Sometimes customers need you to know more about them than they do themselves. That’s what Elite Flooring, an Atlanta-based provider of high-quality institutional flooring, has come to realize shortly after implementing Microsoft’s CRM software.

According to Elite Flooring CEO Sean McCarthy, customer service is the company’s bread and butter. This is because the flooring industry is a commodity business where customers often have trouble recognizing differences in product quality or availability. The main differentiator then is customer service.

With that in mind, Elite Flooring decided to implement a CRM solution that would help it better track its customers and their interactions with Elite.

"We wanted to improve every area of customers&singlequot; total experience in interacting with us—everything from answering the phones, to billing, to all the process-related items," McCarthy said. "Then, once we perfected all those processes, we wanted to put a tool like CRM in place to enhance those processes and take our customer service to a whole new level."

Right-size it

The company considered a variety of CRM options, and even implemented two on a trial basis. The first was too difficult to use, while the other had too many extra, expensive features Elite didn’t need. Microsoft’s CRM was just right, however.

"Microsoft CRM is perfect for our needs,” McCarthy said. “It allows us to get very sophisticated or very simple. Plus, we&singlequot;ll be able to build on it over time."

The company implemented Microsoft Business Solutions CRM on Windows 2000 using Exchange 2000, and immediately saw improvements. First and foremost, Elite now knows more about its customers than even the customers themselves.

“We now have a single source for all of our interactions with our customers," McCarthy said. "The more we know about customers and their last interaction with us—be it one month, one day, or one year ago, or be it e-mail, fax, or telephone—the better and more efficient we are and the better a business partner we are," McCarthy says. "And that&singlequot;s really how customers value us."

Many of Elite’s customers have high turnover rates, meaning the person buying the flooring is often new to the job and unfamiliar with what he has in place or purchased in the past. Microsoft CRM lets Elite maintain detailed job information about every customer. "Customers know they are our top priority," McCarthy says, "because we no longer have to ask, ‘what did we do for you last year?&singlequot;" This knowledge leads to unprecedented customer loyalty, he said.

Watch the integration

Since Microsoft CRM is tightly integrated with Outlook, McCarthy said it saves Elite&singlequot;s sales representatives time and gives them fast access to critical customer information they didn&singlequot;t have previously. "With Microsoft CRM, our sales reps can go into one application, and everything they need is right there," noted Ruth Beaulieu, Elite&singlequot;s Technology Coordinator.

Unfortunately, the tight integration can sometimes lead to problems. For example, when Elite recently upgraded from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003, they were chagrined to learn that Microsoft’s CRM could not synchronize account and contact information with the new Exchange. This is because CRM 1.0 was not compatible with Exchange 2003, Microsoft said. Once the company upgraded to CRM 1.2, the compatibility issues were resolved, however.