Data is one of the key resources to making informed, contextual decisions. Without data, without being able to measure telemetry and usage, it’s challenging to identify areas of improvement. But it’s not just the data itself that matters, it’s that this data is actionable, helping users understand not only the what, but also the how and why. With Dynamics 365 Sales product usage reports, we’re happy to offer administrators and sales managers the ability to get data at their fingertips.

The new feature allows sales managers and sales administrators to track the usage of Contacts, Opportunities, Leads and Accounts (COLA entities) by their sellers. With this information, they will be able to make critical decisions about the work processes within their teams. For example, they will be able to see which teams use the COLA entities less than others, and double-down on expanding CRM usage best practices to those teams. In another example, managers, with the help of product usage reports, will be able to easily identify the top performing sellers in terms of using the application, for rewarding or benchmark purposes.

Understand seller performance with product usage reports.

The Dynamics 365 Sales product usage insights are Power BI embedded dashboards, that allow sales managers, sales administrators and other users to view the usage of COLA entities within the application. They can easily understand and assess the performance of sellers with respect to various transactional sales entities.

Sales managers can easily access the dashboards with a simple enable switch. Sales administrators or managers can also provide permissions to access these dashboards further to other users, based on configuration.

At this stage, we are releasing the following dashboards:

• Opportunity usage
• Lead usage
• Account usage
• Contact usage

Each dashboard can be divided into three broad sections.

• Filters Slice and dice the data to have different views. Filtering parameters include data range, business unit, roles, manager name etc.
• KPI charts Summarize KPIs for the specified date and the percentage change during the period. This view includes a trend to show how the KPI is doing in the selected timeframe compared with the previous timeframe. A green upward triangle indicates an improvement in the score, and a red downward triangle indicates a decline in the score.
• Metric charts A detailed view of the individual values of records. For example, created date, status, and who created and converted the record.

Gain insights on how sellers work

On top of the benefits of the Dynamics sales usage reports to sales managers mentioned above, there are also benefits for sales administrators.

Sales administrators can analyze the Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) operations that sellers perform on their COLA entities. To help this analysis, the usage report dashboards have the following charts:

• CRUD operations over a period To help the admin user to understand the usage of COLA entities by the sellers.
• Users contributing to the CRUD operations To allow the admin user to easily find the usage of leads and opportunities by sellers or groups of sellers.
• Top users contributing to CRUD operations To help the admin user to identify the top performing sellers in terms of using the sales entities.
• Leads & Opportunity overtime chart To help understand the qualification/win rate of the entities over a period of time.

Next steps

Learn more about the sales usage reports: View and understand sales usage reports | Microsoft Learn

Enable reports by following the instructions: Enable sales usage reports for sales managers | Microsoft Learn

The post Optimize Dynamics 365 Sales product usage with new reports! appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The past couple years have been challenging for many customer service organizations. Meeting customers’ rising expectations and adapting to their evolving needs within a volatile economic landscape has been a herculean effort. Businesses are investing more in measuring the impact of their customer service, and the investment is paying dividends. In fact, it’s becoming more about the total customer experience and transforming the business models to create effortless experiences for both customers as well as employees. By 2026, Gartner predicts that 60 percent of large enterprises will use total experience to transform their business models to achieve world-class customer and employee advocacy levels.¹ This growing acknowledgment is a positive indicator that service is finally recognized as a core business value driver as support teams became pivotal in retaining customer loyalty and winning new customers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

But are service organizations ready to face challenges and equipped to provide this level of service at scale? Customer service leaders are turning to modernizing technology and digitization, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, to provide high-quality customer service experiences.  

Five trends to modernize customer service

1. Recognize and quickly connect with customers

Modern customer service means showing up for your customers on the channel of their choice. Customers increasingly expect companies to offer a robust service experience right in their favorite channel. With each social channel representing diverse customer segments, engaging across these channels offers countless opportunities to deliver excellent service.

• 63 percent of customers expect companies to offer customer service via their social media channels, and 90 percent of social media users have already used social media as a way to communicate with a brand or business.²

The Omnichannel for Customer Service add-in for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service offers a wide variety of social engagement options for customers to engage on their preferred channel. Now with 2022 release wave 2, we’ve added Apple Messages for Business to our list of social messaging apps. This rich messaging can be used to generate interactive content and experiences that all take place within the messages application. And remember, when you enable agents to respond using the customer’s channel of choice, it drives brand engagement, creates a positive experience, and builds customer loyalty.

When engaging on social, always remember that you are not interacting with just one customer issue, but a wider audience that may not have context around a customer’s challenge. With an increasing number of eyes on you, it’s crucial to respond with precision, empathy, and quality.

