360Works Case Study - Blue Bird Corporation
Business Challenge
As the Director of Technical Communications, James Talmage is responsible for giving service reps the
tools they need
to communicate efficiently with Blue Bird’s network of dealers. To facilitate excellent service, James
worked
with the service staff and other executive stakeholders to create a FileMaker solution to help Blue Bird’s
service reps track all communications related to dealer parts issues. Every piece of correspondence is
tracked
in the system, whether by email, phone or fax. With over 80 cases per day for each service rep, the amount
of
data to be tracked is considerable!
At first, James took advantage of FileMaker’s built-in capacity to integrate with Outlook
and other email clients. Emails to dealers from service reps were created and sent directly from
the FileMaker solution. After only a few months, however, it became clear that FileMaker’s built-in
functionality
wouldn’t be enough. Emails sent out lived in each user’s Outlook Sent Messages folder, and were not saved
in any
central location. Email replies received from dealers had to be copied and pasted into the tracking tool
by the
already busy service reps. He needed to extend FileMaker’s email functionality. That’s where 360Works and
the
Email plug-in came in.
Customer Benefits
The results of James’ decision to take advantage of the power of the 360Works Email plug-in have been
dramatic.
Since the entire history of communication for a given case is in one place, the service department
delivers
quicker resolutions for each issue. Managers are able to check progress on each case by referring
to the log of communications in the system. Reporting on cases resolution is complete and accurate thanks
to all of the
data being in one place. James says, “we’ve even seen a reduction in the overall number of cases! Since
we’re
able to detect trends and note systemic issues, we can better anticipate our dealers’ needs.”
The email plug-in has also allowed Blue Bird to make life easier for everybody in the chain of
responsibility.
Since the FileMaker solution can both send and receive email, team-members in other divisions of the
company
are able to file status reports and assist in issue resolution via email instead of having to learn a new
software tool to track their responses.
James reports, “Thanks to the 360Works email plugin, we don’t have to make our application visible to all
action owners—the action owners reply to emails and those emails go in and come out of the customer
service
system automatically. We don’t need to burden those staff with another application to learn.”
James is ready to push this powerful functionality even further. 360Works helped him to configure instant
web
publishing, so reps in the field can see the current status of any dealer’s case from anywhere where
there’s
a web browser. By extending FileMaker’s built-in capabilities with a 360Works plug-in, James has made
significant improvements in his customers’ satisfaction and his department’s performance.
Download a copy of this case study in PDF form here.