Tassie Council keeps track of customers

Meander Valley Council, a small rural council located near the mountains of the Great Western Tiers in Northern Tasmania, has implemented a cross-platform customer service system to ease client management and record all outbound and inbound communication.

The new customer service platform, provided by Merit Technology replaces an in-house system that was geared toward customer requests.

“We weren’t really looking, a new CRM wasn’t on the radar, it just happened that Merit Technology was heading to Tassie and they called in to give a demo,” said Malcom Salter, corporate services manager, Meander Valley Council. “We liked what we saw.”

The council’s main aim was to move away from the existing in-house system and integrate Merit CRM to better suit the needs of the relatively small rural council.

Currently using DataWorks, Proclaim and Conquest solutions, Salter said that the previous CRM was resource intensive and in many ways impractical for a council of its size.

The decision to go with Merit CRM was also based on the speed with which the solution could be implemented and the minimal disruption that would occur.

“One of the primary considerations when selecting a new CRM was the ease of deployment, we needed a solution that could be up and running in a matter of weeks rather than months,” Salter said.

Merit CRM will be used to capture all customer communication, including contact over the phone, at the counter, via the Meander City Council website and email, as well as written correspondence. The result will be one solution to access all client information.

“Merit CRM can be implemented and managed far more easily and efficiently than some of the other options we considered,” said Salter.

Other features that Meander City Council required from a CRM solution include the presence of adequate security and a variety of reporting and enquiry options. An easy-to-use platform for council personnel was also an important consideration.

“We were looking for a solution that was intuitive ... merit CRM has been developed with a focus on ease of use and as a result we expect we will be able to deploy the solution with a minimum of user training,” Salter said.

The council is planning to go live with Merit CRM in early 2008.