Client and sector
A UK consumer services business selling and servicing a regulated product to individual customers. The journey runs from enquiry, through an appointment and sale, to document collection and ongoing service.
The operational problem
Each stage of the journey had grown its own tool. Enquiries were logged in one place, appointments in another, documents were requested by email and tracked in a spreadsheet, and follow-up messages were sent by hand from a shared inbox.
None of the tools were bad on their own. The cost was in the gaps between them: information copied by hand, follow-ups that depended on someone remembering, and no single view of where a customer actually was.
Why the existing process wasn't working
- Staff spent a large part of the day moving information between systems rather than talking to customers.
- Document collection was the slowest stage, and chasing was inconsistent because it relied on individuals.
- Customers had no way to see what they had already sent or what was still outstanding, so they phoned to ask.
- Reporting on the pipeline meant reconciling several sources, and the numbers rarely agreed.
What was designed
Rather than adding another tool, the team mapped the customer lifecycle end to end and defined, for each stage, what the system should do without being asked and what a person should do.
The resulting design has one record per customer in Activ CRM, with the portal, messaging and document workflows attached to that record:
- Enquiry: captured by dynamic form or phone, allocated by rule, first response sent automatically.
- Appointment: booked against the lead, confirmed and reminded by SMS, outcome recorded on the record.
- Sale: products, pricing and next steps recorded once, with the document checklist generated from the products sold.
- Documents: requested through the portal with secure upload, chased by SMS on a schedule, marked received automatically.
- Service: ongoing tasks and communications continue on the same record.
Technology used
- Activ CRM for leads, customers, appointments, tasks, documents and the customer timeline.
- Customer portal built on the CRM API, so customers see the same document status the team sees.
- Activ SMS for confirmations, reminders and document chasers, with replies routed to the case owner.
- Workflow automation for allocation, reminders, chaser sequences and status changes.
Integration architecture
The portal is a separate application that reads and writes through the CRM's API rather than holding its own copy of customer data. Document uploads land on the CRM record directly, which is what allows the chaser sequence to stop automatically.
Messaging runs through Activ SMS with webhooks back into the CRM, so a customer replying to a chaser creates a task for the right person with the conversation attached.
Human and process considerations
- Staff were involved in the mapping sessions, which is where most of the "we do it that way because…" knowledge surfaced.
- Automated messages were reviewed for tone and kept short and plain.
- The team agreed which decisions must stay with a person, for example anything that changes what the customer is paying for.
- Chaser schedules respect contact preferences and quiet hours.
Outcome
Customers now move through a single journey, and staff work from one record rather than several tools. Document collection is driven by the system with people handling the exceptions, and pipeline reporting comes from one source.
As with all our case studies, we are not publishing figures the client has not agreed to share.
What happened next
With the journey running on one record, the business is now looking at where Activ Agent can take on the routine phone conversations in the same workflow, starting with appointment confirmations.