The American Armed Forces Mutual Aid Association (AAFMAA) offers more than life insurance, they focus on helping active, separated, and retired military service members and their families manage life’s uncertainties. They are the nation’s longest-standing, nonprofit provider of financial solutions for military families. AAFMAA chose to implement Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, a cloud-based solution that would enhance visibility and clarify next steps for their accounts. The goal was to improve member interactions, customer service, lead and opportunity expansion, and efficient management of tasks related to member cases.
Challenges
Accessibility and Efficiency Hurdles
AAFMAA faced challenges in meeting user access needs, prompting the need to migrate from an on-premise to an online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Their outdated on-prem system necessitated manual sales updates by internal staff. Switching to a cloud-based CRM would enable all AAFMAA users to easily access their data, with the additional benefit of receiving automatic system updates.
Dated Tools for Member Interactions
AAFMAA’s existing processes did not support the seamless relationship of emails and customer interactions to the corresponding contacts within their CRM system. This limitation resulted in manual communications, leading to prolonged cycles and an increase in unresolved customer records. By creating an integration between Outlook and Dynamics 365 Customer Service, AAFMAA can link all Member interactions. This not only simplified the process for employees but also significantly enhanced the company’s Member experience.
Shortfalls in Member Support
AAFMAA faced inefficiencies in managing leads, opportunities, and closed Member records due to a lack of automation, which led to errors and extended response times. They wanted a customized, intuitive solution that would automatically generate and assign activities as leads, or cases, as they progressed through the Member process. This automation was crucial for improving inter-departmental communication about the actions taken for each Member. Furthermore, given that AAFMAA’s Members often deal with sudden challenges such as deployments or the death of a loved one, the organization aimed to ensure quick, respectful, and highly personalized communication.
Solution
To both address their existing challenges and to achieve their goals, AAFMAA implemented a comprehensive online migration strategy, transitioning their Sales instance to the cloud and integrating Dynamics 365 Customer Service. The new CRM system featured customized user dashboards and an automatic activity table to enhance lead and case management efficiency. Additionally, integrating Outlook with Dynamics 365 streamlined communications.
Outcomes
Integrating Dynamics Customer Service and migrating to a cloud-based CRM has revolutionized our operations and member interactions. This transformation has enhanced accessibility and efficiency for our remote employees and streamlined communications. The customized solutions developed by JourneyTeam have empowered us to deliver a more personalized and responsive service to military families, reflecting our deep commitment to supporting them through life’s uncertainties. Working with JourneyTeam was great, their expertise and dedication ensured a smooth transition and successful implementation.
Charlene Wilde, SVP and Corporate Assistant Secretary
Enhanced Productivity
The migration from on-prem to online enabled team members to access real-time data from any location. With Dynamics 365’s online capabilities, JourneyTeam assisted AAFMAA in creating dashboards that displayed the number of open and upcoming activities for each person, or team. This enhancement led to a more organized workflow, and heightened awareness among team members and managers of their daily tasks. This approach not only maximized efficiency and reduced errors, but it also ensured tasks were completed promptly, and clearly identified the workload across the team. AAFMAA has achieved increased efficiency through enhanced knowledge sharing across departments. Previously, member-facing FAQs and “how-to” documents were emailed or stored in individual department folders. Now, departments share knowledge through centralized knowledge articles, allowing customer service representatives to access resources without searching through separate folders. Each department has created templates to ensure consistent communication with members. These improvements have reduced the time needed to solve cases and increased AAFMAA’s ability to provide consistent answers to common member questions.
Improved Member Communication
Enabling the integration between Outlook and Dynamics 365 Customer Service improved communication with Members. When a Member’s status was created or updated in Dynamics 365, AAFMAA employees could easily reference a custom dashboard to ensure the correct next step was taken in servicing that Member. Because of prompt and personalized communication with Members, both cases and claims were closed on average seven days faster than before. AAFMAA also implemented automatic record creation (ARC) rules, that streamlined the connection of new emails to be assigned to the right user to promptly resolve the Members’ problem and move them along in the process. This improved communication with both prospects and Members, ensuring that everyone received timely assistance.
Enhanced Operational Performance Across Departments
AAFMAA collaborated with JourneyTeam to develop customized model-driven apps in Dynamics 365 Customer Service for each of their seven departments, tailored to meet specific requirements. JourneyTeam worked closely with each department to personalize the apps, allowing team members to open cases, and view the case types relevant to their department. Additionally, each app featured personalized automatic activities designed to minimize navigation time. This customization enhanced user experience by allowing each team to access and interact with information pertinent to their roles and functions, contributing to a 25% reduction in technology debt by eliminating task duplication across multiple platforms.