in place.
With order data in scope, the solution Lane Four delivered came together across sales, service, and marketing:
- Sales Cloud to centralize CRM and streamline sales processes
- Service Cloud and Service Cloud Voice to modernize service operations and handle high-volume customer calls
- EPASS order history and tracking surfaced directly on the case
- Marketing Cloud Engagement to strengthen marketing automation and customer engagement
- Sales, service, and marketing data unified in one scalable Salesforce environment
Rescoping Worked Because the Foundation Was Built to Flex
Moving an integration forward in the middle of a phase can force a team to rework what’s already built. Here, it didn’t. Rescoping mid-phase worked because the foundation was already flexible. Case record types, routing tiers, and sharing rules didn’t need to be rebuilt to make room for order data, so the integration fit into the structure already in place.
With order data in scope, the solution Lane Four delivered came together across sales, service, and marketing:
- Sales Cloud to centralize CRM and streamline sales processes
- Service Cloud and Service Cloud Voice to modernize service operations and handle high-volume customer calls
- EPASS order history and tracking surfaced directly on the case
- Marketing Cloud Engagement to strengthen marketing automation and customer engagement
- Sales, service, and marketing data unified in one scalable Salesforce environment
More Than 2,000 Successful Calls a Day Since Go-Live
The impact shows up first in volume. Since go-live, there have been more than 2,000 successful customer calls per day.
The bigger change is what happens during those calls. Surfacing EPASS order history and tracking on the case removed the need to open a second system, so agents could resolve more contacts in one place. Fewer tool switches meant faster, more confident answers, which mattered most for phone contacts coming through Amazon Connect.
That shift also made the migration more valuable. The migrated HubSpot data became far more useful alongside live order data, giving agents the full customer picture in one view.
Across four Salesforce products, the project created a scalable foundation for sales, service, and marketing, one the business can keep building on as it grows.
Start With the Question Your Customers Ask Most
Outgrowing a CRM is a sign of growth. Service is often where the limits hurt first, especially with high call volumes, so it’s worth knowing the signs before the workarounds pile up.
But replacing the system is only half the job. The bigger question is what your agents can see when a customer gets through. For this retail service team, the answer was order history, and it belonged in Phase 1.
That’s easier to get right when sales, service, and marketing are planned together, and when the team leading the move has migration experience on both HubSpot and Salesforce.
If your team has outgrown its CRM, or your contact centre is connecting calls faster than it can answer them, let’s chat.
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