CRM by Definition - Customer Service by Design
Medical device manufacturers’ (MDM) face all of the business challenges as non medical manufacturers, and more. Their businesses have the departmental complexity that spans from the executive suite to the shipping dock. They also have to compete, make sales, and service their customer base. The biggest difference is that they have to deal with government regulatory bodies like the FDA, who with the stroke of a pen, can create the need for immediate, even drastic changes in process, products, and administration, literally overnight. It’s just part of day to day business in this world, and it’s not going to change. So it is critical that products in the field are closely tracked.
Once the MDM’ s product is in the hands of the user, in this example a caregiver in a hospital or clinic, the manufacturer’ s customer support department is now responsible for customer care during the life of the particular devices engagement cycle. This group will be responsible for handling everything from simple operational inquiries, to upgrades, RMA’ s, repairs, recalls, warranty; essentially all things customer as related their products. All while managing the mountains of information associated with all of the customers.
In order to effectively manage their support needs, this particular MDM chose HarrisData’s CustomerFirst Closed Loop CRM system to handle their customer support information management needs. CustomerFirst tracks every area related to the customer from the initial sale to the end of the customer cycle. It’s a complete full cycle system. For example, when a unit fails in the field, the customer simply calls support where the agent checks the warranty status. They may be asked to try some simple tests on the unit, if to no avail; the decision is made to return the unit for service. From there the agent changes the status to in transit, captures any other information required and alerts shipping that a loaner will go to the customer. The customer uses a provided shipping label to return the unit for repair. Once the broken unit is received at the MDM, the unit’s status is changed to repair. Next it’s placed in the repair cycle for diagnosis, repair, test, and final quality assurance (QA) testing and documentation. Finally, QA changes the unit’s status and it is moved to shipping for return to the customer.
Customer quote
“We are able to seamlessly service and process all of our customers’ needs because of CustomerFirst’ s capabilities. Our customer support department has received a 10 out of 10 survey ranking by our customers.”