Tag: Marketing Automation

How AI Can Improve Customer Engagement
Customer expectations have steadily increased since the COVID-19 global pandemic. The pandemic proved that businesses, especially eCommerce platforms, could provide customers with a highly personalised customer experience without dramatically increasing headcount.

CRMs like Dynamics 365 and CDPs harvested data and allowed businesses to provide customers with greater value at a time when competition online was at an all-time high. Powered by AI, CRMs allowed businesses to do far more than let a customer know their order was on the way.

Although life returned to normal, customer expectations did not and businesses are under pressure to meet, if not exceed, those expectations and engage with them in a more personalised way.

Artificial intelligence (AI) represents an opportunity for businesses to drive their customer engagement. By simplifying processes, offering actionable insights, and enabling personalised interactions, AI allows marketing teams, especially small teams, to do more for their audiences. For organisations using platforms like Microsoft Dynamics 365, AI-driven tools such as Copilot offer new possibilities for enhancing the customer experience.

Some businesses have been reluctant to adopt AI in any meaningful way with legitimate concerns giving them pause. Whether AI proves to be a boon or a curse, for now, it is still one of the most powerful ways to create a more personalised customer experience, allowing the team to take on other tasks.

The Role of AI in Customer Engagement

Artificial intelligence has become a cornerstone of modern customer engagement strategy, supporting business in two key areas: administration and execution. With customer expectations so high, it’s no longer enough to react to customer needs, businesses must anticipate them.

Equally, the level of intervention required to produce the customer experience demanded is prohibitive.

AI enables organisations to deliver proactive, personalised, and seamless interactions that meet customer expectations and, over time, foster loyalty.

At its core, AI analyses data and identifies patterns in moments, providing valuable, actionable insights. Powerful CRMs, like Dynamics 365, can consolidate data from various customer touchpoints such as email, phone calls, website visits, and more. Using those data points it can create a unified customer profile. This consolidated view allows businesses to understand customer behaviour better and tailor their engagement strategies accordingly.

AI allows you to enhance customer engagement at scale. Personalisation that might previously have required hours of manual analysis takes moments. This enables businesses to provide high-quality, consistent interactions across a growing customer base without overburdening teams already in place.

Customer-centric AI

AI can improve the efficiency of internal processes, ensuring teams are more responsive and better equipped to meet customer needs. For example:
- Customer Prioritisation: AI can identify high-value customers or urgent issues, escalating them before they become unmanageable or the customer becomes too frustrated.
- Trend Identification: By analysing customer feedback in real-time, AI can uncover emerging trends which can help businesses take advantage of opportunities or adapt before a negative trend becomes a threat.
- Employee Assistance: Tools like Copilot offer real-time guidance to employees, such as suggesting answers during customer interactions or automating follow-up tasks.
AI is a force multiplier for your team’s capabilities, enabling them to focus on building meaningful relationships while the technology handles the heavy lifting.

How AI Streamlines Processes

CRMs like Dynamics 365, augmented by AI simplify customer engagement in several ways, making interactions more seamless and efficient. While streamlining can be viewed a threat to someone’s role within a business, it allows those individuals to do more, faster. It also frees them from mundane tasks to focus on where they can deliver the most value for the customer and to the business.

In an ideal world, it should free up time to allow for personal development as well.

Analysing Customer Communications

AI can process and analyse customer interactions across multiple channels, such as email, chat, and social media. With Dynamics 365, AI-driven analytics uncover patterns and sentiment in customer communications, offering insights into how customers feel and what they need.

AI can identify recurring complaints or frequently asked questions, allowing businesses to address these proactively. This improves customer satisfaction and reduces the workload on customer service teams.

Automating Responses

AI can generate pre-set responses to common queries, reducing the time spent on repetitive tasks. Dynamics 365 Copilot goes a step further by crafting dynamic, context-aware responses. When correctly integrated, Copilot can answer questions about products or provide customers with an update on delivery times.

These tasks are usually handled by a member of the team via email. It’s time-consumin work and provides a frustrating experience for the customer who wants a quick answer to a simple question.

