Customer Experience
Automated customer follow-up in an SME
In the furniture sales and installation industry, timely communication is essential to managing client expectations and ensuring satisfaction. We partnered with a specialized SME serving the corporate and education sectors to automate their customer follow-up journey and eliminate manual notification bottlenecks.
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Context and objectives
An SME active in to the sale, delivery, and installation of furniture faced significant challenges in managing customer communication.
With a vast catalog and a client base of thousands of companies and education sector entities, the team struggled to provide proactive updates. Relying on Microsoft 365 Business Central as their ERP, the company lacked an automated customer follow-up system.
Consequently, customers were forced to contact the company by phone or email for order status updates, resulting in operational inefficiency and diminished customer satisfaction. The primary objective was to automate the customer follow-up journey, ensuring clients received timely notifications from order confirmation through to delivery.
Approach
The project followed an iterative methodology centered on Microsoft Power Automate and its integration with Business Central. This involved:
Holding requirements elicitation sessions to map existing workflows and understand stakeholder needs
Carrying out a comprehensive data analysis to assess the feasibility of automation within the existing ERP infrastructure
Building five distinct Power Automate processes designed to trigger communications at critical stages of the order lifecycle
As always, these processes were developed and validated iteratively with stakeholders to ensure accuracy and reliability.
Results
The team successfully deployed a suite of automated customer follow-up notifications that transformed the client experience and streamlined internal operations.
Key features included:
Order confirmation: immediate notification upon order creation in the ERP.
Status updates: daily checks to notify customers when products are in stock or when supplier delivery dates are updated.
Delivery scheduling: a streamlined feature allowing staff to send delivery details to customers with a single input.
Delivery confirmation: automated alerts sent when a delivery is created in the system.
Quote expiry monitoring: a daily internal report notifying employees of quotes nearing expiration.
Comprehensive documentation was provided to ensure sustainable management of these processes.
Overall, the solution effectively shifted the company from a reactive to a proactive communication model, reducing manual workload and improving customer satisfaction.
To safeguard confidentiality, we may modify certain details within our case studies.