Making an Impact!
CRM Dynamics nominated for 2019 Microsoft Canada Impact Award
Each year, Microsoft gives out its Impact Awards in several categories. Now in their 16th year, the awards recognize partners who have excelled in delivering Microsoft solutions in an innovative way during the previous year.
CRM Dynamics is proud to announce that it has been nominated for the Business Applications Innovation – Customer Engagement 2019 Canadian Impact Award. They share the spotlight with KPMG in this category.
The award is for work we completed with one of Canada’s largest funeral service providers.
CRMD was approached by a funeral service provider who did not have a sophisticated selling process. They were largely relying on the phone to provide quotes and did not have much of a digital presence. Customers were reliant on cold calling a funeral home and hoping to get through. This lea to frustration on the customer’s end and a loss of business for the provider. It was felt that they badly needed a digital presence.
We created a booking portal that allowed customers to easily book a pre-funeral planning consultation time that fit their needs. This is especially important in the funeral industry as customers are often dealing with a significantly stressful situation. By the time funeral planning gets underway, the loss of life of a loved one is often imminent. The company’s own stats suggested that the majority of customers that reached out to them were either in the final stages of an illness, or were representing someone who was.
Time is precious to these individuals and the company felt that developing a digital booking system that was respectful to that was a priority for them. Beyond the element of compassion, potential customers in the funeral industry are not interested in going through a long sales process. Often the first company to offer an appointment will get the business.
However, the main purpose of building the portal was compassion. So long as the portal booking system made a difficult situation just a little better for families who are close to losing a loved one, the company indicated to us that they would have considered it a success
The results of the implementation were dramatic, and instant.
As this was the first digital booking system in the industry in Canada, there are no baseline numbers to compare the results to, but according to a company executive they were thrilled by the results since the system went live in November.
That was the case on both compassionate grounds – the executive indicated that the families they had spoken to were thrilled with the new system — and on a business level.
Since the system has gone live it has generated more than $1-million in new sales. The numbers are trending up each month as the system rolls out to more locations across the country.
Although we were nominated for an award in this case, it’s just one of many success stories CRMD and Microsoft technology has been involved in this year. Give us a call to see how you can be part of the success story in 2019.