Despite significant headwinds in 2020a global pandemic, economic downturn, and technology budgets clippedcustomer data platform (CDP) growth is booming. Businesses are charging full steam ahead on digital transformation efforts as their customers have dramatically moved toward online channels. According to a McKinsey Global Survey of executives, organizations across sectors and geographies are likely to report a significant increase in remote working, changing customer needs, and customer preferences for remote interactions.

Here is a deeper look at the three major trends that will impact how businesses think about customer experiences moving forward, and how a powerful, real-time customer data platform like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights can help you bring together transactional, behavioral, and demographic data to create a 360-degree view of your customers.

1. The physical will become digital

Increasingly, we are moving into an era where almost everything we see will have the potential to become a transaction. From social media to streaming channels to in-storewhen it comes to selling online or offline, it’s no longer one or the other. E-commerce gets physical with augmented reality, while stores go digital.

Augmented reality enables online shoppers to take part in bespoke, store-like experiences and try products virtually, while AI-powered personal assistants round out the experience with individualized recommendations. On the other hand, the transformation of the traditional retail space will continue as a new breed of “stores without walls” will go beyond the confines of the physical space to create a blended experience; an experience that allows in-store customers to find and order out-of-stock products online or receive location-targeted texts about items they have browsed online that are available in the store.

2. Personalization will be built in partnership

Customer experience is developed over a series of touchpoints along the customer journey that requires tight cross-functional alignment. 2021 is the year where customer experience teams will join forcesuniting marketing, sales, service, commerce, and ITto drive customer experience initiatives. A crucial part of this partnership is breaking down silos though shared access to data and analytics that offer real-time visibility. Collaboration across departments will enable businesses to serve customers intelligently all the way from acquisition to checkout and delivery.

3. Agile and integrated technologies will pave the way

Maintaining strong customer experiences require a real-time pulse on changing customer preferences and agile innovation to address them. Businesses will continue to invest in modern and adaptable technologies that meet global sustainability goals and uphold data security and privacy standards. These technologies will push the envelope as they become increasingly agile, operate in real-time, and integrate with everyday business applications. Think about AI-powered virtual agents for self-service, conversational interfaces, or augmented reality to help improve first-time fix rates and conduct remote auditsall while lowering costs and minimizing carbon footprints by avoiding unnecessary travel.

CDPs provide a foundation for personalization

As businesses seek to raise their digital game and transform customer experiences, CDPs deliver on the promise of building a rich customer view with an end-to-end look into the customer journey. Let’s see why CDPs are becoming an essential part of the tech stack and how they power personalized experiences at scale:

• Adapt to the audience

Eighty-one percent of customers want brands to get to know them and understand when to approach them and when not to, according to Accenture. CDPs break down the organizational and technology system silos by unifying the ever-increasing volume of data from all sources, including traditional sources like campaigns, transactions, and calls, and emerging sources like social shopping, augmented reality, virtual agents, and chatbots to create the 360-degree view of the customer. Machine learning models and built-in AI help cluster customer profiles to identify high-value and at-risk customers and recommend relevant products and services. This adaptive modeling and nimble decision-making empowers businesses to scale personalized interactions in real time.

• Center customers with care and empathy

Customer empathy means understanding their needsincluding what really matters to them, the worries, and aspirations they haveand it’s crucial for building strong customer relationships. While empathy has traditionally been limited to in-person interactions, digital empathy requires customer insights. Data is the primary way to listen to your customers and regardless of the system of engagement, CDPs help capture both explicit and implicit signals about customer behavior and intent. Advancements in machine learning have made it possible to interpret new kinds of data and even extrapolate the emotion from an interaction. With the right customer insights, businesses can apply empathy to digital interactions to not only enhance the quality of service but also help customers feel good about their interactions.

• Make personalization even more personal

The customer experience is not linearit includes the touchpoints that a company has created as well as touchpoints owned by different providers, often with no way of connecting and accessing information about these interactions. The dream that businesses are striving for is seamless, omnichannel personalization. They are putting customers at the center and creating value at every step, facilitating a consistent journey, regardless of channel. CDPs makes it possible for businesses to craft the right offers, messages, and experiences at speed. The AI-powered insights and analytics keep a real-time pulse on changing customer preferences; enabling the redesign of journeys and interactions to nurture demand, drive higher quality leads, and tailor content to fit the customer.

