The Client

Headquartered in central Michigan, this company creates custom measurement gauging equipment for many different industries and consumers, including digital transmitters, non-contact laser sensors, fully automated gauging systems and door-closing-effort sensors.

The Challenge

In an increasingly competitive workspace, more businesses are looking to distinguish themselves and separate from the pack by offering comprehensive customer service. This Michigan-based company has been recognized for superior customer service through various awards over the years from prominent corporations. One area where the company itself deemed it was lacking was in providing field services agents with updates on where repairs or orders stood, so they could then brief their own customers, such as when work will be completed. Sales and customer service teams were also unable to receive leads on new business from anyone aside from customers themselves. For example, orders may come from referrals or other businesses that may not be able to help a customer, but know of businesses that can.

In short, this gauging equipment provider required real-time data that could communicate on a real-time basis. The sales and customer service teams needed to receive updates including new order and repair work orders. And, both the sales and customer service teams needed access to the repair history for gauges including the requests that initiated repairs which don’t always come directly from the customer.

The Solution

After doing some research about potential solutions, this company got in touch with fellow Michigander – The TM Group. The TM Group assessed the business’ situation and recommended Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. Through omnichannel, mobile text messaging and AI assistance, D365 leverages the wide variety of interactive channels people use to stay connected, but specifically designed for field agents. So, in addition to keeping their clients in the know, customer service teams could also track sales order and repair histories to provide a better timeline of what they could expect in terms of delivery. This provided visibility to information within the customer relationship management system for sales and service employees without enabling access to the financial and manufacturing systems exclusive to back office personnel which utilized MAX ERP Manufacturing software. Utilizing eOne SmartConnect, the TM Group integrated products, price lists, discounts, repair and non-repair orders, account and address records between Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and MAX.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement software also features order tracking capabilities, so more involved or prioritized gauge orders could be pinpointed through automated business processes workflows, further enhancing transparency and end-to-end communication. Field agents were ultimately able to better manage client-to-customer relationships by reducing guess work and keeping clients in the know on their terms, not the company’s. Out of the box, Dynamics 365 functionality creates a unique name for the serialized record which includes the customer name. A duplicate record check is made at the time of import for whether the serialized item currently exists based on Customer, Product Model, and Serial Number. We configured the system to match their process in which the serialized records unique name will include only the Product Model and Serial Number and duplicate record detection will check only for the combination of Product Model and Serial Number.

Whether your field service agents are veterans or brand new, they can’t do their job effectively without the proper tools. The TM Group has what it takes to evaluate your company’s situation and offer the best tech solutions that can make customer service your very best asset. Contact us and see how we can support your customer-comes-first goals.