Customer Support Solution
Case StudySonoma County
Improving Customer Support for Sonoma County ISD
Sonoma County, located in northern California, employs over 4,000 people with a mission to enrich the quality of life for the citizens it serves. The Information Systems Department (ISD) is responsible for providing county staff with cost effective, consistent, and responsive technology tools while striving for exceptional customer support. ISD is comprised of five divisions including administration, information management, innovation, systems and programming, and technical services.
Challenge
Sonoma County used a survey tool to assess employee satisfaction on internal support services that was set to expire in December 2022. While the tool was effective at collecting survey responses, the feedback was received and reported in bulk – making it a challenge to take timely action.
Upon receipt of a negative response, the county desired a system that could send immediate notification to the manager of the division who handled the support ticket. With over 40 distribution lists for managers, this added an additional layer of complexity. The county had an Active Directory that was already synced with Azure Active Directory in the cloud, making the Microsoft platform a great fit for a solution.
“My experience in working with the implementation team at Arctic IT was delightful. The project manager was just hands-on enough to feel like we were connected but not overbearing, as some project managers tend to be. And I can’t say enough good things about the senior solution consultant. She was kind, whip-smart, professional, funny, responsive, and went the extra mile to implement our needs and suggestions.”
Solution
Microsoft demonstrated a tool called Dynamics 365 Customer Voice for the county, which proved to be an ideal solution. Arctic IT, recommended by Microsoft, was selected to perform the implementation in the Government Community Cloud (GCC).
The Customer Voice employee satisfaction survey was designed using the questions and ratings proposed by the county. The tool can distribute surveys to recipients via email, QR code, and link sharing. As Customer Voice is natively integrated with the Microsoft ecosystem, Arctic IT saw an opportunity to enhance the overall solution by extending it with Dataverse and Power Automate.
Using Power Automate, Arctic IT configured a cloud flow to parse data from the county’s Microsoft System Center Service Manager (SCSM). This data was used to personalize the surveys sent from Customer Voice as cases close. Personalization lets employees know which ticket they are responding on and for whom. Dataverse serves as a central repository for all the data, making it easier for reporting.
With Power Automate, Arctic IT collaborated with the county to configure real-time notifications for managers as an email trigger. The triggers set in Customer Voice included
- A survey with a low rating
- Comments analyzed as negative
- Someone checking “I would like to be contacted about this survey”
This enables timely follow-up by managers, because they can now see details of the service provided and the employee’s response summarized in one email, without having to access another application. Power Automate made it easier to fine-tune the solution without requiring re-input of test data to trigger logic.
The out-of-the-box Customer Voice notifications were a big improvement. However, it created opportunity for multiple alerts to be triggered from one survey. To align better with the business process of Sonoma County, Arctic IT used Dataverse to condense the alerts from the survey results into one email notification for the manager. This gives the manager one consolidated alert to prioritize for action.
Results
Today, Customer Voice provides the county with a dynamic survey tool for collecting employee feedback on support services by ISD.
- Real-time notifications for managers help drive better employee satisfaction.
- Platform agility allows employees to move in and out of departments without the need to reconfigure settings.
- Limitless reporting capabilities gives managers an easy way to pull feedback from Dataverse and share it with their teams.
Simon Kerbel, ISD Service Desk and Warehouse Manager at Sonoma County commented, “Customer Voice affords us much greater flexibility in creating surveys and reporting of feedback. Additionally, its low barrier of entry and ease of use allows us the opportunity to grow this service beyond ISD to the other departments in the county.”
“The greatest selling point of this service, in my opinion, lies in its ability to connect seamlessly with the Power Platform in the Microsoft ecosystem. It’s a future proof tool, whereas many standalone survey products may eventually become obsolete,” said Simon.
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