How a Trusted Health-Products Maker Used Cloud Communications to Overcome Enormous Obstacles During COVID

One of the few things that remained constant through all of the unpredictability of the lockdowns was our ability to communicate easily with our team and our customers—by phone, text, or video call. And that’s because we had RingCentral.- Sarah Pérez Jarrett, Salud CEO

Most people take a reactive approach to their health. They wait until they’re sick or injured, then visit a doctor and ask for a prescription. But some people take a more proactive approach, seeking out natural wellness products to keep their bodies and minds running optimally at all times. For thousands of these people all over the world, their trusted source for natural products is SALUD.

A key reason for SALUD’s far-reaching, loyal customer base is the credibility earned over time by its founder, Dr. Jose Rigoberto Pérez Díaz, who has been developing innovative natural health products for decades. Dr. Rigo is a Medical Doctor with a specialization in sports medicine, a Naturopathic Doctor, and a Licensed Nutritionist. Dedicated to studying what makes humans thrive.

A decade ago, SALUD entered a new growth chapter when the company brought on Dr. Rigo’s daughters, Sarah Pérez Jarrett and Hilda Pérez, to run day-to-day operations. Sarah and Hilda hold scientific degrees and have entrepreneurial backgrounds, so they were ideally suited to help expand SALUD’s reach globally.

The following years featured growth on several fronts: SALUD’s team grew to include members in Spain, the Bahamas, and the Dominican Republic. The company also expanded its eCommerce operations. From its Broadway retail location in Manhattan, SALUD packaged and shipped orders from customers around the world. SALUD also grew its product line – adding products for bone and joint health, respiratory and digestive support, skin rejuvenation, brain health, and energy support.

Then in 2020, the unthinkable happened. COVID-19 brought unprecedented challenges to businesses worldwide. As a result, SALUD’s ability to effectively communicate – with each other, suppliers, and customers – became more important than ever.

A thriving health company nearly taken down by a pandemic

With its New York City storefront forced to shut down and its entire team sent into quarantine, CEO Sarah and COO Hilda had to act quickly. The stakes, they understood immediately, were extremely high—and not just in terms of sales.

“Our ability to transition the company’s operations successfully to this new reality was going to affect the financial well-being of our employees and the health of all the customers who depend on our products,” Sarah recalls. “So, we had to make some huge changes overnight—starting with moving our entire shipping operation into my living room in Florida.”

Finding invaluable uses for video conferences

One creative solution the team devised to maintain a sense of normalcy was enabling customers to schedule virtual wellness sessions with Dr. Rigo using RingCentral Video. “RingCentral makes it easy to send an invite link and open a video conference, so that was a great way to continue giving our customers face-to-face access to Dr. Rigo, even though we couldn’t meet in our store anymore.”

And even though the staff was scattered worldwide, SALUD still managed to have regular face-to-face team meetings, brainstorming sessions, and wellness check-ins—also using RingCentral Video.

RingCentral took the place of our old conference room. We’d jump on video calls, get to see each other, and discuss whatever we needed to get done—marketing messaging, sales projects, or just catching up. It allowed us to keep feeling like a team. – Sarah Pérez Jarrett, CEO

Running a successful virtual customer support center

Another surprisingly smooth transition, Sarah explains, was getting her team set up to take customer calls remotely.

“Our team all had the RingCentral apps on their cell phones and laptops so that everyone could answer calls to our customer service number from any of those devices. So even though we weren’t in the same place anymore, we were still able to cover those calls and keep giving our customers outstanding service.”

Pulling communications together and gaining new insights—with help from Konnectryx 

Because Sarah and Hilda also knew that this new remote working environment would have implications for their various technology tools—their eCommerce system, shipping platform, customer databases, etc.—they turned to SALUD’s trusted IT consulting firm, Konnectryx.

“We helped SALUD pull everything together, making sure all the systems and data sources they need every day would carry over to everyone’s new environment and devices,” says Michael  Amico, VP of Worldwide Sales at Konnectryx.

“We also set SALUD up with a new Salesforce platform. And we helped train the team on some of the RingCentral features they hadn’t used before but would be using now—including RingCentral’s integration with Salesforce.”

As Sarah explains, this help from Michael and Konnectryx was invaluable. “We had different systems collecting data, and our team was spending time re-entering that data from one system into another. Konnectryx’s great work consolidating everything into Salesforce and RingCentral helped us—both by making things run more efficiently and also saving us money.”

In fact, with so much of the company’s data—customer profiles and order histories, customer text messages and call logs, etc.—integrated into Salesforce and RingCentral, SALUD now has more visibility into its operations and actionable business intelligence than they had before the lockdowns.

My management team and I can see so much about what’s happening across the company now. We can make sure our customers, especially our long-term customers, are always getting their calls answered right away. We can see how quickly our team is picking up calls on average. We can even use RingCentral’s call recordings to settle disputes with credit card companies. It’s more visibility than we’ve ever had. – Sarah Pérez Jarrett, CEO

Never losing sight of what matters

As relieved as Sarah and her team are that SALUD managed to make it through a pandemic that might well have forced the end of the company, they’re even prouder of the work they managed to do supporting their customers through the lockdowns—which had little to do with selling products.

“In those early days of COVID, we weren’t even concerned with orders—just making sure our customers were okay. Instead, our team was calling everyone to check in on them and see if they needed anything. We even partnered with Assemblywoman Carmen DeLaRosa in NYC, who connected us with local food banks to serve as an information source for our customers in need. I’m so grateful we were able to provide that kind of service during the worst of the lockdowns—and I’m also grateful to RingCentral for helping us make those connections possible.”

We’re emerging from COVID as a stronger, more efficient business, and I credit a lot of that to RingCentral. – Sarah Pérez Jarrett, CEO

Read the full case study from RingCentral here.