RelaDyne is one of the nation's largest distributors of bulk oil, fuel, and lubricants: 715 employees and $1.3 billion in annual revenue.
At a glance
- Industry
- Oil & Gas
- Employees
- 715
- Revenue
- $1.3B
- Website
- reladyne.com
- Proton products
- eCommerce AI
The company wanted more of its orders placed by customers themselves. Every order a customer places independently lowers the cost to serve and lifts profit — but only if the online experience is good enough that customers keep coming back to it.
The challenge: getting customers to order on their own
The goal was straightforward — raise the percentage of orders customers placed independently, reducing the cost to serve and increasing profit. What that required was harder. The portal had to anticipate what a customer needed and suggest it while they shopped, drawing on everything they had ever bought, not just what they had ordered online.
Simply telling customers about a website is no longer enough. To boost online sales, distributors need to give customers a compelling reason to use it.
The pandemic made that urgent. Years of change arrived in a matter of months, and industries built on in-person interaction — field sales among them — had to pivot to online solutions. For Ashley Rickman, RelaDyne's Senior Director of Sales and Marketing Technologies, that meant shifting the company's focus to online customer service.
Her team runs the ecommerce customer portal where customers log in to place orders, so she went looking for a tool that could put relevant product recommendations in front of them as they browsed.
Why Proton: recommendations built on every purchase, not just online ones
RelaDyne upgraded its customer portal and added Proton's eCommerce AI, which personalizes recommendations for each shopper using transactional history pulled from all of RelaDyne's important data sources, including its ERP.
Customers who log in now see Proton-generated recommendations: new products, products due to reorder, substitution suggestions, and more.
“Our main goal is to make the customer experience as good as it can be, and Proton is a huge part of that. The AI-generated product recommendations in the customer portal are a big deal, since they give customers all sorts of helpful info as they check out different products.”
Ashley Rickman · Senior Director of Sales and Marketing Technologies, RelaDyneWhat reps gained: everything in one place
The recommendations turned out not to be only for customers. RelaDyne's sales reps started opening the portal themselves to consult customers on mobile and desktop — product details, items due to reorder, substitutions for a stockout — all in the same place their customers see them.
“Before Proton, our reps had to log into multiple systems to get a fraction of the insights Proton provides today. Proton made it super easy by putting everything in one place. Now, the reps don't have to waste time searching all over the place for information and can focus on selling instead.”
Ashley Rickman · Senior Director of Sales and Marketing Technologies, RelaDyneBefore
With Proton
Product details
BeforeReps logged in and out of multiple systems to assemble a fraction of what they needed.
With ProtonOne portal, on mobile or desktop, showing the same information the customer sees.
Stockouts
BeforeFinding a substitution meant tracking down the right replacement product.
With ProtonSubstitution suggestions surface alongside the product.
Product questions
BeforeA call to the customer service team for the answer.
With ProtonThe answer is already there in the portal.
The results: a portal customers come back to
Since implementing Proton, RelaDyne has seen more customers log into the portal and keep using it.
67% more regular portal users
The number of regular users in the customer portal is up 67% since implementation — more customers placing their own orders, which is exactly the shift RelaDyne set out to make.
Over $10M in incremental revenue
AI-generated product recommendations — products due for reorder chief among them — contributed to the company's growth over the past year, with more than $10 million in incremental revenue generated.
Reps who stopped hunting for answers
With Proton powering the portal, there's no wasted time searching for product details, tracking down substitutions for stockouts, or calling the customer service team to ask for product information. “It's been a major time-saver for them,” Ashley said.
Live in two weeks
Ashley recalls a hassle-free implementation of Proton that took just two weeks, running on the transactional history RelaDyne already had across its ERP and other systems.
The bottom line: a better reason to shop online
RelaDyne set out to move more ordering online without making the customer experience worse. By personalizing what shoppers see — and drawing on every purchase, not just the online ones — the portal became something customers return to, and reps use too.
“It's exactly what we had in mind when we came up with our vision for where we want to take our technology,” Ashley said.
