Overview
Lakeside CNC Group, Ltd. leveraged Zoho Desk to redesign its repair management system and increase data visibility within the organization.
The Company
Lakeside CNC Group, Inc. is renowned in the repair and maintenance industry for FANUC CNC products. Its team of experienced professionals analyze electrical and electronic equipment to provide solutions to customers in manufacturing and other industries. Founded in 2009, Lakeside CNC Group is committed to providing quality services for the repair, purchase, and exchange of products.
The challenge
Lakeside CNC Group began its journey as a small repair shop with two employees. Today, it operates high-workload simulators with the help of CNC technicians and engineers. As the business scaled, Lakeside CNC Group had to leave behind the solutions it had once relied on, because the technology could not keep up with the company's growth.
Lakeside CNC Group was using spreadsheets and other basic IT tools. It kept a record of customer questions and requests in spreadsheets and responded to customers via email. Even internal communication took place through phone calls and emails, making true transparency difficult to achieve.
In addition, the team struggled to document the details of every repair in an organized manner. As a result, stakeholders were not aware of the progress and status of their repairs. To address these issues, Lakeside CNC Group decided to automate the entire customer support process, repair status management process, and more.
Initially, the company went with SIMMS by KCSI Inc., but the Windows-based application had limited and inflexible features. It could not help the company improve its customer experience or maintain repair data in one place. For every customization, the Lakeside CNC Group team had to seek help from a developer.
The Solution
Eventually, the company decided to retire the SIMMS application and look for a new solution that was affordable and easy to implement. It considered a few options, such as Zoho Desk, Salesforce, and Hubspot, and implemented the trial versions for basic business processes. Ultimately, the company chose Zoho One for its low pricing and intuitive user interface. Lakeside CNC Group subcontracted implementation and customization of Zoho to United Parts of Chicago, Zoho's authorized partner, who made their customer happy with their extraordinary support.
It was a tough job. Like I said before, our processes are completely different from the ones that the implementation coordinator might expect in the more common businesses, such as retail or customer electronic repair. Dmitry Skylark of United Parts of Chicago did a good job with implementation.
He even managed to change our corporate mindset, and we had reshaped many of the ways we were interacting with the customers before. You know, it is easy to deal with the solution from the books, but when it comes to real-life business, you have to deal with the people more than with the software. So Dmitry did both of the parts.
Zoho Desk is part of the Zoho One suite of products and is used extensively by Lakeside CNC Group for repair data management and customer service. Since choosing Zoho Desk as its repair management solution, Lakeside CNC Group's management has gained greater visibility into its employees' daily workloads. The order queue is now streamlined, and the repair status of every customer's equipment is transparent to all team members involved in the process. The team has integrated Zoho Desk with Zoho CRM, WordPress, Zoho Inventory, and Zoho Books.
Zoho Desk's self-service portal helps Lakeside CNC Group's customers find information related to repairs and service, without manual inputs from the Lakeside team.
Benefits & ROI
The company's website is now integrated with Zoho Desk, so customers can check the status of their repair orders remotely by entering their order numbers into the website's Order Tracker. That integration significantly reduced the number of phone calls to the repair department, freeing up more time for the reception desk to serve new requests.
Honestly, I was very skeptical about Zoho at the very beginning. I was disappointed by the SIMMS software, and I did not expect that Zoho would be SO different. Now, I can’t imagine running my business without Zoho Desk.
Back in the day, I was the only person in the company who could make a price decision or approve a repair. Now, the micromanagement is gone. Who wouldn't be happy about that?
- Industry typeFANUC Repair Service
- Employees11-50
- Type of businessB2B
Looking forward
Lakeside CNC Group has integrated Zoho Desk with its website to manage customer requests and resolve issues swiftly. The company is looking forward to exploring more new features of Zoho Desk.
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