Arctic Spas improves customer and employee experience with unified Zoho One

The challenge

For far too long, Phil Edey, Business Analyst at Arctic Spas, says that the company relied on a patchwork collection of apps that encouraged only minimal efficiency. Its chosen project management software could only produce a long list of tasks, leading to long, unwieldy meetings due to poor organization. As a result, marketing efforts were difficult to coordinate and remained sporadic, relegated only to pop-up banners. Meanwhile, salespeople were growing frustrated with their supporting software, and customer service suffered.

Time was of the essence, too; Edey maintains that sales leads need to be contacted within the first hour after they initially reach out, or they'll likely lose interest. And being a premium product with a lengthy sales process, the efficiency of their funnel in capturing and qualifying leads is paramount.

Problems with the company's software extended beyond task management. Without the ability to collect and synthesize data analytics, the organization was over-allocating resources for sales and didn't have the visibility needed to identify issues and inform course-correction strategies.

At the time, the company's tech suite contained apps that weren't able to communicate well with one another, and it was becoming difficult to achieve alignment between departments and employees. This was particularly relevant to Arctic Spas because of the company's large dealer network; they had to ensure geographically appropriate leads made it to the right individual while maintaining equitable distribution among salespeople.

The solution

Arctic Spas evaluated numerous potential solutions and ultimately landed on Zoho CRM to serve as a hub that would connect to other apps, offering visibility and interoperability to each department based on specific needs. This eliminated silos and encouraged collaboration without overwhelming employees with an array of complicated new features.

Arctic Spas has connected their sales, support, marketing, and project management processes on Zoho, improving both their operations and the quality of their data and analytics. A customer journey may start through marketing campaigns or webforms, with CRM capturing that data into one record that any team can access to get any information about the customer. Over time, this also connects to any support related information coming from the customer service team.

For the sales side, Zoho CRM was configured to guide the team through a streamlined process. Leads were fed into the system, which automatically determined which dealership was best equipped to service the potential client as soon as possible. The system generated email templates and workflows for the sales reps to use, customized to the potential customer's business and use case.

To ensure harmony within its technology suite, Arctic Spas went on to replace existing pieces of software with Zoho products that worked directly with CRM. Management could make use of Zoho Projects to oversee progress, and sales folks benefited greatly from further data produced by Zoho SalesIQ and from the customer service platform, Zoho Desk. Staff at Arctic Spas' 14 retail stores also use apps built on Zoho Creator, Zoho's low-code development platform, to track inventory and order status all the way through the installation process. The marketing team received Zoho Campaigns and Zoho Social to manage automated campaigns, and they also rolled out Zoho Backstage to help manage their 30th anniversary celebration event as well as annual seminars in both 2024 and 2025.

All told, Arctic Spas implemented 11 new pieces of software. Now, the company runs on a unified system, giving them access to analytics that empower decision-making. Edey says that the software helps with slicing and dicing data for whomever it's required—salespeople and managers pay attention to different metrics, and each region contains its own idiosyncrasies.

By implementing Zoho Analytics as well, Arctic Spas could drill down even further into its sales data to determine trends by region, time period, and external factors, such as tariffs. This windfall of data, available to anyone within the organization, would guide improvements to operations and help the company prepare for evolving economic conditions. For instance, when the possibility of increased tariffs first came up, Arctic Spas was able to parse through data to determine if and how they should adjust production between their facilities in Canada and the United States.

They also fed real-time information about their customers' hot tubs from Analytics right into CRM. Now, when a customer calls in about an issue they are experiencing, the service team can pull up that customer's dashboard with live information on their spa's water temperature, PH levels, or sanitizer levels, and then provide immediate assistance.

Benefits and ROI

Almost immediately after implementing Zoho, Arctic Spas noticed a reduction in effort and time required to run daily operations. The length of those unruly status meetings dropped by 66%—from 90 minutes down to only 30 minutes.

Unification between apps has unlocked new functionality and methods for acquiring customers. For example, the company began hosting live chats and was able to hand off interested participants to the sales team seamlessly, converting a significant number of them into customers. "I like how seamlessly it transfers the information from an online chat to then create a lead for a salesperson to be able to follow up," says Alexa Macklin, Sales Manager at Arctic Spas.

Macklin points to the software's simplicity and adaptability as a leading factor in it's success within the organization.

Centralized marketing activities have also allowed them to increase the quality of the leads that they hand over to sales from other channels. Vanessa Lewis, Director of Marketing at Arctic Spas, notes that current economic times have made potential customers more hesitant to invest in luxury products, but they have seen success with value-focused campaigns sent through Zoho that focus on the aspects of their product that are more sustainable and affordable in the long run. "This has led to higher open rates and click-through rates and more people reaching out," Lewis mentioned.

Increased data visibility is also boosting marketing efforts. For example, their marketing team identified a regional partiality towards a specific spa model through Analytics. They then leveraged that information by swapping the photos attached to their campaigns from a lounge seating spa to a bench seating spa in that region, effectively doubling their click-through rates in the process.

The sales process became smoother, as the software's automation capabilities enabled folks to offload routine, tedious tasks and focus on making sales. The ability to offer faster service and quickly field inquiries—maintaining end-to-end visibility into customer interactions via integrations with third-party software, something the company hadn't originally envisioned—has improved sales and customer experience dramatically. On top of that, giving support staff access to real-time data personalized to each customer's spa has improved support outcomes and strengthened customer relationships across the board.

Lewis also highlighted the benefits on the employee experience side, saying that working with teams that use Zoho requires less time on the phone and less follow-up than those not using Zoho. Within a unified software system, communication doesn't have to be constant because anyone within the organization can check project statuses and see updates in real-time. This goes for events as well, which have been centralized in Backstage. "It has made event logistics, planning, communication, and execution easier for everyone involved," Edey remarked. "Our attendees and staff love it."

Overall, both Lewis and Edey praise Zoho for helping to quantify marketing ROI across initiatives via Zoho product integrations.

"The great thing about Zoho is that it allows us to do so much," Edey says. "It gives us a better picture of our customers and has allowed us to open all sorts of avenues to create metrics to see how we are doing. We can go back a long way and really see how we have progressed."

Looking forward with Zoho One

Arctic Spas hopes to leverage Zoho's strong analytics capabilities to refine its sales and marketing processes further. The company will start running AB testing on different landing pages and start running campaigns through Zoho Marketing Plus.

Customer feedback will play a significant role, moving forward. Zoho Survey already collects information from store managers to identify pain points and successes, and the company rolled out one survey to their online parts customers asking why they purchased an Arctic Spa. After seeing how it provided them with valuable feedback, they plan to use Survey more to hear directly from their customers and ensure their business objectives always remain aligned with what their target market is looking for.

Most of all, Arctic Spas is excited to innovate and refine its technology suite now that it has found a partner who shares a dedication to continue evolving. "We're not happy with the status quo; we want to progress and push the limits on manufacturing and customer experience," Edey says. "Zoho has the same philosophy—they're not simply content staying where they are, they're always building new things and ensuring their products are accessible to businesses of all sizes."