Enhanced Decision-Making

With its ability to process vast amounts of data, AI helps businesses make informed decisions. Dynamics 365 leverages AI to provide actionable recommendations, such as identifying upselling opportunities or suggesting ways to resolve customer issues. This data-driven approach ensures that decisions align with customer needs and business objectives.

The Power of Copilot in Dynamics 365

Microsoft’s Copilot integrates directly into Dynamics 365 giving users a suite of tools designed to enhance customer engagement and streamline processes. Having this functionality native to the platform gives users a competitive edge, both in terms of functionality and compatibility with the CRM. Notable functionality includes:

Chatbot Capabilities

Copilot can be programmed as a chatbot to handle customer queries 24/7. Copilot can be customised to reference specific resources to inform its answers as well as pre-programmed with set responses to specific questions. By pointing Copilot at specific internal resources, you can ensure it provides accurate answers to your customers’ questions.

Personalised Customer Journeys

With access to customer data in Dynamics 365, Copilot enables businesses to create highly personalised interactions. It can suggest the next best action based on customer history or recommend content tailored to individual preferences, driving better engagement and loyalty.

Advanced Resource Management

Copilot can pull information from a variety of sources, whether internal databases, specific web pages, or even the broader internet, to answer queries. This ensures that customers always receive accurate and up-to-date information, regardless of the complexity of their question.

Practical Applications of AI in Dynamics 365

As AI is part of Dynamics 365, users can take full advantage of it to help them run their businesses more effectively. By streamlining and speeding up tasks or processes that would otherwise require hours of manual intervention businesses can operate more efficiently, and more profitably.

Proactive Customer Support

AI tools in Dynamics 365 can predict potential issues before they arise. For instance, AI can flag delays in delivery schedules or identify customers at risk of churn based on historical data. This allows businesses to take proactive measures to address concerns, enhancing customer trust and loyalty.

Real-Time Insights

AI-powered dashboards in Dynamics 365 provide real-time insights into customer interactions, enabling businesses to respond promptly and effectively. For example, managers can track response times and satisfaction rates, ensuring customer service teams meet performance benchmarks.

Automated Campaign Management

For marketing teams, AI simplifies campaign planning and execution. Dynamics 365 uses AI to segment audiences, optimise messaging, and schedule communications at the best times for maximum impact. This level of precision drives engagement and improves ROI.

Intelligent Sales Assistance

Dynamics 365 Copilot can assist with lead scoring, identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities, and even draft personalised follow-up emails. This ensures sales teams focus on high-priority tasks while AI handles the heavy lifting.

Concerns Around AI in Customer Engagement

Despite its benefits, some businesses hesitate to adopt AI due to concerns about cost, complexity, or the fear of losing the ‘human touch’. However, tools like Dynamics 365 Copilot work alongside human teams, not replace them. The intention is to provide teams with greater bandwidth by letting the technology handle the low-level or mundane tasks.

Cost and Implementation Challenges

Some perceive adopting AI technologies as expensive and resource-intensive. Businesses may worry about the initial investment required for software, training, and system integration. Additionally, the implementation process might disrupt existing workflows, causing temporary inefficiencies. However, this is mitigated with the right planning and support, and the long-term ROI often outweighs the upfront costs. Native solutions like Copilot make integration much less of a concern.

Data Privacy and Security

AI thrives on data, which raises concerns about how it collects customer information, stores, and uses it. Businesses must adhere to data privacy regulations like GDPR and maintain robust security protocols to prevent breaches. Transparency about data usage can help alleviate customer concerns and build trust.

Over-reliance on Automation

While automation can streamline processes, over-relying on AI for customer interactions may result in impersonal experiences. Customers still value genuine human connections, especially for complex or sensitive issues. Striking the right balance between automation and human intervention is key to maintaining strong relationships.

Bias an AI Decision-Making

AI systems learn from the data provided, which means they can inadvertently inherit biases present in historical datasets. This could lead to unfair or inaccurate decisions, negatively impacting customer satisfaction and brand reputation. Regular audits and careful training of AI systems can help mitigate these risks.

