When some people hear the term CRM (customer relationship management) they assume that it's a tool that is only really useful in sales and marketing departments. While CRM is relied upon by these departments in many organizations, they are by no means the only ones who can benefit from the use of such systems.
I recently read an interesting case by that describes the experience of one company that bought to improve its customer service response time and found many more uses for it along the way. What follows is a quick synopsis of that article and some of its major takeaways.
ABC Financial, the company profiled in this case study, is a payment processor and software provider for more than 3000 fitness clubs. Because of the nature of the niche industry in which ABC Financial operates, it does not need to market itself to tens of thousands of potential customers. Instead, it is a B2B organization whose main method of keeping and attracting customers is offering concierge level service.
When it first decided to invest in a CRM system ABC Financial took Salesforce for a test drive. However, after a year and a half of using that solution, ABC Financial decided what it really needed was a CRM system that more seamlessly integrated with the Microsoft software that employees use on a daily basis. This is what led it to look at Microsoft Dynamics CRM. After a successful implementation of , the organization saw improvements across many business areas, some expected and others not so expected. These benefits include:
- The percentage of customer service calls that are resolved during the first phone call is now 85%. That's up from an average of less than 10% before a customer relationship management system was installed.
- Help desk staff has been reduced from 40 employees to 28, saving the company a great deal of money that is now freed up to be invested in other areas.
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM has become a part of the everyday lives of almost half of ABC Financial's 450 employees. It has now been rolled out across several different departments, including HR. The company's ultimate goal is to make Dynamics CRM its business process management system, the go to application for handling and tracking a wide variety of tasks within the organization. Like many companies, before installing a CRM system, the main mode of internal communication at ABC Financial was e-mail, which we all know is a cumbersome and ill organized way to store information. But now that employees have Microsoft Dynamics CRM at their disposal, the company has a streamlined system where they can store and track much of the data that was once lost in separate and disorganized e-mail boxes.
If you are like ABC Financial, looking to improve customer service response time and communication throughout your organization, there is no need to look any further Microsoft Dynamics CRM. To learn more about this system and whether or not it is the cost-effective solution you've been searching for, please .
By: Laura Heinbockel, Intelligent Technologies Inc., a
