Discover how Dynamics 365 helps customer experience leaders do more with less

Leaders of organizations in every region and industry are cautiously navigating business decisions of 2023. The recent economic turbulence has forced companies to evaluate their internal processes, tools, and enterprise software to optimize for efficiency. Conversely, customer experience (CX) leaders see 2023 as the year of opportunity. By strengthening their customer experience strategy with technology, CX leaders can retain their most valuable customers, acquire new customers, and look to surpass their competitors. The good news is that you don’t need more to do this. You can do more with less, utilizing the power of AI to optimize experiences for your sellers, marketers, and data analysts so they can deliver better experiences for your customers.

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Understand your customer

CX leaders know that the first step to any great customer experience is understanding your customer. They need a customer data platform that can do more for them, making sense of their data, offering recommendations, and serving up valuable insights. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights unifies and enriches first-party and third-party data to truly understand your customer and predict their intent. It does this while maintaining privacy and compliance with customer consent. Out-of-the-box AI guides data wranglers with the next best action and also can provide predictions for customer lifetime value, so you can determine how to best invest in your customers.

Business Finland utilized Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to gain greater data insights, resulting in the ability to support thousands of Finnish companies through the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing its export sales by 20 percent, and allowing the Finnish government to fund topics and initiatives that align with its strategic goals.

With the latest Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, data analysts and marketers can engage directly with customer data using simple, natural language. This saves time for data analysts, allowing them to type the query in their own words instead of identifying the query in SQL. This capability democratizes access to insights, allowing marketers to use their customer data platform (CDP) to ask questions using everyday language and receive answers fast, without needing to know SQL programming. With simple prompts, marketers can explore, understand, and predict customer preferences and needs in near real time, reducing the reliance on the analytics team to provide them with the customer insights they need.

Engage your customer

Customers today expect personalized experiences, but your marketers don’t have the time or resources to tailor every interaction with every customer. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing can do more with less by using AI to orchestrate personalized journeys across every customer touchpoint. In addition to customer journeys, Dynamics 365 offers email marketing, lead scoring, marketing pages, and social posting, allowing you to seamlessly connect your marketing and sales processes. Mid-Continent Instruments and Avionics, an aviation parts supplier, is using Dynamics 365 Marketing to automate the follow-up process for completed repairs, tying this activity into product campaigns, and communicating more effectively with customers.

With Copilot in Dynamics 365 Marketing, marketers can eliminate the time-consuming process of manually building customer segments for email campaigns, utilizing the query assist feature that allows them to describe their targeted segment in natural language. When they are ready to craft their email content, marketers can harness the Copilot feature, content ideas, to generate content by providing a few prompts. They can also tailor the tone to meet the needs of their audience. With Copilot in Dynamics 365 Marketing, marketers can spend less time on copywriting and audience segmentation, and more time on strategic marketing efforts.

Deliver for your customer

You’ve moved your customer down the funnel, understanding and predicting their intent, personalizing experiences with communications and offers, and now they’re ready to purchase. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales enables salespeople to build strong relationships with your customers, take actions based on insights, and close deals faster. You can use Dynamics 365 Sales to keep track of your accounts and contacts, nurture your sales from lead to order, and create sales collateral. Sales managers can use AI to make their sales teams stronger by monitoring conversations with customers using conversation intelligence and providing coaching and feedback to sellers, or by creating step-by-step guidance for next best steps with sequences.

DP World shortened sales cycles enabling five times more proactive sales and two times greater retention with Dynamics 365 Sales.

With Copilot in Microsoft Viva Sales, part of Dynamics 365 Sales, sellers can save time with generated email content suggestions, which includes data that is relevant to the customer, such as pricing, promotions, and deadlines. In addition, they can generate an email response that proposes a meeting date and time based on availability of their Outlook calendar. These new capabilities help sellers automate and expedite administrative work so they can focus on what matters mostmaking meaningful connections and building trust with their customers and prospects.

Learn how to do more with less

With Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Marketing, and Sales, you can connect your teams across all business processes to ensure your customer is always at the center. This ensures they have a personalized, seamless experience, from consideration to purchase. To learn more or take a guided tour, please visit our connected sales and marketing solution page. To learn more about Dynamics 365 Copilot, read the announcement blog from Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Business Applications, Emily He.

The post Optimize experiences for sellers and marketers with Dynamics 365 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We’re excited to return to Field Service Palm Springs from April 25 through April 27, 2023, at the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa.

We will showcase how Connected Field Service helps leaders:

• Move beyond the costly break/fix model to a proactive, predictive model.
• Unlock the power of data and use Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, and AI.
• Transform their field operations and improve customer experience.