Resistance to Change

Both employees and customers may resist the introduction of AI, fearing it could lead to job losses or depersonalised service. Clear communication about the purpose of AI, as a productivity multiplier, not a replacement is important. Buy-in from company leadership and robust training for employees can ease this transition and foster acceptance.

The Future of AI in Customer Engagement

The potential of AI in customer engagement is still in its early stages, and the future promises even greater possibilities. As technologies like Dynamics 365 Copilot continue to evolve, businesses can expect AI to play an even more integral role in their customer strategies.

Hyper-Personalisation

AI is already helping businesses personalise customer interactions, but as the technology progresses how the AI leverages the data will become more efficient and its responses will be more authentic. There is a downside; removing humans from customer interaction can create distance between the business and their customers. However, with appropriate triaging and reporting (which the AI will get better at too), team members can still have customer contact when required.

Voice and Sentiment Analysis

Future AI tools will integrate more advanced capabilities like voice and sentiment analysis. We’re all familiar with assistants like Siri and Alexa who we can speak to, and they respond with answers to our questions.

The technology behind them is improving at an impressive rate. Aside from understanding a wider range of questions, the AI will be able to analyse the voice and understand tone and sentiment. This would allow AI to triage calls and either adjust responses or provide customer service teams with notes about the customer’s stress/agitation levels to help them manage the situation more effectively.

End-to-End Automation

From initial inquiries to post-purchase support, AI will streamline the entire customer journey. The first two points feed directly into this. The more data the AI can access and understand the more useful it can become. Handling post-purchase support can be an effective way of dealing with teething problems and gauging customer satisfaction while keeping the team productive. The AI can be trained to escalate issues if an answer isn’t immediately available, preventing frustration on the part of the customer.

AI, when used correctly, can help businesses engage with their customers more often and more efficiently. It can help users to glean valuable insights from the CRM to make customer interactions more rewarding. It can also lighten the load so customer success teams can focus more on the success side of their role and less on the brush fires that can break out. With Dynamics 365, organisations can streamline processes, provide deeper insights, and deliver personalised experiences that build trust and long-term loyalty.

If your business is ready to take customer engagement to the next level, now is the time to embrace AI.

Learn more about how you can combine CRM and AI to drive customer engagement.

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Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we help businesses like yours navigate Microsoft Dynamics 365 recovery and deployments.

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December 11, 2024
Strategies for Changing CRM Platform

Changing CRM platforms is not a decision taken lightly. It’s usually the result of years of trying to make the incumbent system work with countless, patches, workarounds, and manual processes. The latter bypasses the CRM altogether.

Inevitably, the cost and time involved in forcing a CRM to work with the business becomes prohibitive, so an alternative is required.

On occasion, the business’ demands have outpaced the functionality making the CRM a hindrance to achieving business objectives.

Either way, the threat of a poorly performing or unsuitable CRM can be severe – even existential. Despite this many organisations shy away from deciding to change. Cost is undoubtedly a concern, as is the time it takes to implement a new CRM. Those perceived pains associated with changing CRM platforms can seem overwhelming. Familiarity with the incumbent system, concerns about disrupting workflows, and resistance from staff are also common barriers. However, holding on to an outdated or ineffective CRM often hinders growth, stifles customer engagement, and prevents businesses from realising the benefits of digital transformation.

Transitioning to a new CRM platform, like Dynamics 365, offers an opportunity to modernise operations, streamline processes, and deliver personalised customer experiences.

However, hesitancy is natural so it’s important to understand where problems and resistance may arise and what you can do to overcome them to ensure a successful transition that benefits your entire organisation.

Why Businesses Hesitate to Change Their CRM Platform

For many organisations, their CRM is deeply embedded in their technology stack, integrating with systems such as ERP, marketing tools, and analytics platforms. Extracting the old CRM and ensuring system compatibility with the new one can seem like a massive task, with fears of data loss, errors, or extended downtime.

Even when a CRM platform is outdated or inefficient, it often feels safe because employees know how to use it. Even if that means relying on workarounds for its shortcomings. Over time, these workarounds become habits, making the thought of change seem unnecessary or overly complicated.

The problem is compounded by team members training new starters with these unhealthy habits and workarounds. As information becomes second or third-hand, further workarounds and by-passes arise, gradually corrupting the CRM’s data over time.

