Case study: Berggren

Berggren is an international full-service intellectual property house that helps its customers with intellectual property rights (IPR), including protection, conflicts, contracts, and commercialization. As an established company, Berggren has a broad customer base, which has been increasingly difficult and time-consuming to offer service to. Thanks to Vainu, artificial intelligence now aids the process and reveals when a customer should be contacted.

The company

Berggren, an 80-year-old IPR house based in Helsinki is one of the older Vainu-customers. The company has trusted Vainu's sales intelligence solution since 2016. The challenge for Berggren was to keep an increased amount of customer data updated. They also needed the information about current affairs at any firm to offer their services at the right time. With a customer base of more than 4,000 companies, this was a difficult feat through manual labor.

Initially, Berggren acquired Vainu to help with their new business efforts. Shortly, the focus shifted to enriching their CRM data and monitoring changes in their current customers, in which Vainu proved crucial.

AI-monitored customer base

Berggren first purchased Vainu to support sales and to build target groups with companies matching Berggren's Ideal Customer Profile. At the same time, a need emerged to have up-to-date firmographic data (industry, revenue, personnel, etc.) in Berggren's CRM. This is when Vainu showed its real power. Vainu's company information is now integrated into their HubSpot CRM, updating the firmographics in real time.

In addition to firmographics, Berggren uses Vainu's sales alerts to monitor its current customer base, ultimately wanting to know when they should reach out. The buying signals they look for include brand-related recruitments, internationalization, and new product releases.

According to Heikki Kinnunen, Vice President and Partner at Berggren, the company has stopped cold calling altogether. "In the world of IPR, one needs to seize the day. If you – by chance – make a call when there's an invention that needs a patent, you're a lucky person. When we reach out, there's always a buying signal to back it up. To use static calling lists is not relevant in today's business."

Contacting when there's a need

In the past, when looking for new sales opportunities, Berggren would reach out to roughly 100 contacts to acquire 10 customers. Now, with Vainu's advanced company data, the process is 5 times more efficient: Only 20 contacts are necessary to close 10 new deals. This has an effect also on customer satisfaction. As Berggren employees are better informed of their customers' situations, they are able to provide improved customer service. During the past years, Berggren's Net promoter score has improved by 20 points, in which Vainu played a vital role.

Berggren has used Vainu for several years now and plans to do so in the future. "We've tried many premium services, but they haven't worked for our niche business. Vainu's comprehensive data sets and versatility make it worthwhile, even for us!" Heikkinen praises and finishes:

"Vainu is a genuinely useful tool. I've recommended it to many colleagues in other companies, and many of them have chosen Vainu. I'm happy to give positive feedback, and I hope that our customer feels the same way. Nothing beats positive customer feedback."