Service Repair Solutions provides technology solutions that help automotive technicians increase the efficiency and accuracy of their work. Based in Las Vegas, Nevada, the company maintains a customer support call center in Roseville, Minnesota. For two years, Service Repair Solutions used NetSuite CRM, an Oracle-based solution, for its customer relationship management system. But the lack of integration between NetSuite CRM and the company’s other systems slowed performance, limited employee productivity, and restricted growth. After evaluating several customer relationship management solutions, including Salesforce.com, the company replaced NetSuite CRM with Microsoft Dynamics® CRM. Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the company has cut call times in its customer support call center by 30 percent, reduced agent training time by 25 percent, and strengthened its growth capacity.
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Microsoft Dynamics CRM is faster and more reliable, so our agents can solve customer problems in 30 percent less time than it took with NetSuite CRM. |
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Jeff Hislop, CIO, Service Repair Solutions |
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Situation
Service Repair Solutions, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, is the leading provider of software and consulting for the automotive service and repair industry in the United States. Headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, it is the parent company of three subsidiaries: Mobile Productivity, Identifix, and International Automotive Technicians Network. Together, these companies have 350 employees, including 25 field sales representatives; 65 customer support staff based in Roseville, Minnesota; and 45 inside sales agents who work in the Nevada office. The company added 15 employees to its workforce in a recent 12-month period.
Service Repair Solutions takes an aggressive, growth-oriented approach to its IT investment. With an IT staff of 12 people, the company consistently seeks to take advantage of new software and technologies to strengthen productivity and improve customer service. “We consider ourselves to be a technology company, and we think of our products and services as technology solutions,” states Jeff Hislop, CIO of Service Repair Solutions.
Problems with Integration
For two years, Identifix agents used NetSuite CRM to record customer interactions, create trouble tickets, and track follow-up activities with customers. NetSuite CRM was difficult to integrate with the company’s other business technology, including Microsoft Dynamics® SL, which is used to manage accounting for Identifix, as well as several custom-developed customer relationship management systems based on Microsoft SQL Server® 2005. In addition, Service Repair Solutions experienced difficulty integrating NetSuite CRM with GoldMine, a specialty lead generation and tracking solution used by its inside sales force. Says Hislop, “Although we achieved limited integration between NetSuite CRM and some of our other systems, we didn’t accomplish the real-time integration we needed.”
Need to Improve Customer Service and Boost Efficiency
Without integration among systems, the company’s call center agents had difficulty serving customers efficiently. While engaged with a customer on the phone, agents would often click on the customer’s record and have to wait minutes for the information to appear on their screens. Service Repair Solutions handles more than 4,000 calls a day at its call centers and closely monitors time per call as a key performance metric. “Speed is critical in a call center environment,” explains Hislop. “Our agents need to be able to resolve customer inquiries quickly to handle the kind of call volume we manage everyday. And NetSuite CRM just didn’t meet our performance needs.”
The company was also looking to boost the efficiency of its training process. Service Repair Solutions devotes two full days to training new customer support agents, and it dedicates a significant portion of this time to coaching agents on how to use the customer relationship management system. “We’ve made a big investment in staff training over the years,” says Hislop. “And we’re always looking for ways to streamline the training process, without cutting out any of the necessary content.”
Solution
Business and IT leaders at Service Repair Solutions looked for a more flexible and extensible customer relationship management solution that could improve system integration, increase operational efficiency, and strengthen customer service. After evaluating several customer relationship management solutions, including Sales Logic and Salesforce.com, the company turned to Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Inetium to facilitate implementation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0.
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Adding to the out-of-the-box value, we saw a huge upside in the customization potential of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, especially in integrating it with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. |
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Jeff Hislop, CIO, Service Repair Solutions |
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The Inetium team helped Service Repair Solutions deploy Microsoft Dynamics CRM to its entire customer support staff of 30 people between Roseville and Las Vegas. “The decision to go with Microsoft Dynamics CRM was based on several factors,” says Hislop. “We were excited about the integration opportunities, and we also knew that the familiar interface would help simplify tasks and increase efficiency, especially in our call center.”