The staff themselves can be one of the biggest causes for concern. Some employees may like the current CRM and be unduly negative about the alternative, spreading discontent throughout the team.

Others may fear the learning curve associated with a new system, worried it they won’t be able to adapt. Or they simply see a new system as disruptive to their productivity. Without clear communication and training, this fear can lead to reluctance or outright rejection of the new platform.

Reduced productivity is a legitimate concern, especially if the new CRM is drastically different from the old one or offers unfamiliar features.

It takes time to get up to speed with any new system, especially something as vast as a CRM like Dynamics 365. Businesses need to set expectations around output with the new CRM. Make it clear the business has planned for lower output and give the team both detailed training and a roadmap to getting up to speed.

Team works together on a project launch

Reframing CRM Migration as Part of Digital Transformation

Rather than viewing CRM migration as a disruptive change, it’s essential to frame it as a step toward broader digital transformation. A new CRM isn’t just a replacement system—it’s a tool that can revolutionise your business processes and customer engagement strategies. When approaching a new CRM whether it’s part of a wider digital transformation or not, planning is key.

Define What Success Looks Like

Before embarking on a CRM migration, businesses need a clear understanding of what they want to achieve. Whether it’s improving processes or streamlining customer engagement, there needs to be a clear output in terms of productivity, efficiency and what that could equate to in terms of money saved or revenue generated.

Providing CRM improves how your business operates and makes it more profitable; it isn’t a cost to the business. That is a true measure of success for a CRM system.

A good place to start with any CRM project is to understand what you need a CRM to do and objectively critique that against your current solution.

Some solutions, like Dynamics 365 are highly customisable so just because it doesn’t do what you need it to now, doesn’t mean it can’t. Similarly, sometimes a CRM is underperforming because it hasn’t been configured correctly. So, a new CRM platform isn’t required at all, but rather a specialist to support you through a CRM recovery project.

Once you’ve established the requirements and what success means for your business – be it enhanced reporting for streamlined workflows – you’re in a much stronger position to move forward.

Recognise the Strategic Value of your CRM Platform

By positioning the new CRM as a catalyst for growth, businesses can generate excitement and buy-in across the organisation. This is especially important for organisations that are new to CRM. An integrated system that records every communication or interaction about a customer or contact can seem like ‘Big Brother’ is watching. Although there is greater accountability with CRM, it’s far more about working transparently and making it easier for everyone to gain insight and learn. So, all the information doesn’t just sit with one person as that represents a huge risk to the business.

However, the right CRM, such as Dynamics 365, provides more than just consolidated data. CRM is meant to function as the nervous system for your entire business. It facilitates efficient movement of data, automates repetitive tasks, and can serve as a sophisticated means of communication to your customers.

A correctly deployed CRM will drive data-driven insights and allow your organisation to make better, more informed decisions, faster. This makes the business more agile, more competitive, and more profitable.

Engage Cross-Functional Teams

Depending on the size of your organisation, your CRM system could interact with every department. This means you should make every effort to include those departments when assessing what your CRM needs to do. A solution that makes IT, marketing, and sales happy but frustrates finance is not the right solution.

This can eliminate CRM platforms with compelling features, but half a solution is no solution at all. Especially when platforms like Dynamics allow you to create automation that forwards invoices and even authorises payments for recurring set amounts.

Including departments from across the business in early discussions may feel like you are moving slower than you’d like, it will prevent problems and additional development costs further down the road.

These departments will also bring with them procedural insight and understanding that sales, marketing, and IT are unlikely to have. This can result in a better brief and more robust CRM strategy.

Engaging these teams early in the process ensures the new system meets the organisation’s diverse needs while fostering a sense of shared ownership.

Plan for Scalability

A key part of a digital transformation strategy should be scalability. CRMs don’t just help your business grow but grow with your business. This can take the form of extra functionality that smaller businesses may not require at the outset but, the technology is there to set you up for success.

All CRMs should be built for scalability to meet future business needs. Dynamics 365, for example, offers flexibility and integrations that grow with your organisation, ensuring long-term value and reducing the risk of needing another migration down the line.

