IDV helps small team use automation to support military customers with Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Contact Center

Before Dynamics 365, IDV's customer service team relied on phone calls, emails, and Excel spreadsheets to manage increasing support requests.

IDV deployed Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Contact Center, and various Microsoft technologies, providing a unified control room for customer interactions to enhance support for military vehicle maintenance and fleet management.

With Dynamics 365, IDV has enhanced customer interactions, centralized dashboards for case status and remote access for mechanics, and streamlined fleet management. The solution also improves SLA monitoring and vehicle health checks.

Iveco Defense Vehicles (IDV), headquartered in Bolzano, Italy, is a brand of Iveco Group dedicated to delivering innovative automotive and protection solutions to meet the needs of military customers worldwide. The company manufactures armored vehicles, engines, components for defense vehicles, and vehicles for civil protection services, as well as marketing Iveco’s full commercial range, adapted as necessary to meet the demands of the military user. The customer service team was managing an increasing number of requests and IDV needed to have a better digital system to support remote teams and provide better access to the company’s knowledge base. IDV turned to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Dynamics 365 Contact Center to enhance support for military vehicle maintenance and fleet management.

“We have different SLAs for our customers. For example, our Italian contract might stipulate a certain timeline for a vehicle repair, whereas the French contract might be different. Using Dynamics 365, we can segregate the data to meet our business requirements while also monitoring specific SLAs more effectively.”

Carlo Oroni, Digital and Integrated Product Support Manager, IDV

Unharmonized and outdated system bogs down support amid rising requests

Over the past five years, as IDV has sold more contracts and fleets to its global customers, its customer service team has dealt with a growing volume of technical support requests without having an updated system to manage these requests. Additionally, some IDV technical support specialists travel to customer sites, and they wanted a faster way to access maintenance guides and technical articles in the company’s knowledge base. IDV’s customer support organization also wanted to align with the company’s broader digital transformation strategy, which aims to improve performance and monitoring by transitioning from legacy systems to a unified digital application. “We didn’t have a centralized tool to manage all support requests,” says Carlo Oroni, Digital and Integrated Product Support Manager for IDV. “We wanted a digital solution that could be used as a main center for customer support.”

A new road to unified customer support

IDV initially deployed Dynamics 365 Customer Service, a comprehensive, flexible solution for modernizing customer care experiences that integrates various Microsoft technologies, which Iveco Group used for customer service. However, to better accommodate defense customers, IDV decided to develop its own customer care “control room” also using Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Dynamics 365 Contact Center. Contact Center extends the capabilities of Dynamics 365 Customer Service with voice and digital engagement channels and self-service options. The new control room also incorporates interactive voice response (IVR) capabilities in Microsoft Copilot Studio, and IVR logic in Microsoft Azure Communication Services redirects calls to technicians’ mobile phones when needed.

Now, when customers need help, they call or email the primary IDV help desk in Italy and can choose a support level and preferred language. The help desk operator can quickly search hundreds of technical reference articles in the company’s knowledge base in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. If the operator can’t resolve the case, it’s sent to an engineering design team.

Support center staff can use the control room to access information in other IDV digital systems, such as the Fleet Management System (FMS) platform and the IDV Desk. The FMS platform collects vehicle information to evaluate the health and utilization status of customers’ vehicles, and the knowledge base contains all available technical information.

One source of truth for customer interactions

The IDV control room provides a unified solution that helps IDV contact center staff provide faster and more informed support by viewing and managing all customer interactions in one place. “We have a single point of contact for our customers in the control room, which helps our team provide better service because calls and requests arrive to the right person,” Oroni explains. Contact center staff can better manage their caseloads while supporting customers in both troubleshooting and maintaining their vehicles. The company is also developing centralized dashboards and reports to monitor contract KPIs.

“With our fleet management system, agents can monitor vehicle health and contact fleet managers for quick repairs. If there is a problem, IDV staff can contact the customer’s fleet manager to provide information to help get it back on the road quickly. We are also using our help desk to manage maintenance plans to help customers manage their fleets.”

Carlo Oroni, Digital and Integrated Product Support Manager, IDV

More flexible, proactive support

Dynamics 365 gives IDV the flexibility to support customers in the field as well as the contact center. “Our remote mechanics can call the help desk, and operators can search the control room to get mechanics the information they need. This helps mechanics get updated case information and track progress as they manage a vehicle,” Oroni says.

IDV also uses Dynamics 365 to monitor service-level agreements (SLAs). “We have different SLAs for our customers,” says Oroni. “For example, our Italian contract might stipulate a certain timeline for a vehicle repair, whereas the French contract might be different. Using Dynamics 365, we can segregate the data to meet our business requirements while also monitoring specific SLAs more effectively.”

IDV is streamlining fleet management and maintenance and proactively helping customers maintain their vehicles in the field. “With our fleet management system, agents can monitor vehicle health and contact fleet managers for quick repairs,” says Oroni. “If there is a problem, IDV staff can contact the customer’s fleet manager to provide information to help get it back on the road quickly. We are also using our help desk to manage maintenance plans to help customers manage their fleets.”

Forging ahead with Microsoft Azure and Power Pages

IDV is exploring the possibility of moving some control room capabilities to Microsoft Azure, which it already uses to gather and analyze telemetry data from one customer’s vehicles. “We will integrate as much as we can into Microsoft Azure as our next step,” says Oroni.

The company continues to enhance and evolve the control room, and it plans to use Microsoft Power Pages to build a portal for customers to access their case history, SLAs, and contract information. “We want to give our customers the ability to reach us not only by telephone and email, but also via the web,” says Oroni. “We also want to further integrate our knowledge database with our internal technical publication system to bring even more company knowledge to contact center staff at their desks.”