2. Help customers help themselves with self-service

Intelligent self-service empowers customers to conveniently secure answers when and how they want, and this online, anytime support option is growing in popularity with customers. Business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) customers are likely to search for an answer to an issue within a knowledge base, online community, or portal before reaching out to a customer support agent. These critical self-service capabilities free up your agents to focus on high-priority, complex issues, and drive customer satisfaction.

• In a McKinsey survey of customer care leaders, nearly two-thirds of respondents who successfully decreased their call volumes identified improved self-service as a key driver.³

AI-powered chatbots are leading the charge in intelligent self service. Bots serve as the first point of contact for customers, alleviate customer frustrations from long wait times, and provide around-the-clock, immediate online support.

With the right service solution, bots can be deployed as conversational interactive voice responses (IVRs) equipped with natural language processing. A direct benefit of this intelligent, human-like conversation experience, paired with around-the-clock availability, is increased resolution speed. A quick response to a problem can be the difference in keeping a customer or having them pivot to a competitor.

• By 2027, chatbots will become the primary customer service channel for roughly a quarter of organizations, according to Gartner.⁴

AI and machine learning advancements continue to make bots even more powerful and more efficient in understanding and conversing with customers. The use of bots in customer service is likely to expand as the technology becomes more and more democratized.

3. Personalize and drive brand loyalty

Customers want businesses to quickly recognize them as individuals and tailor their customer support experiences. Personalization isn’t only about knowing your customers and their histories, it means being able to understand and accordingly respond to their sentiment in real time. The ideal solution creates interactions based on each customer’s profile, which uses their current and past interactions and user data to customize the experience. It can be as simple as greeting a customer by their name and pulling up their order automatically by an email address or phone number, or it can mean taking the first step and implementing proactive customer care.

This trend in personalizing customer service demonstrates the value of the relationship to the customer, enhancing CSAT and strengthening loyalty, while significantly impacting the company’s bottom line.

• 63 percent of consumers expect personalization as a standard of service and believe they are recognized as an individual when sent special offers.⁵

• 80 percent of customers are more likely to make a purchase when businesses provide a customized experience.⁶

Improving Customer Satisfaction with AI

Learn how AI is helping customer service leaders drive higher customer satisfaction scores.

Read about it

4. Improve agent productivity

• In the past two years, customer service leaders have seen a dramatic shift in the number of employees working from homeup to 85% of their workforces in some cases.⁷

With agents working from more places than ever, they need new ways to find experts who can help them solve customer challenges. The right data at the right time is key to empowering agents to meet customers’ needs quickly and accurately. However, as omnichannel customer profiles grow, agents need tools that proactively surface insights that matter in the moment.

Advancements in AI technology, especially natural language understanding, enable real-time analysis of conversations and the ability to surface real-time insights and knowledge. Agents can be alerted to similar cases and successful resolution steps, along with knowledge suggestions customized for the current context. All of these capabilities help agents solve customer issues more quickly, improving resolution rates and customer satisfaction.

5. Optimize with automation and run your business lean

Many customer service leaders are making it a priority to transform their departments from cost centers to growth centers. At the same time, they face continuous pressure to keep costs down.

Unifying tools onto a single, cloud-based platform reduces redundancy and enables cost flexibility to meet changing business conditions. If that platform has an open architecture and no-code/low-code development capabilities, the time and cost of development can be dramatically reducedputting innovation within reach across the organization.

Building tomorrow

These are just a few of the trends in customer service, but one thing is for sure: customer service is evolving rapidly. The real challenge is being able to serve customers wherever they are and making sure every customer interaction is captured and available in a single profile for the support agent to use in resolving customer issues.

Microsoft is listening. We’re continually adapting and innovating to provide service leaders with the tools you need to consistently deliver exceptional customer service. We continue to invest in features like self-service, bots, social engagement, and agent productivity tools that bring value to you, your customer service organization, and most of all, to your customers. Our goal is to build intuitive, sophisticated, easy-to-use tools that enhance your service delivery and empower your service representatives to exceed customer and organizational expectations.

Our service product roadmap is filled with new features and innovations that will take your service experience to the next level, differentiate your brand, and ultimately help you rise as a leader in your industry.

Learn more

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and check out Apple Messages for Business.

End notes

¹Gartner webinar, The Total Experience Strategy for Better Retail Digital Interactions. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

²180+ Social Media Marketing Stats You Can’t Ignore (2023), Dreamgrow.com.

³The state of customer care in 2022 and beyond, McKinsey, 2022.

⁴ Gartner Press Release, Gartner Predicts Chatbots Will Become a Primary Customer Service Channel Within Five Years, July 27, 2022. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

⁵Consumers expect personalization, reveals report, Retail Customer Experience.

⁶New Epsilon research indicates 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences, Epsilon Research.

⁷The state of customer care in 2022 and beyond, McKinsey, 2022.

The post 5 customer service trends to watch in 2023 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.