Many businesses opt for free or cheap CRMs, often to test the waters but it quickly becomes apparent the tool isn’t up to the task as demand grows. At least not without significant investment. Even then it’s a case of making the business fit around the CRM rather than making the CRM work with what you already have.

Microsoft Dynamics 365’s highly customisable nature means businesses can shape it to your specific needs, as well as integrate it with your existing systems.

Strategies to Overcome Resistance

Team resistance is common when changing the CRM platform. It’s understandable, especially when the incumbent system has been in place for a long time. And team members are comfortable with its workings – or the workarounds. Anxiety around job performance is also perfectly natural as well. Transitioning from one system to another might mean a brief drop in insights and reporting.

Whatever the concerns it’s important for the business not to trivialise them and bring everyone on the journey.

They need to see that the new CRM platform will be a help, not a hindrance.

Prioritise Training and Onboarding

One of the most effective ways to address resistance is to provide comprehensive training. Building confidence in the new solution is the most effective way to reduce anxiety.

Tailored training sessions help employees understand how the new CRM will make their jobs easier. Hands-on workshops, live demonstrations, and ongoing support ensure staff feel confident and capable.

Appoint Change Champions

Identify capable individuals within each team who can act as advocates for the new CRM. These champions can help address concerns, share best practices, and encourage adoption by demonstrating the system’s value in day-to-day operations.

Communicate the Benefits

Clear communication is vital. Highlight the tangible benefits of the new CRM platform, such as improved efficiency, better customer insights, and streamlined processes. Sharing success stories from similar businesses can also help build enthusiasm and alleviate concerns.

Leverage Incentives

Encouraging early adoption through incentives, such as recognition programs or small rewards, can motivate employees to engage with the new system. Gamification techniques, such as progress tracking or friendly competition, can also make learning the CRM more enjoyable.

A Collaborative Approach to CRM Adoption

One of the biggest obstructions to a successful CRM migration is a lack of engagement from company leadership. Either through indifference to the decision-making or a detachment from team members, it’s incredibly damaging.

Not least because the CRM platform should be something everyone uses to understand the business better. A lack of engagement from the top could mean the wrong solution gets selected. It could also mean that leadership won’t use it properly which creates the very problems you’re trying to stamp out.

Involve Leadership

If they are not involved in the process currently, they should be. Leadership buy-in is critical to the success of any CRM project. When leaders actively support the transition, it sends a strong message to employees about the importance of the change. It should also dispel some of the

Develop a Roadmap

A clear roadmap that outlines timelines, responsibilities, and milestones ensures everyone understands their role in the transition. This roadmap should include plans for data migration, integration testing, user training, and post-launch support.

Test and Iterate

Before rolling out the new CRM platform across the organisation, conduct a pilot phase with a small group of users. Use their feedback to address any issues and refine the implementation process. This iterative approach reduces the likelihood of major disruptions during the full rollout.

CRM Migration as Part of a Bigger Picture

Transitioning to a new CRM is rarely a standalone initiative. It’s part of a broader effort to modernise operations and improve customer engagement. Businesses that approach CRM migration with this mindset are more likely to see it as an opportunity rather than a challenge.

Align with Business Goals

Ensure the new CRM supports broader business objectives, such as increasing customer retention, reducing operational costs, or expanding into new markets. This alignment ensures the system delivers measurable value.

Foster a Culture of Continuous Improvement

CRM adoption isn’t a one-time event, it’s an ongoing journey. Regularly review how the system is used, gather feedback from teams, and adjust to ensure it continues to meet the organisation’s needs.

Migrating your CRM Platform to Dynamics 365

Changing CRM platforms is a complex process, but it can deliver transformative benefits when approached strategically. By addressing hesitations, engaging stakeholders, and framing the change as part of a larger digital transformation journey, businesses can ensure a smooth transition and long-term success.

With the right CRM strategy and tools like Dynamics 365, organisations can overcome the challenges of migration and unlock new opportunities for growth and efficiency.

