Crown Automotive Improves Service with Online Access to Customer Invoices and Service Documents
Crown Auto Dealerships, Inc. (Crown) is one of the top 100 automobile dealerships in the United States based on sales. Crown has thirteen dealership locations in St. Petersburg, Florida, one in Wauchula, Florida and one in Ohio.
The Problem
The major challenge for Crown is maintaining and accessing customer invoices and files in the customer service area. Frequently, service personnel have to show a signed copy of a service invoice to the customer to show that work has been done previously and/or for warranty service backup. To accomplish the task, service personnel have to go to the file room, search for the customers file and specific information needed, while the customer waits. If the corporate office needs a document, it is pulled, faxed, and refiled by the service personnel.
The Solution
Crown implemented PaperHost and now all service invoices are sent to the corporate headquarters daily. They are scanned, indexed and uploaded to PaperHost for immediate access by service personnel. Without leaving their workstations, service personnel can search for the custom record on PaperHost and immediately have the information they need to quickly and efficiently assist the customer without wait times. The corporate office can also access needed customer records without interrupting the service personnel at the dealership level. If customer records are requested by telephone, the entire customer file or only specific portions can be emailed to the customer.
PaperHost also has optimized the corporate scanning and indexing process for Crown using PaperHost
phSCAN production scanning software and a high-speed scanner with ultra-sonic double feed protection to eliminate double feed of documents. After invoices are all scanned in batches, each document is indexed with the invoice number. The phSCAN software feature for connection to an ODBC database from their Dealer Management Software, auto-populates all the additional index fields for the document, eliminating manual, error prone hand keying. The invoices can be searched by customer name, dealership, VIN number, phone number, date of service and service advisor.
Crown also uses PaperHost to make them more efficient in other areas such as Parts Invoicing, Accounts Payable, Auto Sales and Payroll. Not only are they much more efficient saving time and money, but their customer service ratings have gone up as well making their customers even more loyal to Crown. Another determining factor in oursourcing their document management to PaperHost is that Crown's geographic location makes them susceptible to hurricanes.
Summary
With PaperHost, they now have all their most critical business documents backed up in an offsite, inland location that is an ISO 9002 compliant data center. This provides for both disaster recovery and business continuity in the event of a natural disaster or just a malfunctioning sprinkler head.
