If your business offers commerce, you should think about investing in a customer engagement platform if you haven’t already. And if you have, you might be wondering if it’s worth the investment. Here are some reasons why the Microsoft Dynamics Customer Engagement suite is the platform your business needs.
- Brings your customer data into one place
- Allows you to offer a consistent brand experience
- Gives you the ability to personalise your customer experiences
- Create meaningful connections with your customers
- Truly get to know your customers
1. Brings your customer data into one place
Microsoft Dynamics Customer Engagement integrates with multiple business systems so you can import data from any source. This creates a single view of your individual customers - basically, a single source of truth which makes it much easier to quickly find the information that you need.
That means your teams can spend less time searching for and managing customer data and more time on their other tasks - like ensuring they’re providing the best customer service and experience possible.
2. Allows you to offer a consistent brand experience
Leading on from the above, having all of your customer data in one place makes it easier to find what you need, when you need it. Microsoft Dynamics Customer Engagement also allows your teams to collaborate with each other.
For example, your sales, marketing and customer service departments can share files and update information in real-time. No-one needs to be working on outdated documents or combing through multiple versions to find the most recent one.
This boosts productivity. Now your teams can focus on the tasks that really matter - such as ensuring your prospects, leads and customers receive a consistent experience at every touchpoint they encounter with your brand.
Think about it. If your essential customer data is stored in one place, it’s easier to ensure you’re communicating the same messaging regardless of which channel you’re using. From Facebook and Instagram to WhatsApp and even WeChat, Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement helps you offer a consistent brand experience so your customers never need to feel like they’re speaking to different people.
3. Gives you the ability to personalise your customer experiences
In addition to your customer data being stored in one place, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights can help you better anticipate customer needs at every step of their journey. So, not only can you easily access the information you need, you can also tailor every individual customer interaction.
This is especially useful when you consider that your customers may be at different stages of their buying journey to each other and have different needs. Some might know exactly what they want while others are just here to browse your website. There may be some who want to speak to your customer service agents via live chat while some may prefer the traditional email route.
And of course, a proportion will be returning customers while others may be new.
The point we’re trying to make is you need to treat your customers as individuals and make them feel valued. Personalisation helps with that. For example:
- Greet your returning customers with a personalised message
- Offer your new customers an exclusive promotional code as a welcome gift (and entice them to make a purchase)
- Provide personalised product/service recommendations based on your customers’ past purchases or search history
- With every product/service listing, offer relevant products to ‘complete the package’ (a great way to up and cross-sell)
Apart from the last, all of the above will depend on what you know about your individual customers. This is why it’s a good idea to store your customer data in one place. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement takes it one step further by offering AI-driven insights which we’ll discuss in the next section…
4. Create meaningful connections with your customers
The Customer Engagement suite helps you make smarter, more informed decisions, thanks to AI. Contextual insights recommend next best actions so you can tailor the engagements you have with your customers.
Here are some examples:
- See when and how customers interact, plus personalised talking points so it’s easier to close deals
- Customise customer journeys based on each prospect’s buying behaviours, such as sending triggered emails depending on their actions
- A/B test your content so you can continuously improve the performance of your sales and marketing campaigns
- Lead scoring models and sales readiness grades make it easier to see when leads are ready for sales reps to take over
- Relationship health notifications help you monitor the relationships you have with your customers and quickly act on any that are ‘at-risk’
As you might be able to tell, these AI-driven insights empower your teams with knowledge into what your customers are thinking and feeling. This can help you create more meaningful, deeper and ‘real’ connections with your customers which can encourage brand loyalty and boost retention.
5. Truly get to know your customers
A recurring theme throughout all of these reasons is that Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement helps you gain a 360-degree view of your customers. And when you know exactly what your customers want, it’s easier to ensure they’re receiving the experience they’re after.
This can help you provide a truly customer-centric experience which is the key to eCommerce success. That means offering your customers…
- Relevant content - such as blog posts, videos, emails and guides they might be interested in
- Individual-level personalisation - such as product recommendations and promo codes based on search and purchase history
- A consistent brand experience across all the channels and devices they might use. And don’t forget to marry your online and offline experiences too
- Consistent messaging across all your product/service ranges (tip: a good PIM system comes in handy here)
The answer is to offer a Connected Commerce experience
To create an experience that has the customer’s interests at heart, you need to adopt a Connected Commerce strategy. This ensures your customer experience is unified across all channels because people don’t want to feel like they’re interacting with a different brand at every touchpoint.
But how do you offer this experience? How do you ensure that when your customer buys a product/service in-store, it feels like the same experience as online? How do you ensure that when they speak to a customer service agent on social media and then moves to email, the switch is seamless?
That’s what we cover in our guide. Six recipes for Connected Commerce, six ways to offer the ultimate customer experience and boost your satisfaction. Ready to learn more?
