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Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement – Engage your customers and increase loyalty

Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Customers are at the very heart of every business. And in today’s world, they have more choices than ever before. With a broad selection of providers and suppliers, they now have higher demands when it comes to quality, customer experience, and price. They want more tailor-made products and services and not just standard offers. That’s why organizations are now looking at ways to improve customer experiences. Because they understand that better customer experiences lead to stronger customer engagement. Read on to learn how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement helps business engage customers and increase loyalty.

How do you get loyal customers? 

Digitalization has resulted in customers spending more times on their phones and digital channels. And, while it’s now easier for sellers to access customers, this digitalization produces massive amounts of data. So how do organizations collect this data and ensure they use it effectively? To answer this question, organizations need a solid overview and understanding of the data and this is where Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement comes in.

Loyalty programs 

In the past loyalty programs were almost exclusive to the travel, retail, and financial services industries. But digitalization and other trends have set a higher bar for customer experience. Today, organizations that previously didn’t have a traditional one-to-one customer relationship are now looking into this. According to Jess Huang, McKinsey partner and coleader of their loyalty work, loyalty programs are starting to expand into all industries especially the healthcare and insurance industries. For instance, healthcare providers are starting to ask themselves how they can engage with customers between scheduled visits and ensure they return.  

The days when the salesperson is the only person who communicates with the customer are over. With more access and ways to engage, loyalty is something everyone in the organization needs to think about. And by better understanding the data, it’s possible to identify new ways to take advantage of these customer touchpoints and quickly determine the next steps. 

So how do you start designing a loyalty program? Well, the first thing you need to do is understand what your customers want and what you can offer them?  

Loyalty and predictive analysis 

Predictive analysis can improve the effectiveness of your loyalty programs by providing insights to help you better understand your customer—how much their spending and their importance to the company. Plus, you can use the data to fine-tune existing loyalty programs. For instance, you can uncover which customers are the most valuable based on their transaction-and-engagement data and figure out ways to up-value them by spending money.  

The cost of acquiring new customers is much higher than servicing existing customers, so it makes sense that organizations focus more on retaining existing business. By analyzing the data, it’s possible to determine which behaviors drive high-value customers. For example, as a retailer, you might discover that customers who buy in Category 1 often purchased items in the three adjacent categories. You can then use this data to refine your loyalty programs and add incentives to drive that specific behavior.  

Designing a loyalty program 

The first step in designing a loyalty program is to define your goals and objectives and determine how to measure their effectiveness. Ask yourself, who are the specific customers you are targeting? What do you want them to do- what are the specific products and services you want them to spend more on? Your loyalty program must align with the overall company and brand strategies. The program also needs to be flexible so it’s easy to update as the company evolves.  

Finding the right balance

To ensure you create value for the customer, you need a loyalty program that creates value for both of you. And, while you need to spend money to be able to offer something that creates value, it’s always a balance. Because if you over-spend you could quickly lose money. So how do you ensure your customer value proposition supports your company objectives? Well, you need to be specific and ensure the values you add drive specific objectives. What features and benefits are valuable to the customer, have most impact on your loyalty program, yet are low cost? What value are you giving away and to whom? Value propositions are different for each type of customer, and you might decide to implement tiers in your loyalty program or design a broader program that defines what to offer each specific customer. The ideal approach is to meet customer expectations and solve their main pain points without spending too much.  

Better customer engagement is possible when you better understand your customer. But, to do this you need to understand ALL the data so you can quickly derive the insights you need.  

Engage your customers with Dynamics 365 Customer Engagment 

How can organizations support their employees and ensure the best possible customer engagement? This is where Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 comes in. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement has completely transformed the way we think about customer relationship management. Built on reliable industry-standard technology, this flexible and robust solution bundles all customer data centrally in one software, with records of all activity including quotes, orders, e-mails, and phone calls. Plus, it offers tools to enhance sales, marketing, and service processes.  

Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement is a comprehensive suite

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement includes five key apps: Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Field Service, and Project Service Automation. These apps simplify daily sales activities and empower sellers to build and foster trustworthy, long-term relationships with customers through active personal engagement. They also help ensure better cross-team collaboration so sales and marketing teams can work together to efficiently generate and nurture sales leads.  

Seamless integration 

Featuring an intuitive interface, Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement helps streamline processes and drives consistent and measurable improvements in daily business processes. It’s integrated with Microsoft Office 365 to ensure overall improvements in productivity and collaboration. Plus, users can work from within whatever tool they are most comfortable with. For instance, it’s possible to seamlessly move between D365 Customer Engagement and Outlook or Teams.  

Smart tools for better engagement

By gathering all your data and processes in one centralized location, Dynamics 365 provides sellers with all the insights they need to nurture relationships. And, by uncovering insights into customer buying behaviors, you can provide each customer with a unified, consistent experience, regardless of who is managing their specific case. In addition, this powerful solution offers smart tools to further help you engage. For example, it’s possible to: 

  • Guide customer communications with the assistant
    The assistant (formerly the Relationship Assistant) is part of Dynamics 365 Sales Insights. This smart tool appears prominently throughout the application and keeps an eye on your daily activities and communications. It helps you stay up-to-date by using insight cards to provide tailored and actionable insights.
  • Use playbooks to enforce best practices
    Dynamics 365 Sales playbooks help guide teams on how to respond to events. For instance, if a decision-maker leaves the organization in the middle of a deal, the playbook offers guidance on how the team should respond to such events. Playbooks define an organization’s best-practices and can help streamline and automate recurring tasks.
  • Optimize virtual selling opportunities
    Seamlessly integrated, the LinkedIn Sales Navigator allows you to view the profiles of related leads so you can find the right prospects. It offers recommendations on how best to introduce yourself allowing you to build and manage real, long-term relationships.

Centralized data at your fingertips

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement ensures continuous, uninterrupted access to the system with easy remote access from anywhere in the world. With instant access to all the information, teams will have a complete view of each customer allowing them to efficiently perform business operations — anytime and anywhere. Furthermore, thanks to accurate, real-time data, sales and marketing teams can make smart decisions based on real-time data analysis.  

Stay up-to-date  

You can read more about Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales and the five key customer engagement apps. Plus, you can sign up today to receive our monthly newsletter with all the latest industry-specific news, trends, best practice tips from our team, and more. 

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