Company
Profile
Technology
Integration Associates (TIA) is a Long Island, New York based Microsoft
Solution Providers and Authorized GoldMine Solutions Partners. TIA does
systems integration, network consultation and GoldMine integration,
customization and training. TIA also offers helpdesk support, network design
and implementation, training, service contract support and hourly onsite
service for all windows based PCs. Targeting small to mid-range businesses,
they deal with anywhere from one to one hundred or more PCs in a single
company.
Problem
Being
a systems integrator and a solution provider, TIA needed to constantly keep
track of their customers' needs, support issues and support problems. They use
GoldMine as their contact management system to keep track of their clients'
names, addresses, phone numbers etc. Initially they used the GoldMine's
calendar function with technicians logging the description of work performed
into the Appointment notes section. However, the problem was that they
could not see all the customer issues in one place. They could not search, sort,
prioritize and organize these customer issues.
As
TIA grew rapidly and added more customers to its client base, it became harder
to keep track of their customer issues. As is the case with
most
integrators and consultants, they also needed to keep track of the effort spent on
each issue to justify the billable time especially with smaller companies.
Because
TIA uses GoldMine to keep track of their customer information, it was very
important that their customer support solution integrated with GoldMine.
Without this integration, their customer information will have to be
duplicated in GoldMine and the customer support solution and this duplication will
cause a lot of confusion.
Solution
What
TIA needed was a customer care solution that tracks all their customer
issues and accurately report on status
changes, updates and solutions. TIA
chose FrontSupport as their customer care system. They installed FrontSupport on
10 desktops that were used by their technicians and other people personnel who
deal with their customers. The FrontSupport database was then integrated with
their GoldMine's dBASE contact database. The databases for FrontSupport and
GoldMine reside on their central server.
When
a customer calls (or emails) into TIA, the technician uses FrontSupport to
lookup an existing issue or create new issue for this problem. The issue is
then prioritized and assigned to the appropriate technician based on the
nature of the problem. As the technicians make progress on the issue, they
record notes. TIA then uses these notes to update their customers regarding
the progress of their problem. The notes help TIA justify the invoices when
billing their customers for the work done.
TIA customized the "Tools" menu in GoldMine to launch
FrontSupport from within GoldMine. Also, all the
GoldMine users in the company can see the open and closed issues in the contact's history
tab. This way, everybody in the company is up to date when they are talking to
the customers regarding their problems.
Why
FrontSupport?
Scott
Sanford, Managing Partner of TIA says, "we needed a reasonably priced
good quality support solution that worked out of the box. Being a small
company, we cannot afford a complex solution, spend time and money customizing
it and then train our technicians to use it. FrontSupport is a great product
that fits our needs".
Scott
adds, "With our
users (admittedly technically-oriented), ten minutes was all they needed to
get comfortable with the software. With this user friendly solution in place,
it has become very easy for everybody to track and solve the customer problems
more efficiently".
Benefits
FrontSupport
allows TIA to send their clients a weekly progress e-mail, FAX or printed
report. With minimal efforts, they can generate useful report of services
performed including RMAs, whether parts were shipped, what needs to be
completed, what they plan to do next, etc. Additionally, when TIA generates an
invoice for their customers, all the progress notes are attached to qualify
their services.
According
to Scott, "By giving our customer all the details on the work performed,
we justify the time spent on solving our customers' problems. This reduced the
invoice questions and late payments. Now the payments come in about 10 days sooner
than before!!"
By
deploying a FrontSupport based customer care solution, TIA is able to provide
better and a more efficient service to their customers.
