TC Acoustic leverages low-code to streamline retail operations

The company: About TC Acoustic

TC Acoustic (TC) is a major audio distributor in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. Carrying globally award-winning and category-leading brands—Sonos, Marshall, Klipsch, and most recently, Bowers & Wilkins—they're a sought-after go-to partner for both online and offline retailers. With a people-first philosophy, they were voted #1 in The Straits Times Best Customer Service awards and were named the Great Place to Work™ Best Small Workplace in Singapore.

After transitioning to new management in 2010, TC went through an extreme makeover. With a young staff team, TC has a fresh, entrepreneurial culture. Throughout the pandemic, their innovative strategies propelled their brands to be best sellers on online marketplaces like Lazada and Shopee.

The challenge: The drudgery of manual processes

Before using Zoho Creator, TC Acoustic relied on various communication channels and Google Sheets to gather information and track retail execution, which required considerable administrative effort and was time-consuming and cumbersome.

Some of the challenges the team faced before adopting low-code:

• Manual processes that required a lot of labor hours and were prone to human error
• Lack of a single source of information and ownership for customer returns, leading to confusion and accountability issues
• Difficulty in tracking the progression of cases, limiting visibility on problem areas, which in turn limited the possibilities for improvement
• Considerable efforts were needed to calculate pay, commissions, and rostering

The solution: Retail applications galore

By leveraging Zoho Creator, TC Acoustic developed four custom applications that tackled the challenges they faced in their retail operations.

Store Visit app

This retail store management application provides a one-stop solution for managing stores. It allows managers to keep track of store staff, customer visits, and the different audits conducted in the store. The app also consolidates data, making it accessible to the team for analysis and report generation. With this app, TC Acoustic can ensure accountability, simplify operations, and make data-driven decisions.

TC Ambassador app

The TC Ambassador app is a management tool designed to streamline the scheduling and commission tracking process for the company's promoters (ambassadors). With over eighty ambassadors across different countries, coordinating schedules and tracking sales data was previously a manual and time-intensive process.

For rostering, ambassadors just need to input their available dates, and the app will slot them into available stores for their duties. During their slot, they can then key in their sales data, which allows the company to track commissions easily without manual processing. Since all the data is readily available, consolidating and analyzing payroll, reporting, and forecasting data becomes easy.

TC Asset Loan Portal

The TC Asset Loan Portal helps manage the movement and quality of their demo units. The application tracks the entire process from the point of request to the deployment to retail stores to regular audits on deployed units. The app also offers visibility on the locations and conditions of these units at any point in time.

Service Concierge app

The Service Concierge app is a customer service application that keeps track of customer interactions. All records are also tied to Zoho CRM, allowing seamless understanding of a customer’s journey.

The app allows relevant departments to act on customer requests, such as product replacements and returns, and automates processes such as sending customer confirmation emails. Customers can also leave a Google review by scanning a QR code in the app.

Benefits: Streamlined success

With the help of the low-code applications built on Zoho Creator, TC Acoustic can now monitor and deploy demo units more effectively, manage ambassador schedules and pay more efficiently, and better meet customers’ needs. In turn, they saw an increase in customer satisfaction and workforce efficiency.

Looking forward: Less code, more growth

By leveraging the power of low-code development, retail businesses can automate processes, streamline operations, and improve customer engagement efficiently.