Seven months after deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, the company upgraded to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. “We wanted to take advantage of new features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, such as the improved integration with Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007, but the biggest draw was the flexibility of the platform,” states Hislop. “Adding to the out-of-the-box value, we saw a huge upside in the customization potential of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, especially in integrating it with Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007.”
Improving System Integration and Increasing Throughput
Service Repair Solutions maintains a sophisticated IT infrastructure that includes several custom entities. “Essentially, all of our systems are based in Microsoft SQL Server 2005,” notes Hislop. “So we were excited about the idea of streamlining our IT infrastructure with the addition of another Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.”
Since the deployment of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the company has experienced a substantial performance improvement across its technology infrastructure. “The integration of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and our other systems, including our custom-built systems, has been excellent,” states Hislop. “The call center agents have faster, more reliable access to customer information, enabling them to resolve customer inquiries in less time.” Service Repair Solutions expects further improvements to its system integration with the addition of Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2006, which will facilitate the transfer of data between the company’s accounting system and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Simplifying Staff Training
New customer service agents participate in an intensive training process. Service Repair Solutions dedicates a portion of this training to coaching agents on how to use the customer relationship management system. “We set up the training this way because it would take time before our new agents felt comfortable with NetSuite CRM,” states Hislop. “We don’t have that dedicated part of the training anymore because learning how to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM is easy. The agents typically get it within a few minutes, which lets our trainers quickly move on to explaining other aspects of the job.”
Enhancing Call Center Performance
With help from the Inetium team, IT staff from Service Repair Solutions built a custom integration link between Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Office SharePoint Server 2007. “It took us very little time to build a window within Microsoft Dynamics CRM that enables agents to access a filtered view of all the documents related to a specific customer record,” says Hislop. “In a single click, customer service agents can view contract information, service agreements, incident reports, and related customer history data from anywhere within Microsoft Dynamics CRM.”
Benefits
Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Service Repair Solutions has improved its responsiveness to customers, increased business process efficiency and employee productivity, and strengthened its capacity for growth. “With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we’ve been able to improve customer service and increase efficiency,” says Hislop.
Reduced Time Per Call by 30 Percent
One Service Repair Solutions call center handles approximately 1,000 calls a day and each customer call spans an average of 10 minutes per call. Because the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM resolved the integration problems associated with NetSuite CRM and helped increase throughput capacity, customer service agents now average 7 minutes per call instead of 10 minutes. “Microsoft Dynamics CRM is faster and more reliable, so our agents can solve customer problems in 30 percent less time than it took with NetSuite CRM,” says Hislop.
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With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we’ve been able to improve customer service and increase efficiency. |
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Jeff Hislop, CIO, Service Repair Solutions |
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Cut Agent Training Time by 25 Percent
Before implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Service Repair Solutions dedicated four hours to training staff on how to use NetSuite CRM. Since deploying the new solution, the company has close to eliminated this portion of the training. “We went from spending four hours on system interface training to virtually zero because it’s no longer necessary,” says Hislop. “Now, customer service agents sit down, start using Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and are reasonably proficient with it in a matter of minutes. Considering that our more seasoned agents help with the training of new employees, the time savings and productivity value really adds up.”
Increased Employee Productivity
Service Repair Solutions gains increased employee productivity through the synchronization between Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Office SharePoint Server 2007. With access to a holistic view of customer account information from within Microsoft Dynamics CRM, call center agents are able to address customer requests more efficiently. “Because our agents can access all of the information they need without leaving Microsoft Dynamics CRM, they can troubleshoot problems and resolve customer inquiries in about one-third the time it used to take,” says Hislop.
Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning curve for your people, so they can get up and running quickly and focus on what’s most important. And because it is from Microsoft, it easily works with the systems that your company already has implemented. By automating and streamlining financial, customer relationship, and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics brings together people, processes, and technologies, increasing the productivity and effectiveness of your business, and helping you drive business success.
For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to:
www.microsoft.com/dynamics
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about Service Repair Solutions products and services, call (800) 997-1674 or visit the Web site at:
www.servicerepairsolutions.com
For more information about Inetium products and services, call (952) 646-0800 or visit the Web site at:
www.inetium.com
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
