CRM Wins the Day

It’s fair to say that my year didn’t get off to a great start. It all went wrong when I decided to upgrade my iPhone to iOS 7.04.

(I should point out that I also have a Microsoft Surface and that the phone is a legacy inherited from a previous job…)

Anyway, the upgrade didn’t go quite as planned and the end result was a phone that appeared, to the untrained eye, to be completely dead. Dead as the proverbial parrot.

As you do under these circumstances, I immediately referred to the ‘expertise’ that can be acquired through the miracle of Google.

Sadly, holding down various combinations of the start and home buttons had no impact and I was left with a completely blank and unresponsive screen.

I also stumbled across some pretty vitriolic views on Apple which didn’t offer much hope in terms of resolving the problem without significant expense.

As a result of this negativity, my initial thought was to seek out a back-street repair shop but it was so back street that I couldn’t find it.

Finding the Apple Store was easier so when charging the phone overnight made no difference I braced myself for the worst and headed in to town.

Thankfully, I’m delighted to report that my experience was entirely positive.

And I was particularly impressed with both their slick customer service and seamless use of CRM.

All three members of the team who dealt with me knew exactly what the issue was and managed my expectations perfectly – so speaks the marketer in me! – and I was actually dealt with ahead of my appointed time. (Their system emailed me a confirmation of the appointment time but I didn’t get the email because my phone wasn’t working!)

By some miracle they managed to revive the phone and all I needed to do when I got home was restore the back-up that I’d made before attempting the fateful system upgrade (seems that I’ve been indoctrinated into the importance of backing up critical data!)

Better still, there was nothing to pay, which really did impress me!

In fact, I was even moved to post a very rare status update on Facebook to share the experience with my very select group of contacts – although I’ve no doubt that someone in the Apple marketing will have picked up and reported on the positive social media reference using some sophisticated Big Data / CRM / marketing software. Perhaps not Microsoft Dynamics CRM though!

And the moral of the tale? There are a few actually. But the biggest is probably that great customer service driven by effective use of CRM shouldn’t just be the domain of huge corporations like Apple.

With so much out-of-the-box functionality available, and affordable, through the latest versions of applications such as Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, surely even the smallest businesses can deliver this level of customer experience.

Also, there are times when it really makes sense to trust the experts!

In some ways it’s a shame that it’s put off the inevitable day when I make the switch to a Windows 8 phone (Nokia 1020 or 925?) but that’s probably going to be dictated by when a friend of mine gets round to developing a Windows version of his Motivo.cc cycling app (apologies for the shameless plug) which I appear to have become addicted to.

See more – Top Tips for a Smoother CRM Installation