To assess how well your CRM platform is working, why not take our free CRM Health Assessment and gain some valuable insights? Or, if you’d like to learn how we could help you transform your business with Dynamics 365, get in touch to speak to a member of the team.

Let’s Talk

Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we help businesses like yours navigate Microsoft Dynamics 365 recovery and deployments.

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November 26, 2024
How to use your MS Dynamics CRM for marketing

MS Dynamics is an established and powerful CRM that helps businesses manage customer data. Dynamics was designed to be the backbone of your data-gathering efforts and a means for you to understand the level of engagement accurately.

By integrating with other systems and applications, replaces data silos with a complete 360-degree view of your customer data.

Dynamics 365 can give you one source of truth for each customer record, seeing every interaction you’ve had with them since their initial enquiry or response to your outreach.

Aside from making it easier to understand your client or prospect’s requirements, it eliminates confusion and duplication of work.

Importantly it makes it relatively easy for anyone to pick up a client account should the need arise. With every quote, order, email, phone call and record in one place.

But effective and accurate data collection isn’t the end of the journey with MS Dynamics, it’s the beginning.

MS Dynamics 365 has powerful marketing functionality in the form of Customer Insights Journeys (formerly Dynamics 365 Marketing).

Customer Insights Journeys takes the wealth of customer data you’ve collected and puts it to work delivering a personalised experience for your customers.

The more personalised you can make the experience, the more likely your customers are to transition from repeat customer to loyal customers. And from there become an advocate.

The effectiveness of your marketing with MS Dynamics comes down to how well you manage your data and how well you can leverage that data in Customer Insights Journeys.

Data Ingestion and Segmentation

Data is the fuel for most modern businesses and, as with any engine, the better the fuel the smoother the engine. Your ability to gather, cleanse and ingest data into your Dynamics 365 CRM will have a direct impact on its performance.

The old adage of garbage in, garbage has never been truer.

Dynamics 365 integrates with a wide range of platforms allowing a free flow of data into your CRM without any manual intervention. This is powerful from both a labour perspective but also from an efficiency standpoint. Having the data ready to use allows your business to go much faster. And respond to potential issues as well.

Equally, the more data sources and touchpoints you can link your MS Dynamics to, the more insightful and valuable that customer data becomes.

It’s the difference between knowing a customer buys women’s skirts and tops and knowing what colours, sizes, styles and brands they choose.

The first instance is useful, but the second instance is powerful. That level of granularity gives you enough data to engage with that customer in a personalised, meaningful way.

Integrating Multiple Data Sources

One of the most powerful features of Microsoft Dynamics 365 is its capability to integrate data from a wide range of sources, creating a unified and comprehensive view of each customer. By pulling in data from various channels, including customer interactions, social media activity, purchase history and website behaviour, MS Dynamics enables businesses to build a detailed and nuanced profile of their customers.

By capturing as many touchpoints as possible, businesses develop insights into customer preferences and sentiment, while analysing purchase history can reveal buying patterns and product affinities.

Combining these data points in MS Dynamics 365 gives you the ability to segment your audience more accurately, leading to more targeted and effective marketing campaigns.

Moreover, integrating multiple data sources enriches your customer data and ensures that your marketing strategies utilise the most relevant and up-to-date information.

Ensuring Data Quality

Integrations alone don’t ensure data quality, the data itself has to have been well maintained or, at the very least, gone through a cleansing process before integrating with your CRM.
Bad data can lead to ineffective marketing campaigns, miscommunication, and ultimately, a loss of customer trust. To maximise the value of your data in Dynamics 365, it’s crucial to maintain clean and accurate records through regular data quality management practices.

Deduplication and standardisation of your data, preferably before it enters Dynamics 365, are key. Identifying and merging duplicate records prevents the very kind of mistakes and duplication of work a CRM can help you to avoid.

Fragmented customer profiles can result in an inconsistent customer experience at best or losing the customer at worst. So, managing your data properly is key.

Similarly, standardising your data means your data is consistent. Consistent data is manageable data. Ensure that all data entering Dynamics 365 follows a consistent format. Standardisation helps prevent errors during data analysis and ensures that all marketing communications are accurate and professional.