• Earn trust that drives loyal, lifelong customers

Tightening restrictions on data collection has made it difficult to personalize messaging. Regulatory bodies have increased standards and pressure to meet global sustainability goals and minimize carbon footprints. It’s imperative to reinforce the ethical usage of data and discover new ways to improve customer experiences while respecting the people behind the data. CDPs centralize and streamline the customer data infrastructure, helping build trust and loyalty with customers through strong consent management, data governance, and privacy controls.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is an AI-powered customer data platform with unmatched time to value. Trusted by enterprises across industries, it is empowering business teams across sales, service, and marketing to personalize experiences at scale. For instance, Campari Group, an alcoholic spirits manufacturer, is using Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to unify a fractured data landscape and accelerate time to market for new campaigns that support end-to-end customer journeys across the organization. Just as many bars and restaurants were closing in response to COVID-19, Campari leveraged Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to multiply its revenue five-fold through deeper customer engagement. This is just one example of how CDPs are making personalization more personal.

Take a guided tour and check out the e-book, “Delight your customer in just three steps,” to see how your organization can use Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to unlock insights and drive personalized customer experiences

The post Top 3 customer data platform trends for 2021 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Retail used to look different. It was local; it was a relationship. But new technology brought change. Trains opened the door for the Sears catalog, offering a wide array of products to distant customers. Henry Ford’s automobile led to suburbanization, malls, and department stores, changing the face of retail. And now, enabled by digital technology and the internet, customers can leverage the convenience and rapid delivery of e-commerce. Each of these innovations improved the shopping experience by offering access to more goods while reducing friction, but there was a cost to each of these changes: the relationship between a customer and retailer became more distant.

While the way people buy has changed, their desire to have a relationship with retailers has not. More than half of customers say they prefer buying from local stores (51.5 percent) verses big retailers (48.5 percent), and this trend has only been accelerated by the pandemic, with nearly 20 percent of adults saying they will support more small businesses as a result of the pandemic. (GWI, Core survey data, 2020¹.) At the same time, we’re seeing record growth in e-commerce (United States Census, 2020), suggesting that what customers really want is the best of both worlds: the variety and convenience of e-commerce with the personal relationships of local retail. This presents a new challenge for modern retailers: how do they build relationships with customersdelivering the unique and personalized experiences they wantat scale?

To accomplish this, retailers must rely on modern commerce platforms, like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce, that provide the data they need to understand their customers and the tools to deliver personalized and unified customer experiences.

Understanding customers through unified data

Building relationships with customers starts with understanding customers. In the past, customers have built relationships with brandsthrough social media, online purchases, in-store visits, and interactions with support staffbut these relationships have been one-sided. While the customer remembered each interaction due to siloed data and systems, retailers had little visibility into the customer’s history with the brand. They didn’t know the last time a customer interacted with them or for what. From the customer’s perspective, this experience can feel like every interaction with a brand is the first interaction.

For better or worse, customers want brands to act like people; like a friend who owns a local shop. They want to have an ongoing relationship with a brand, not one that resets at every touchpoint. When they interact with a new sales associate or support agent, they expect that individual to understand the context of their existing relationship with the brand. They want a continuous conversation, not fragmented, one-off discussions.

Delivering connected experiences across channels begins with unified data; however, nearly 50 percent of retail decision-makers lack unified customer data and real-time insights needed to drive these types of experiences. Recognizing these challenges, 47 percent are focused on improving analytics capabilities, including cross-channel analytics, to better turn customer data into insights. (Forrester Consulting, The Digital Imperative, 2021.)

“If you’re able to gauge customer lifetime value and find out who your best customers areand locate other customers like themit opens up tremendous possibilities for targeting them with more meaningful messaging,”Sashi Kommineni, Director of Enterprise Analytics, Chipotle Mexican Grill

Microsoft Dynamic 365 solutions enable retailers to aggregate customer data across every customer touchpoint, enabling retailers and their employees to see a customer’s history with a brand. In doing so, they can provide continuity in the relationship between a customer and brand, giving employees the essential information to make each conversation a continuation of the lastthe way a true relationship with a peer would evolve.

