US Small Business Administration saves millions with Dynamics 365 and Power Platform

The US Small Business Administration (SBA) helps Americans start, build, and grow businesses. A network of Disaster Recovery Centers across the country makes it easier for approximately 32 million small business owners to get the support they need wherever they are. In addition to providing disaster and ongoing support for its customers, the SBA manages federal loans and related services.

Recognizing an opportunity

Until 2023, if a disaster survivor wanted to talk with an SBA staff member, they had to seek services as a walk-in. In disaster scenarios, such as a pandemic or hurricane—when the SBA is called on most commonly—the organization couldn't scale rapidly to meet customer demand. This in-person protocol created more stress for customers when they could be facing the most difficult moment of their lives.

Staff relied on emails, phone calls, and spreadsheets to manage and track activities. "To track walk-ins at our hundreds of Field Centers, people noted daily activity on paper, then consolidated the information at the end of the day to add to an electronic system," says Brian Quay, Program Manager at SBA. "It was difficult to determine when a specific customer visited a Center, how long they were waiting to be seen, what type of services were being used, how long it took to provide support, and what SBA employee worked with them." Quay saw an opportunity to not only deliver more reliable, accessible service to customers, but to gain visibility into performance.

Embracing scalability and performance

To facilitate faster support for customers, the SBA set up auto-routing for emails and launched online appointment scheduling and a support request form using the Microsoft Power Platform stack: Power Pages and Power Automate. At contact.sba.gov or appointments.sba.gov, both portals built with Power Pages, customers complete a form and schedule an appointment or request support. Power Automate connects the form to Dynamics 365 Customer Service and routes the request to the appropriate Center and representative via email notification. "Familiar, but different," Quay smiles. Now the case can be tracked from start to resolution against specific metrics, including type of assistance, employee, date, and time, in a Power BI dashboard. "The barrier to change within our staff was lessened, and we were able to stand up our modern solution in six days," Quay laughs. "It sounds absurd that we implemented Dynamics 365 Customer Service in six days. Everybody said it would be at least nine months to deploy a CRM solution. Microsoft really showed up for us."

In addition to managing appointment scheduling and case management, the SBA team is using Dynamics 365 Customer Service to send email campaigns to customers, easily tracked against the call center data to see which campaigns are facilitating engagement. An employee service hub better supports employees and centralizes support across all functional areas of the organization, all within the Dynamics 365 ecosystem.