In addition to deduplication and standardisation, it’s also important to regularly audit and cleanse your data. This means periodically reviewing your data for accuracy, removing outdated information, and updating records as necessary. By keeping your data clean, you enhance the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and improve the overall customer experience.

Segmentation within MS Dynamics

Dynamics 365 can segment your data by almost any data point you care to use. If the data exists, it can be used for segmentation. This gives your marketing team a substantial number of options to engage your audience with.

Demographical, transactional, behavioural and search data can all exist within your Dynamics CRM. So not only can you send a campaign to that customer who buys tops and skirts, but you can recommend products that match both their purchase history and their search history.

The value of that email vastly outstrips anything generic hitting inboxes from your competitors.

Just be careful; the more you segment your data, the more you have to keep track of it. Carefully plan your segments before you add them to Dynamics 365 so you know exactly what you can do with your marketing campaigns.

It doesn’t preclude you from adding further segments in the future, it’s about making the process as manageable as possible early on.

As you get more experienced using Customer Insights Journeys, you can start to use advanced functionality like predictive modelling and AI-driven segmentation.

Predictive modelling can help you to identify changes in customer behaviour and allow you to take action. Churn analysis, purchase propensity and lead scoring can be predictively modelled so your team can put their energies where they will yield the best results.

Trigger-based campaigns are highly effective when used in conjunction with predictive modelling. You can engage with your audiences at just the right moment which can result in higher customer retention or increased sales. Or both.

The Impact of Data on Segmentation

The more data sources you can draw upon, the richer the data available becomes. Again, it’s knowing a customer likes to buy clothes and knowing specifically which clothes in brand, size and colour. And, actually going a step further and recognising the difference when a customer is buying for themselves or buying for someone else.

The more data you can integrate with Dynamics 365 from across your business, the more precise their segments become.

While this may seem a lot of busy work to some, be under no illusions, your audience expects personalised communication. Not least because, fundamentally, the people who spend money with you want to feel seen and they want to feel valued.

This has been a marked shift from traditional transactional relationships, especially in eCommerce. Goods at a low price with free delivery aren’t enough anymore.

According to a study by Evergage, 88% of marketers report a measurable improvement due to personalisation, with more personalised content leading to better customer engagement.

Better customer engagement usually equates to sales.

Segmentation and Customer Insights Journeys

Once you have the data, you can put it to use with Customer Insight Journeys. This tool, within MS Dynamics 365, allows you to go through a strategic process of mapping out and understanding the various stages a customer goes through when interacting with your brand. From initial awareness all the way through to post-purchase engagement. These journeys allow you to tailor communications and interactions to meet the specific needs and behaviours of each customer segment at every touchpoint.

In Microsoft Dynamics 365, Customer Insight Journeys is enhanced by the CRM, allowing you to create highly personalised and automated marketing strategies. By leveraging the data ingested and segmented within Dynamics 365, companies can craft detailed customer journeys.

Each journey can reflect the individual preferences and behaviours of each segment and adapt in real-time as customers progress through the different stages.

Personalised Communication Strategies

The ability to segment customers effectively within Dynamics 365 enables marketers to develop communication strategies that are not just personalised but also contextually relevant. Segmentation allows for the creation of dynamic customer journeys, where each communication is tailored to the specific interests and behaviours of the individual, leading to more meaningful interactions.

Providing you have the segmentation in place, you can create campaigns based on their behaviour and interests, as well as special offers (including individualised offers), and relevant content.

Similarly, customers who have abandoned a shopping cart can be automatically sent reminders or incentives to complete their purchases. These tailored and timed messages, driven by the segmentation within MS Dynamics 365, help to build stronger relationships with customers by delivering content that resonates with them.

Statistical Insight

According to research by Epsilon, 90% of consumers find personalised content appealing, and 80% are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalised experiences. This underscores the importance of using segmentation to drive personalised communications.

Automation and Customer Journeys

One of the standout features of Dynamics 365 is its ability to automate customer journeys based on the data-driven insights gained from segmentation. This means you can set up automated workflows that trigger specific actions, such as sending emails, notifications, or SMS messages, at the optimal time for each customer segment.