From unified data to unified experiences

When building customer relationships, unifying data is the first step. The second step is leveraging that data to improve customer experiences. To do this, modern retailers must consider their offering in the context of the digital era. When a customer engages with a retailer, they aren’t just buying “goods” and “services,” they are investing in the end-to-end experience of discovering, purchasing, procuring, and using the product. The “product” is the sum of every interaction a customer has with a brand. Accordingly, retailers must design every customer touchpoint with the same detail and care they do their productsbecause to the customer, they’re one and the same.

“We are driving efficiencies in our warehouse, trialing new fulfilment models, and unlocking deeper insights into customer experiences faster than ever before.”Matt Keays, Chief Information Officer, Michael Hill

Retailers must not only consider every touchpoint individually; they must also consider the holistic experience for the customer. Many retailers understand this need, with 83 percent of retail and CPG decision-makers agreeing that delivering a connected and unified experience to customers is vital to their business success. (Forrester Consulting, The Digital Imperative, 2021.) No matter the platformwhether in-store or onlinecustomers should have a consistent and continuous experience

Creating personalization at scale

Beyond creating unified experiences, retailers must create personalized experiences. The benefits of creating personalized experiences are clear. Personalization increases the number of items purchased by 110 percent, increases average order value by 40 percent, and increases net promoter scores by 20 percent. (BCG, Business Impact of Personalization in Retail Study, 2019.)

There are still many challenges in providing this level of personalization to customers. Forty-two percent of retailers said an inability to track targeted customers through the entire journey inhibited their ability to implement and grow personalization strategies, while 35 percent cited challenges attributing marketing performance to individual programs, campaigns, and channels. (NRF, The State of Retailing Online, 2019.) Over three-quarters (76 percent) of retailers cite improving digital commerce capabilities as the most urgent business priority, with 52 percent expecting better personalization as a result. (Forrester Consulting, The Digital Imperative, 2021.)

“We are well ahead of where we thought we would be, our ability to engage meaningfully with customers using real-time data has increased exponentially because we use cutting-edge Dynamics 365 technology.” Emmett Vallender, Chief Operating Officer, Citt

While many leverage personalization onlinesuch as personalized recommendations in an email (67 percent)far fewer connected the dots across channels, with only 9 percent of retailers including in-store clienteling solutions for store associates as part of their personalization strategy. (NRF, The State of Retailing Online, 2019.) For companies to build strong relationships with customers, they need to think beyond personalized experiences to create personal experiences. Where personalization is a targeting exercise, creating personal experiences requires greater data unification and a deeper level of insight and intelligence.

How to get started

Dynamics 365 Commerce makes it possible for retailers to deliver unified, personalized, and seamless shopping experiences. Combined with native support for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of their customers. By providing frictionless and consistent engagement across online and offline channels, consumer facing organizations can build strong, personal relationships with their customers at scale.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Commerce today or contact us to request a demo or speak to a specialist.

¹These data points are from GlobalWebIndex’s GWI Core dataset. The data points were analyzed from responses to two survey questions: 1. Typically, which of the following would you rather do? Buy from big retailers (48.5%) OR Buy from local retailers (51.5%). 2. After the outbreak is over, how do you anticipate your shopping behaviors will change? Buy more from local retailers (19.8%).

The post Building customer relationships through relevant and unified personal experiences appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Is a well-defined knowledge base valuable for delivering exceptional service? No matter the business, the answer is a resounding “yes.” In a recent survey, 91 percent of customers would use an online knowledge base if it were available and tailored to their needs, and in another published report, respondents preferred knowledge bases over all other self-service channels. It’s clear that a well-structured, well-written, and easily consumable knowledge base empowers customers to obtain self-service support anywhere, anytime. Allowing flexibility and accessibility for customers may positively influence customer satisfaction.

A knowledge base isn’t just a helpful self-service tool for customersit’s also an indispensable tool for customer service staff. It can serve as a learning tool for support staff to deepen their service or product knowledge. It’s also a valued commodity in the transfer of information from support agent to the customer by bridging the knowledge gap that prevents the customer from achieving a specific goal, thereby creating a positive customer experience and increasing customer loyalty.

