Family-owned Berryessa Gap Vineyards empowers its mobile workforce and enhances the customer experience with Microsoft 365 and Teams

Family-owned Berryessa Gap Vineyards has a small but passionate staff that is on the go between its three locations. The company’s reliance on paper messages, voicemails, and desk phone lines led to delays in returning customer and supplier calls.

Berryessa Gap, a longtime user of Microsoft 365, turned to Microsoft Teams Phone to create a solution that could follow its employees on laptops and mobile devices.

Company employees have reduced the time to return calls from three or four days to merely an hour, and Berryessa Gap no longer pays for landlines from a third-party vendor.

Berryessa Gap Vineyards (Berryessa Gap), a family-owned vineyard and winery, is transforming its customer service and business operations with communication tools in Microsoft Teams. This small company is empowering its mobile workforce to respond to customer and supplier inquiries within hours instead of days and streamlining operations with increased visibility and accuracy.

Embracing innovation to enhance customer service

With deep roots in California, Berryessa Gap produces about 5,000 cases of high-quality wine annually with wine tastings and events at its three locations west of Sacramento. The company, known for its Petite Sirah wines, focuses on offering its customers high-quality wine and experiences, including wine tastings and a wine club.

Berryessa Gap realized it needed to transform its communication network to support its small staff of full- and part-time employees who move between its three locations and vineyard. The company used landlines, voicemails, and emails to communicate with customers and suppliers. “We were slow to respond to customers because paper messages would sit on a desk for several days,” says Corinne Martinez, Co-owner, President, and Chief Operations Officer at Berryessa Gap.

Supporting an on-the-go workforce with modern communication tools

For Berryessa Gap, improving the customer experience and supplier communication began with a solution that would support its employees wherever they were. The company was a longtime user of Microsoft 365, making Microsoft Teams Phone a natural fit. “Our employees have Teams Phone on their company-provided laptop or on their mobile device and do not have to give out their personal cell phone numbers to receive a critical call,” says Martinez.

“Our employees have Teams Phone on their company-provided laptop or on their mobile device and do not have to give out their personal cell phone numbers to receive a critical call.”

Corinne Martinez, President, and Chief Operations Officer, Berryessa Gap Vineyards

With support from Microsoft, Berryessa Gap set up auto-attendant features so that callers are connected with the right person instead of having all calls go to a general line. For weekends, the company created out-of-office messages and call routing to get customers to the appropriate voicemail. Even when call volume is high, Berryessa Gap is more confident in its ability to provide an exceptional customer experience. “We get a lot of phone calls when we do our wine club,” says Martinez. “We want those calls to be picked up by a live person.”

Berryessa Gap also developed channels in Microsoft Teams where its employees and external consultants can share Microsoft Word or Excel documents. As Berryessa Gap collects lab results and data from the vineyard and production facility, this information is updated in Microsoft Teams channels that all employees and consultants can access and work in. “Even when our wine-making consultants are off-site, they can collaborate with us on those files, which is very important during harvest,” says Martinez. “It allows us to make real-time decisions on how to treat the grapes during processing and how to treat the wine juice as it is fermenting into wine.”

“Even when our wine-making consultants are off-site, they can collaborate with us on those files, which is very important during harvest. It allows us to make real-time decisions on how to treat the grapes during processing and how to treat the wine juice as it is fermenting into wine.”

Corinne Martinez, President, and Chief Operations Officer, Berryessa Gap Vineyards

Streamlining operations and reducing costs by 40%

With its staff using Microsoft Team Phones to receive calls and messages on the go, Berryessa Gap is slashing response times to customers and suppliers while reducing operational costs. For example, its employees return messages within an hour instead of three to four days, and the company is saving 40% on the cost of traditional landlines from a third-party vendor. Berryessa Gap further expanded its digital transformation by using Microsoft Power Automate to automate inventory management and generate shopping lists, saving its employees hours on shopping.

“We want to elevate the quality of both our wine and the customer experience so that we can bring joy to wine lovers.”

Corinne Martinez, President, and Chief Operations Officer, Berryessa Gap Vineyards

Berryessa Gap continues to create new ways to connect with customers, using live chat in Microsoft Teams to develop a widget on its website that connects customers to a real person as needed. For this family operation, technology innovation is about empowering employees to focus on producing high-quality wine and enhancing customer satisfaction through personal connections. “We want to elevate the quality of both our wine and the customer experience so that we can bring joy to wine lovers,” says Martinez.

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