Creating the ideal customer experience revolves around customer engagement. Whether you’re nurturing a current client or trying to close a deal with a new one, how well you’re engaging with them is paramount to changing the account to “closed won.” And, those valuable interactions — hosted by dedicated sales teams, developed through social media, or brought to the light via form fill — call for intelligent technology to enrich them.
Microsoft has launched one of the most expansive Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools to meet and exceed customer engagement possibilities, the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CE) plan. Offering various tools for businesses, Dynamics 365 CE goes beyond sales operations and leverages extensive business insights to customize sales and marketing operations. What does all that look like? Let’s explore.
What is the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Plan?
Although its familiar user interface gives customers a significant leg up, the differentiators that make Dynamics 365 CE stand out are its diverse array of applications. When businesses sign up for a Customer Engagement Plan, they gain access to an enterprise suite of Microsoft tools to refine the entire spectrum of the customer experience, from attraction to loyalty.
- Dynamics 365 Business Central (NAV): Previously branded as NAV, Business Central is a robust ERP offering that provides all necessary tools for managing your organization’s finances, accounting, inventory, and back-end operations. Business Central is also unique in its capacity to work for numerous business types, from manufacturers and government contractors to small businesses in retail and the service industry. (This includes access to Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and Dynamics 365 for Retail.)
- Dynamics 365 Customer Service & Insights: One of the keystones of customer engagement is effective customer service. Dynamics 365 for Customer Service serves as an advanced medium between your organization and the customer with tools to accelerate assistance, provide product/service recommendations, and access to knowledge centers. The data collected at every touchpoint is compiled into customer profiles, allowing for the system’s Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) functionalities to generate an entirely personalized experience.
- Dynamics 365 Field Service: When field service agents are onsite for installation, product repair, equipment/system maintenance, access to customer information and project requirements are essential. With Dynamics 365 for Field Service, all the necessary resources are at their fingertips with mobile accessibility on any device.
- Dynamics 365 Marketing: The backbone of customer engagement, whether your prospects are at the top or the bottom of the funnel, is an encompassing marketing strategy accompanied by technology that supports and drives it. Everything your marketing team needs to execute its initiatives is built into Dynamics 365 Marketing — your content, emails, event schedule, website, and marketing automation can all be managed in one place with insights that rival face-to-face interactions. And, with an array of social media engagement tools, you can build a brand that attracts and converts from numerous social hubs.
- Dynamics 365 for Sales: No CRM is complete without a specialized system to streamline sales operations and nurture customer relationships. Dynamics 365 for Sales allows your sales reps to make sales processes easier on both sides of the deal, integrating seamlessly with customer data repositories. No matter where your reps are, they can create new records, schedule meetings, set reminders, and find pertinent information to rapidly close deals and maintain customer satisfaction. You can build reports, workflows, dashboards, and interactive charts for full visibility to drive ideal outcomes and contextual guidance. In other words, it’s a lead generation and conversion machine. (This includes PowerApps through the Microsoft Power Platform.)
- Dynamics 365 for Talent: When you build a strong team of experts and value employee satisfaction, customers are more likely to buy from you. That’s why staffing your organization with the right talent is critical to success, and Dynamics 365 for Talent offers an innovative approach to filling each position with the ideal candidate. By integrating with LinkedIn, Talent propels hiring teams past the manual processes of identifying potential candidates to autonomously find profiles with matching skills and experience for the specific position. Not only does it find them, but its built-in applications (including Attract, Onboard, and Core HR) alleviate the more strenuous onboarding activities to guarantee new hires are up and going when they start on their first day.
The Benefits of Microsoft’s Customer Engagement Plan
Each tool has incredible potential, and when implemented by Microsoft experts like XTIVIA, you can capitalize on all the benefits they have to offer. Although the list goes on and on, here are some of the standouts that we’ve seen in our client’s success:
- The ability to perform sales operations and engage with clients on any device from any location. Whether you’re responding to a comment on Instagram, assisting your customer from the field, or helping a coworker retrieve data, it can be done anywhere.
- Strengthens relationships with customers by promoting a service presence across your website, conversion funnel, and social media platforms. With precise targeting and data unification, your team will deliver everything it needs to provide every customer with a personalized experience no matter where they’re engaging with your brand.
- Bonds between department teams are also empowered by enabling everyone to work together to complete tasks, mediate problems, and efficiently execute your company’s initiatives. Improvement plans and projects can be approached from multiple angles through Microsoft’s collaborative and easy to navigate workspace.
- Deliver state-of-the-art marketing campaigns with insights to drive effective targeting for building a catalog of MQLs and satisfy your sales team’s funnel.
The ultimate goal of a CRM is to bring your sales team into harmony with your customer to deliver a meaningful and valuable experience to your customers. Doing so requires an interwoven network of operations and dedicated procedures — Dynamics 365 CE acts as the connective tissue binding those practices to fulfill customer demands and actualize your team’s goals.
If you’re looking to ramp up your customer engagement, reach out to the experts at XTIVIA. As a Certified Gold Microsoft Partner, our team has innovated CRM and engagement strategies for countless organizations, spanning multiple industries and company sizes, with XTIVIA’s Microsoft implementation approach. If you’re ready to ignite your Dynamics 365 CE journey, feel free to contact us today.