In this post, we will cover how self-service tools within Microsoft Dynamics 365 can help your customer service team deliver personalized customer care, fill knowledge gaps, and streamline productivity.

A thought-provoking tool

A modern knowledge base is a collection or library of digital articles containing relevant content, videos, images, and other useful information about your service or product. Typically, it contains published documentation such as frequently asked questions, quick-start and how-to guides, and troubleshooting instructions. It acts as the source of truth for the service or product for its stakeholders such as customers, employees, and partners, and should be easy to use for finding and locating solutions to problems without requiring additional company support.

A well-fed, well-maintained, and easily accessible knowledge base can become the cornerstone of your customer service team’s self-service strategy. A knowledge base can be a cost-effective component of a company’s self-service portal or part of a website as it reduces the time and effort the customer spends on getting an issue resolved. It’s a tool that is immediately valued by both support agents and customers alike. Support agents can refer to a knowledge base article or share the actual article with a customer, answering a query quickly rather than spending time asking a colleague for guidance or taking the time trying multiple solutions until finding the right one. Customers can quickly and easily search the knowledge base for articles that answer their questions, eliminating the need to interact with another layer of company support and keeping live agents’ time free to focus on more complex issues.

Deliver enhanced customer care

A well-maintained knowledge base is the backbone of any organization to deliver world-class customer care, but how do you keep your knowledge base current?

Understanding what agents are searching for to resolve customer issues can help improve knowledge base content, which in turn improves the agent’s ability to support customers more efficiently. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, knowledge search analytics can be used to gain visibility into the effectiveness of the knowledge base for your support agents. Managers need visibility into issues support agents face and whether the knowledge content effectively addresses the issues customers raise. Managers can easily run reports such as “top search terms with no matching knowledge articles” or “top search terms with poor engagement rate” to quickly identify and fill gaps in content. By identifying searches that have low success or return no results, the knowledge search analytics dashboard can help identify knowledge gaps, improve search results, and surface the most relevant articles.

Fill gaps between fragmented knowledge

Once content gaps are identified, how do you fill them? The challenge for most companies is that knowledge is typically fragmented across an organization and stored in different formats, such as documents, images, videos, blogs, wikis, structured knowledge, and the list goes on. The engagement points for surfacing knowledge have also increased with the advent of digital messaging (such as SMS and WhatsApp), chatbots, and social apps. These disparate formats and source points make it difficult to curate and surface the right content.

This month, we are releasing our preview of federated knowledge search within Dynamics 365 Customer Service. As knowledge is typically held in a wide variety of formats, spread across multiple sources like SharePoint sites, OneDrive, and third-party knowledge management systems, federated knowledge search provides the ability to find and share knowledge from as many sources as possible to help agents be more productive and resolve customer issues quickly.

Making federated knowledge search work for you is easy: simply plug a connector from an external search provider (such as SharePoint search, Microsoft search, or cross-Dynamics 365 search) into the knowledge search experience.

Federated knowledge search is an essential tool in providing knowledge base content, pivotal to maintaining a rich and current knowledge base to help resolve customer issues fast and accurately.

At Microsoft, we know that effective knowledge management is an essential element to delivering high quality customer service across all engagement modalitiesself-service, assisted service, and onsite service. We are continuing to innovate by extending the capabilities of our knowledge management offering within Dynamics 365 Customer Service so you, your support agents, and your customers always receive the right content at the right time, no matter the format or source.

2021 release wave 1 features

Federated knowledge search and knowledge analytics are just the start. A few of the 2021 release wave 1 knowledge management features being released April 1, include the ability to customize article search filters, personalize language settings for article authors, and a new form designer. We are continually extending the reach of Dynamics 365 Customer Service to deliver the features you want along with the features you need.

• Get an overview of Dynamics 365 Customer Service
• Learn more about Dynamics 365 Customer release wave 1 features

The post Why a knowledge base is important in delivering exceptional customer service appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

If you’re looking for ways to harness the power of AI to help prevent retail loss, please join us for a free webinar at 10:00 AM PST on Wednesday, February 10, 2021.

Attendees will gain insight into how Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection loss prevention has helped fashion company, BESTSELLER, quickly identify and investigate potential sources of fraud and inventory loss in thousands of its stores and how that technology can help the retail industry.

