Personal involvement

I am a fan of the Ronald McDonald philosophy. I know from experience how much the volunteers mean in extremely difficult situations of families. It has been over 20 years since my brother and sister-in-law were guests at the Ronald McDonald House in Utrecht. My eight-year-old nephew had leukemia, which severely affected their family. My wife and I went to visit them when we were still a young family. It struck me deeply how comforting the care of the Ronald McDonald guesthouse was.

 House Utrecht

The Kinderfonds has been live on Salesforce CRM for more than three years now. Huis Utrecht also maintains its relationships via Salesforce and the support of all kinds of organizations and the donations from friends are well managed. The guest house for parents of sick children is run by volunteers and is largely dependent on donations from individuals and companies. The registration of the guests was done in a separate application, not connected to Salesforce.

Huis Utrecht has been managed by Agatha Kleis since the beginning of 2017. With a background in hotel management, Agatha initiated the Business Breakfast Club (breakfast with a mission). A logical wish was to integrate guest registration with CRM.

Huis Utrecht wordt sinds begin 2017 gemanaged door Agatha Kleis. Met een achtergrond in hotelmanagement heeft Agatha onder andere de Business Breakfast Club (ontbijt met een missie) geïnitieerd. Een logische wens was om de gastenregistratie te integreren met CRM.

 Challenge

Privacy and GDPR legislation were a challenge in this regard. The number of volunteers registering guests is considerable, it would be very expensive to have them all work in Salesforce directly. Moreover, that gives additional challenges in terms of privacy and user-friendliness. How can registration be done in a reliable, discrete, cost-effective and user-friendly way?

 Solution

In close collaboration with the Ronald McDonald Children’s Fund and Huis Utrecht, g-company has found a good solution for this challenge: volunteers can use online forms to register guests in Salesforce. Salesforce uses an objective algorithm to select which room is allocated for which parents, sometimes with their families. The information is processed and shared via a secure link. In addition, room management and financial administration are managed in Salesforce. There is now a complete picture of all guests within the CRM.

Most organizations have multiple processes that are not integrated supported by a central system. It is worthwhile to map this out and to think about what added value can be achieved by working together on a platform and registering all data only once.

 Result

The details of guests, the parents of sick children, are now also in the database and aftercare is facilitated even better. In addition, former guests can, in an appropriate manner and through well-designed customer journeys, give something back to the Ronald McDonald House that has received them so lovingly. From personal experience I know that this need can be strong. At Ronald McDonald they know that too: there are thousands of volunteers in the Netherlands who are committed to helping the lives of parents with sick children in a very difficult period of their lives to make it a little more bearable.

Want to know more about guest registration, or how further added value can be achieved with the Salesforce platform? Feel free to mail or call me: balt@gcompany.nl | 0652869224.

Read more about the Salesforce CRM implementation for the Ronald McDonald Children’s Fund here.