The first point of contact someone has with a business is usually a visit to the website followed by an interaction with an employee of the company. Both of these touch-points give you the opportunity to provide a first-class customer experience.

In the first part of our two-part article looking at 10 Microsoft Dynamics 365 features that can help with your CX strategy, we looked at the flexible licensing now available for Microsoft Dynamics 365, we also talked about the simple to use new interface, which now makes Dynamics 365 one of the easiest CRM systems to use ever! A truly sophisticated, yet simple CRM.

In this second part, we continue our review and examine the emerging role of the embedded intelligence features within Dynamics 365 as well as integration and voice of the customer surveys.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 CX features

6. Embedded Intelligence

The inclusion of embedded intelligence into Dynamics 365 is a huge differentiator for Microsoft. With the inclusion of the embedded intelligence suite, Dynamics 365 starts to take over some of the thinking for you.

The relationship assistant will display action cards to prompt you to follow up on sales opportunities and customer service cases when they are due, without the need to set reminders. So, for example, If you’ve forgotten to link an important email to a record, Dynamics 365 will find your unlinked emails from Outlook and prompt you to link them into Dynamics, even offering a one-click button to link it. Clever hey?

There isn’t enough space to list all of the new machine learning functionality in this blog post, but this is certainly an area to watch as this type of functionality is developing at a supersonic pace. All of the embedded intelligence functionality is also available on the apps for phones and tablets, meaning that customer requests can be actioned even while the user is out of the office.

7. Knowledge Base

Every company has its own bank of unique knowledge, but unfortunately, it’s often locked away on people’s desktops or in people’s heads. Imagine a scenario where you log a case for a customer and Dynamics 365 then takes the case and automatically performs a keyword search, based on the case context, and brings back suggested reading or solutions for the customer. Then imagine the added functionality of using one-click to then send that information to the customer.

With the new Dynamics 365 knowledge base, you can create and manage knowledge articles that your users may be looking for. You can even make these available on a portal so that your customers can self-serve. Not only are you exceeding customers expectations by doing this, but you are alleviating the pressure on your customer service team.

8. Quotes “on the fly”

Microsoft Dynamics 365 uses opportunities to manage pipeline, but sometimes you may have a request for a simple quote. In Dynamics 365, quotes can a part of a bigger opportunity or they can be standalone. It is really simple to add a quote, including products from a product catalogue, the ability to add a discount, use different currencies and have alerts if a quote is over a certain value. Quotes can be revised in Microsoft Dynamics 365, with a full history of the previous quote.

Customers phoning up for a quote can be presented with a quote seconds after the phone call is completed.

9. Integration

Not only does Microsoft Dynamics 365 integrate natively with Office 365, but it also allows integrations with almost any other system. Native integrations include Exchange for emails and calendar and SharePoint for documents, as well as Skype for business, Word and Excel.

Using the Common Data Service (the platform that Dynamics is built on), it’s possible to build your own custom apps that are fully integrated with Dynamics 365. In fact, it’s so easy that Microsoft has been running a course lately called “An App in a day”.

Using integration tools such as SSIS, integrations can be built with almost any database system such as a finance, ERP or event management system. It’s now quite common to integrate all the key business applications within an organisation using a hub and spoke design. In such a design Microsoft Dynamics 365 sits as a central hub where all relevant data flows, providing that full 360-degree view for your team when dealing with your customers.

10. Customer Service Surveys

Unless you have a real understanding of your customers’ experiences, you may end up as one of those 80% of CEO’s that thinks they are providing a superior service but actually aren’t. Forms Pro is the name of the tool that deals with customer questionnaires and surveys.

Poorly timed and poorly thought out surveys have little or no use, but with a few best practices, it’s possible to create a meaningful survey that gathers good and accurate responses. Forms Pro is a very easy to use survey designer with a range of question and response types. It allows for well thought out and designed surveys to be created and delivered in various ways to a customer.

See the link below to see more about Forms Pro
Forms Pro: The free survey tool for Dynamics 365

Summary

In this two-part article, we have listed 10 features of Dynamics 365 that will help transform your Customer Experience strategy although we could easily have continued to extend the list ten more times because there are now so many good features in Dynamics and the pricing is pitched correctly that is almost is at the stage where you don’t need to think about your choice of CRM package anymore and you just bundle it along with your Office 365 licensing.

As companies battle for business in a world where customers become more demanding, customer experience is increasingly becoming a key differentiator. The role of data and technology in leading this change is paramount and we, as a business, feel that Microsoft is responding to the need by delivering world-class tools, with built-in intelligence, that is available at a price that doesn’t preclude any business no matter how small or large.

Rocket CRM are a Microsoft Dynamics 365 partner based in London in the UK. We have over 30 years joint experience in the CRM industry…. And we are really excited about the future!
Contact us to arrange a call to discuss how Dynamics 365 can help your business.