This year, we are hosting a thought leadership luncheon with our partner Hitachi Solutions to discuss the benefits of a connected field service and how to use data to remain competitive, and continuously improve business performance and customer experiences in an increasingly challenging environment.

Field service organizations manage hundreds of technicians with varying expertise, experiences, and skills. With 80 percent of consumers more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences, organizations have come to realize how important quality service is to remain resilient despite uncertainty.¹ Employees are working from remote or distributed locations, reducing the amount of personalized interaction. Meanwhile, remote monitoring of IoT devices continues to transform service from a cost center to a revenue generator.

Connected Field Service is the ability to add connected devices, powered by the Internet of Things (IoT), and uses cloud capabilities to augment your existing field service operations. It enables organizations to transform the way they provide service from a costly, reactive break-fix model to a proactive, and in some cases, even predictive service model through the holistic combination of IoT diagnostics, scheduling, asset maintenance, and inventory on the same platform.

IoT has brought a new level of efficiency to the field service industry, helping service professionals address issues more proactively and minimize downtime. As McKinsey researchers predict, IoT applications could generate a value of over $470 billion annually by 2025 by enhancing operations across various industries.²

By integrating IoT signals across the enterprise, a connected field service helps organizations predict and resolve customer issues before the customer is aware, thereby ensuring consistent and dependable customer operations through hassle-free and preemptive field service.

Four Connected Field Service solutions

Connected Field Service combines four innovative Microsoft solutions that enable service leaders to digitally transform service organizations:

1. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service: Optimizes service operations and inventory management

• Reduces downtime by enabling service organizations to rapidly dispatch technicians
• Helps service teams ensure a first-time fix by selecting the right technicians and parts for each call
• Increases service efficiency by optimizing service call assignments, routes, and scheduling
• Increases customer satisfaction by ensuring technicians are aware of service preferences

2. Azure IoT Remote Monitoring: Gathers data from connected assets

• Helps technicians identify and repair malfunctioning assets before damage occurs
• Reduces the need for service calls by enabling technicians to remotely diagnose equipment issues
• Arms technicians with the diagnostic information they need to ensure a first-time fix
• Enables service organizations to analyze equipment failure patterns to improve maintenance strategies

3. Microsoft Azure IoT Predictive Maintenance: Transforms asset data into insights

• Reduces downtime by enabling technicians to anticipate and preempt equipment failures
• Limits unnecessary maintenance by aligning equipment service strategies to observed patterns
• Increases efficiency by enabling teams to service assets when the right parts and people are available
• Enables organizations to explore new business models using insights from service data

4. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales: Identifies upsell and cross-sell opportunities

• Provides service technicians with upsell and cross-sell recommendations
• Enables team members in non-sales roles to advance deals with step-by-step guidance
• Enables sales teams and service technicians to access customer information and sales resources in non-office environments
• Drives visibility into product and parts usage across the organization

Connected Field Service becomes a reality with Microsoft. Service leaders can better manage costs, enhance service delivery, and increase customer satisfaction (CSAT) by proactively resolving customer issues before the customer is aware. Take advantage of smart, internet-ready devices that can detect and diagnose issues, integrating with field service management (FSM) software like Dynamics 365 Field Service to automatically initiate troubleshooting and, when needed, create work orders to dispatch technicians for onsite service. Learn how you can use technology to schedule preventative maintenance based on consumption rather than rely on a regimented schedule. Best of all, enjoy the flexibility of implementing the solution in stages so your team can ramp up via a natural progression. Learn more about the latest Dynamics 365 Field Service features.

Engage with Microsoft at Field Service Palm Springs 2023

We invite you to join us, along with our partners, to discover how Connected Field Service using Dynamics 365 Field Service and IoT can help create a seamless service experience that enhances customer experiences, increases cost savings, and improves efficiency.

Register for Field Service Palm Springs and visit the Microsoft booth (101/103) where you can meet with Dynamics 365 Field Service experts to discuss how connected data enables better experiences across your organization.

About Field Service Palm Springs

For 20 years, Field Service Palm Springs has become the must-attend conference for service executives. From early IoT concepts to AI, Field Service is where innovative ideas spread, and future strategies are created. Today, Field Service is a global event, with major conferences in Palm Springs, Amelia Island, San Diego, Amsterdam, and Singapore.

Since 2003, the top service and support minds have gathered in Palm Springs in April for the flagship Field Service conference. With forward-looking content and unique session formats that ensure you learn and network most effectively, Field Service is designed to help you achieve service excellence and drive profitability.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service

Optimize service operations and inventory management.

Explore Field Service

Sources

¹ Forbes, 50 Stats Showing The Power of Personalization, 2020

² FieldCircle, How To Utilize IoT in The Field Service Industry?

