22 Feb 2019
5 Ways Microsoft Dynamics 365 Solves the Top Customer Service Problems
No matter what business you're in, customer service matters. Everything, one way or another, needs to be helping your company get sales and retain customers. Here are five ways Microsoft's CRM tool can help:
1. Get rid of third-party integration and unwieldy widgets.
Online tools and SaaS platforms are getting better at working together. Zapier and IFTTT can often bridge the gap, and there are plenty of Chrome extensions for common apps. But that's a long chain of connectivity that you can't control. That's bad for business continuity, especially since you won't know something is broken until it's been broken for a while. Even worse, extensions and plug-ins are terrible for security. If you use a bunch of different applications to juggle customer information, a data breach may be in your future.
That's why it's often better to use one suite of products to handle everything. When you operate with one primary SaaS provider, you don't have to worry about engineering your own integrations or rely on plug-ins to make it happen.
2. Avoid duplicate accounts.
If you have multiple sales people reaching out to the same customer, that's a problem. At best, a B2C customer gets competing offers and goes for the lower deal. At worst, a major B2B client sees this as a sign of poor internal communication and walks away.
This can happen a lot in CRMs that rely on precisely accurate CRMs. It's easy to accidentally create "Company X Inc," "Company X, Inc," and even "Company X, Inc." accounts and never know you're treading on a team-mate's toes. But when your CRM stores emails and domains better, it's clearer when there's a duplicate account.
3. The calendar is all in one place.
If your company is using Microsoft Outlook for internal meetings and something else for external meetings, there's going to be a conflict sooner or later. But if your CRM automatically integrates with your employees' central calendar, you don't have to worry about missed meetings.
Even better, a CRM-based calendar lets everyone keep track of customer meetings. For example, a salesperson inheriting an account doesn't have to backtrack meetings through the other person's Outlook. They can just look at the meetings' history on the customer profile.
Better still, you can make your calendars even stronger by letting customers set appointments and meetings. When all of your tools operate under the same roof, your website's appointment setter can automatically fill the details into the account and the right employee's calendar.
4. Develop ways of thinking that create the most useful data.
Every CRM is different. It's not just certain functions or appearances that differ, either. Salesforce creates a different way of thinking than HubSpot; one allows for detailed, granular modifications, and the other is more intuitive for small businesses. Microsoft Dynamics 365 also creates its own way of thinking based on how its algorithms interact.
If your employees are used to using Microsoft tools for everything, they can more easily dive deep into the details of Dynamics's functionality. That means they'll start to automate their processes or build routines that best fit the results they need to get from the tool. That can include everything from filling out templates a certain way to setting automated reports that answer specific questions. Your teams need that deeper familiarity to seize every opportunity data collection can bring you.
5. Customer help tickets are visible regardless of your employees' workflow preferences.
Customer help tickets need to be just as accessible as account information. They need to be on task lists, set on automated email reminder schedules, and added to accounts. The more visibility there is in more spots, the less likely an issue is to slip through the cracks. Savvy employees can also set up their homepages to give them the information they need in a format that works best for their working style.
Don't let miscommunication or delays hurt your sales pipeline or customer retention. Instead, get a CRM that all of your external and internal communications can work through. Contact our team to learn more about finding the right business tools for your company.