Improving Customer Service: How One Company Used Microsoft Dynamics CRM to Increase Its “Touch” Points

It can sometimes take the very worst to bring out the very best in a company. After poor customer service cost Pathology Associate Medical Laboratories in Spokane, Wash., a customer worth $1.5 million annually, it initiated a move to implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM. 

The result? The company nearly eliminated customer service as a drag on revenues; previously, bad customer service reduced revenues by 20%annually. In a presentation to the CRMUG Summit 2008, PAML COO Rosalee Allan described how working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM enabled PAML to achieve this reduction.

PAML is a company that works with hospitals to test specimens-blood, tissue, etc-and get the results back to doctors and hospitals in a speedy and accurate manner. After losing the major client described at the outset, Allan said the organization knew it needed to improve its customer service. "It's the service that makes a difference," she told the session at CRMUG. "Otherwise, we become a commodity."

In implementing Dynamics CRM, the first step for PAML was having people log all contacts with a specimen. "We first try to identify everytime we touch a client," she said. "We take CRM and get every one of the touchpoints into our system."

Since each interaction with a client is now logged, when people are out in the field and there's an issue with a client, they have the complete picture in front of them, since all the client info and interactions are logged in the system. The data-logging capabilities are extended by allowing employees in the field to log client contact via hand-held devices.

Allan recounted that when Dynamics CRM was first implemented, there was...