Wesley Mission Queensland (WMQ), which has 2,500 staff and close to 100 volunteers, delivers retirement living, residential aged care, disability, and mental health services for youth and families.

The story

The organisation realised it was facing a huge challenge when a trio of external forces – the Australian government’s introduction of Consumer Directed Care (CDC) and the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), the digital revolution, and an aging population – were progressively impacting its established operating environment. Consumers were overtaking the government as the key Wesley Mission Queensland stakeholder group. The organisation needed to learn about influencing this wider group of individual end-users to ensure continued operations and growth.

“We understood that building a deeper understanding of customers was going to be key to embracing the new landscape we found ourselves in, and yet we had no single customer view. Information about our customers was spread between departments, systems and excel spreadsheets, so achieving a single view of our customers was a key objective for our CRM initiative,” said Kris Sargeant, Director Community Care & Inclusion, Wesley Mission Queensland.

Achieving a single customer view was essential to helping Wesley Mission Queensland adapt to an increasingly ‘consumerised,’ competitive aged care and community services landscape. After defining the CRM strategy in 2016, the organisation rolled out Sugar to the Customer Service, Marketing, Fundraising, In-Home Care and Allied Health businesses throughout 2017.

“We chose Sugar’s open software because it provides incredible ease of use for staff at every level of our organisation, enabling them to engage with customers and stakeholders effectively. Sugar offers a flexible, user-centric tool that supports our shift towards a customer-centric strategy,” stated Sargeant.

The results

Since late 2016, Sugar has worked closely in partnership with Wesley Mission Queensland to roll out the CRM solution step by step. Establishing the CRM strategy upfront was an important first step to making practical the vision of using a CRM to help drive a broader transformation agenda. Rolling out Sugar gradually has helped Wesley Mission Queensland manage change impacts and has meant the organisation could learn how best to deliver results from their CRM journey.

Sugar continues to work with Wesley Mission Queensland today and now supports many business areas, from In-Home Care to Residential Aged Care; enquiry management to volunteers management; allied health to the NDIS business