The webinar will be hosted by:

• Kim Guldager, BESTSELLER Program Manager and Product Owner
• Sondra Feinberg, Global Payments and Fraud Executive at Microsoft
• Venkat Ganesan, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft

Sign up for the webinar

Webinar registration link

The post Webinar: Tips for using AI in retail loss prevention to fight against fraud appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Having spoken to over 300 Microsoft Dynamics 365 on-premises customers, I have a lot of empathy for companies that are faced with the decision to migrate to the cloud. Most commonly I’ve heard that changing business software can appear risky, daunting, and expensive, but the customers that have successfully migrated to Dynamics 365 will tell you that the benefits of cloud far exceed the perceived risks of going through migration, or simply remaining on-premises. For me, I think of cloud migration as buying a house. You can enjoy the benefits right away while investing in your future. Take the first step toward cloud success by migrating your on-premises solution with expert guidance from Microsoft. Below are the three main reasons why you should accelerate your journey to the cloud with Dynamics 365.

1. Peace of mind

COVID-19 has established that having your business applications in the cloud is critical for ensuring business continuity through unexpected external events that are out of your control. Companies that are on Dynamics 365 in the cloud are able to pivot their resources and processes to respond to the unprecedented circumstances. These companies are able to quickly switch to a fully remote work environment, and swiftly manage the variability in supply and demand. Moreover, since Dynamics 365 is a fully managed software as a service (SaaS), they don’t have to worry about upgrades or security enabling them to invest in strategic work rather than managing IT. This is a unique time in history that may become the new normal for businesses, so now is the time to migrate your on-premises applications to Dynamics 365 in the cloud to stay resilient and flexible.

2. Enhanced functionality

Dynamics 365 provides increased productivity from latest functionality, such as real-time insights and customized modern reporting optionshelping business owners get a 360-degree view of their business. With Dynamics 365 you are always on the latest software version with improved features that address industry and regulatory trends. Dynamics 365along with Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft Power Platformoffers extended functionality and competitive advantages for you to always stay ahead. With these enhanced capabilities, several companies on Dynamics 365 can fundamentally reimagine their business processes while being more agile and responding to change even faster.

Read additional details how leading recreational vehicle maker, Lippert Components, Inc., advanced scalability by migrating from Dynamics 365 on-premises to Dynamics 365 in the cloud.

3. Economic value

Organizations on Dynamics 365 have often observed that they have higher financial returns when compared to staying on on-premises business applications. The primary cost savings come from improved business and IT productivity. Plus, when you compare your on-premises costs to cloud, don’t stop at the cost of software licenseslook at the total economic impact. For example, companies in the cloud don’t have to manage servers, IT-focused maintenance, or periodic upgrades anymore. According to a recent Forrester study, when migrating from Microsoft Dynamics AX to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance + Operations, there was a 109 percent ROI with a payback period of six months. Likewise, when migrating from Microsoft Dynamics CRM to Dynamics CE, there was a ROI of 63 percent with a payback period of 10 months.

Get started with the Dynamics 365 Migration Program assessment

COVID-19 has accelerated the cloud journey of many companies. If you are on Dynamics AX or Dynamics CRM then you can apply to take part in the Dynamics 365 Migration Program. The migration program offers access to a dedicated team of migration advisors, no-charge migration assessments, pricing offers, tools, and migration support for qualified customers.

Learn more about the no-charge Standard Migration Assessment. This virtual technical assessment helps you to:

• Understand the benefits of moving from an older, on-premises solution to the cloud.
• Identify business objectives and tie those into the functionality of Dynamics 365.
• Learn how to optimize the migration process with a focus on reducing effort and costs.
• Determine your next steps toward cloud transformation.

Join many customers who have benefited from the program.

“I was impressed about the information received from the migration assessment. The results will give us confidence for the next steps.”Senior Business Analysist

“Our migration advisor was very thorough. He did great degree of analysis and provided greater insights on the good, the bad, and the ugly. He was knowledgeable and took the time to answer every question my team had along the way.”Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer

To apply or learn more, visit the Dynamics 365 Migration Program to take the first step toward cloud success.

The post 3 reasons to accelerate your migration journey to Dynamics 365 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.