The post Field Service Palm Springs: Modernize service operations appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Pricing is one of the fundamental tools to boost supply chain profits by better matching supply and demand. Many businesses have started to reform their pricing strategies in recent years as a result of the growth of e-commerce and the constantly changing business environments in order to improve pricing transparency, supply chain agility and margin optimization.

We are launching the Public Preview of Pricing management within Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management from 10.0.33 to support sales managers managing and execute the attribute-based omnichannel sales pricing.

Why attribute-based omnichannel pricing?

• Transaction to omnichannel pricing:

Traditional business-to-business (B2B) organizations are increasingly considering switching to omnichannel sales and selling directly to end customers in order to have greater control over price and margins. The omnichannel transformation results in significant modifications to pricing models and rules.

By offering an omnichannel price engine, a central place to manage pricing rules and automated omnichannel pricing execution, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management aids B2B business in the transition to omnichannel pricing.

• Transaction to attribute-based pricing:

Working with the marketing and product manager to comprehend the product differentiating features, target customer segments and other pricing sensitivity elements is one of the important responsibilities of the sales managers. The package types, the delivery mode and the expected receipt date could be one of the pricing differentiators. By giving business the ability to convert data from customers, product, and orders into price attributes and building pricing on different pricing structure,  Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management supports business to adopt the attribute-based pricing model.

What is Pricing management?

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management Pricing Management leverages the Commerce Scale Unit (CSU) to help traditional B2B companies embrace omnichannel pricing. Pricing management enables attribute-based pricing for the price components that are across the sales pricing structures, including product base price, sales trade agreement price, discounts, charges and rebate management.  

How Pricing management supports business flows:

1. DESIGN your pricing component types using price attributes.
2. CONSTRUCT your pricing structure with pricing components, such as margin elements.
3. MANAGE price markup based on product standard cost (for manufactured products) or vendor price catalog (for trading products).
4. SIMULATE pricing rules and impacts.
5. EXECUTE pricing calculation across channels.
6. MONITOR promotion fund consumption with control.

• Flexible data model for building price attributes. Price attributes can be based on categorized product pricing differentiators, customer groups and order types.  
• Central place to offer, manage and calculate pricing. Boost pricing transparency across channels, which is essential for aligning pricing strategies across multiple channels.  
• Manage complex pricing structureswith price component breakdowns. When you place an order, the pricing details reflect the pricing structure for you to understand the pricing calculation sequence and price breakdowns for future in-depth analysis.
• Establish the sophisticated pricing with pricing simulator to evaluate the impact. When converting from B2B pricing to B2B and B2C pricing, consider discount concurrency, bundle sales, mandatory sales items, and bonus free item pricing rules.  
• Fund control to ensure you don’t avoid margin leakage from fund consumption.  
• Real-time cross channel pricing execution with the pricing engine to quickly determine pricing while considering a variety of commercial aspects, such as the item’s general base price, the price of a sales trade agreements, long-term discount agreements, short-term promotion discounts, and retrospective rebate calculations for each sales order. 
• External applications can retrieve calculated pricing by leverage the Commerce Scale Unit (CSU)based Pricing APIs.

Next steps:

If your organization on the journal transition to attribute-based omnichannel selling pricing, consider taking the next step with Pricing Management within Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

Get an overview of Pricing management by reading the document.

If you are a potential customer or partner and want to learn more, contact the https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/supply-chain/pricing-management/price-attributes-overview product team directly by email.

Also check a series of demo video in Pricing management Yammer.

Not yet a Supply Chain Management customer? Take a guided tour

The post Manage attribute-based omnichannel sales pricing  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Your brand is the face of your business. And often, the live chat widget on your website is the first point of contact for your customers. Having a strong brand for your customer service products can build trust and credibility, differentiate yourself from competitors, ensure consistency in communication, and create a positive emotional connection with customers.  

We are excited to announce our upgraded live chat widget that allows you to customize every detail of the widget to match your brand identity. From the font and color scheme to the iconography, you can now own every pixel of the widget and ensure that it represents your brand in the best possible way. 

Style every component of the live chat widget to reflect your brand 

When you update your environment with the latest release, you can use our live chat script tag customization to edit the design of the live chat widget through CSS-represented styling. It is easier than ever to create a branded look for your chat widget. You can choose the font, color, style, and size of every component of the chat widget to reflect your brand. The image below shows examples of chat widget components and the different ways you can change them.

Learn more

Watch a quick video introduction.

To update your chat widget and customize every detail, please check out our public documentation here to learn more. 

For more advanced customization options, try the custom chat widget here, where you can customize the functionalities as well.  

The post Drive brand loyalty with a customizable live chat widget in Dynamics 365 Customer Service  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.