How a distributed PR firm increased speed to serve clients by 50%

Hokku, a leading public relations firm, has a history of adopting innovative tools. Working with clients and team members across 3 continents and 5 time zones, they were looking for a way to streamline internal communication and increase speed to provide exceptional client support. They needed a solution that could seamlessly integrate with the place they communicated as a team and with clients - on Slack. What they didn’t realize is that such a tool existed that could also leverage the information in these conversations to their advantage. Enter Knode.

Challenges

Before adopting Knode, Hokku's primary challenges were twofold: 1) keeping track of work as a distributed organization serving international clients and 2) organizing incoming requests and delegating assignments. Account managers were creating and sharing documents from individual user Drives and shared ad-hoc which made it hard to find documents. In addition, the company faced the challenge of managing a steady stream of incoming information and to-do’s in monitored external shared Slack channels. The team needed a tool that could pull information from these unstructured data sources and compose content with it in a user-friendly, source-first manner. 

Key Features

• Better, faster composition on deliverables

• Easier search on documents and details relevant to client needs

• Better management and accountability with tasks

Rolled out to one client team initially, Hokku was able to see enhancements to productivity in the first week. Onboarding onto the tool took under 5 minutes and every account manager saw immediate productivity gains in brainstorming story angles, finding documents, and generating pitches. 

The adoption of Knode search, tasks, and composition features in particular resulted in significant improvements in Hokku's client services. The team was able to retrieve information quickly and accurately, leading to more timely and effective client communication. Knode’s tasks allowed them to track work and assign tasks in channels where they were having discussions as well as jumpstart their client deliverables.

Results

The impact of Knode on Hokku's operations has been transformative across the organization where managers are reporting more timely and consistently-voiced content from junior publicists. 

The Vice President of Hokku, Alexanndria Welch, was particularly impressed with Knode's ability to streamline tasks management within her organization. “Our team is constantly reacting to client needs. Knode’s magical tasks and writing workflows made sure we were able to respond quickly with quality content in a tone that matches our clients’ expectations. Now nothing falls through the cracks.``

With the successful integration of Knode, the Hokku team expanded Knode's usage to other client teams in their organization, extending the efficiencies they saw in their beta group.