This is a story about two different clients making use of tablet technology to improve customer interactions.

Both Improve International and English Woodlands Timber interact with their customers, face-to-face, every day. Whilst one provides specialist veterinary training programmes and the other carefully sourced specialist timber, their desire to better serve their customers is the same.

Too much manual processing

On any busy day at Improve International's training centres across the UK and Europe, veterinary surgeons and nurses are arriving to undertake their training programmes and need to sign in. Historically this meant creating a register sheet prior to the day and handing it to each customer upon arrival for them to sign. Post training, the attendance of each customer then needed to be recorded in the company database and this meant manually entering the attendance details from the register sheets.

At English Woodlands Timber, customers are arriving, selecting and then purchasing wood on a daily basis. Upon completion of their purchase, they need to sign a proof of delivery note to confirm they have received their goods. The proof of delivery would then need to be manually entered into the company database to record the order as collected.

The solution

Having already developed tailor-made database platforms for both Improve International and English Woodlands Timber, Ambrose Fox developed fully-integrated digital versions of both the register sheet and proof of delivery forms that are now presented to customers using touch-screen tablets (e.g. iPads). The customers simply sign with their finger or a stylus and click confirm.

No more paperwork and, more importantly, the information (including the signature) is captured in the database, triggering other business processes such as the generation of attendance certificates or stock adjustments.

Tailor-made software from Ambrose Fox helps our clients to reduce manual processing, increase accuracy and delight their customers with efficient service.