MS Dynamics 365 can automate the nurturing of leads by sending targeted content based on a prospect’s behaviour, such as downloading a whitepaper or attending a webinar. As the customer progresses through the journey, the system can automatically adjust the messaging to reflect their changing needs and preferences, ensuring that each interaction is timely and relevant.

This level of automation enhances the efficiency of marketing campaigns but also ensures that customers receive a seamless and consistent experience across all touchpoints. It reduces the manual effort required to manage complex customer journeys, allowing marketers to focus on strategy and creative development.

Measuring Success

To ensure that the segmented and automated customer journeys are achieving their desired outcomes, Dynamics 365 provides analytics and reporting tools. Marketers can track key performance indicators such as open and click-through rates, conversion rates, and overall engagement across segments and campaigns.

By continuously monitoring these metrics, you can refine their segmentation strategies and optimise their customer journeys to improve results. This iterative process of analysis and optimisation ensures that customer journeys remain effective and aligned with business goals.

Maximising your MS Dynamics for Marketing

Dynamics 365’s marketing functionality allows you to engage with your customers in a hyper-personalised way, and without the need for a third-party tool to do it.

You can create your campaigns in Dynamics and see all the reporting come through, along with ever-enriching customer profiles.

The more data-driven campaigns you send, the more refined they become based on customer interaction. And, by extension, the more insight you gain about your customers, clients or prospects.

However, your ability to effectively market to your audiences is dependent on the data you’re using and how it exists within Dynamics 365.

Without proper configuration, integration and segmentation your ability to create personalised journeys will be severely impaired.

To learn more about how Dynamics 365 can be configured to your precise business needs, or how to utilise Customer Insights Journeys to better engage with your audience, speak to a member of the team today.

Let’s Talk

Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we help businesses like yours navigate Microsoft Dynamics 365 recovery and deployments.

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August 14, 2024
Elevating Customer Experiences through CRM Personalisation

Personalisation is the key to customer engagement. It’s how you build trust, deliver value, and ultimately convince customers to spend their money with you. Without personalisation, marketing is frustrating for both sides. Customers are tired of receiving generic communications from the companies they choose to engage with. Whether it’s from a department store or professional services, generic communications guarantee that only a small proportion of the email that individual receives will be relevant to them.

Meanwhile, businesses achieve minimal returns on marketing campaigns and customer relationships fail to get off the ground.

Fundamentally, without personalisation, messages can only ever be generic which makes them either irrelevant or annoying. Let’s not forget, that while a 25% open rate for an email may seem good, 75% chose to ignore you.

The absence of reliable data makes it next to impossible for a marketing function to improve its odds of success. For prospects and customers, generic messaging makes them feel ignored or unseen, which undermines trust and harms the working relationship.

The absence of reliable data makes it next to impossible for a marketing function to improve its odds of success. A CRM that houses a single source of truth for each prospect and customer enables you to create personalised experiences. What’s more, you can personalise communications at scale.

How personalisation transforms customer experience

Personalisation cuts to the heart of what’s important to the customer. In that sense, it’s an extension of customer-centric marketing – where you focus not on your offer, but on the customer’s need. Take, for example, a customer who has been browsing wallpaper designs on a DIY superstore’s website. With that data to hand, the store could email them offers on relevant products. The wallpaper. The paste. The tools. They could send ‘how to’ guides or direct them to relevant social media content. In short, they can make the journey from decision-making to buying to enjoying much simpler for them. Compare this to the DIY superstore that highlights whichever products are the flavour of the month – a lawnmower, perhaps, or taps. Generic, impersonal marketing doesn’t help the customer progress their purchase. And if you can’t help them, they will go to a seller that can.

Personalisation doesn’t need to be complicated to be effective. For example, event planners might target return customers – particularly if they’ve conducted feedback surveys and received positive results. Those customers will appreciate the opportunity to return. Gyms might note which classes members usually attend and reach out if they haven’t been in a while. Done well, this signals to members that their gym cares about them and wants them to succeed. Overcoming the generic barrier is transformative. Consider the effect an email with generic summer lines would perform compared to one that features products that match a customer’s purchase history, right down to size and colour choices. Not every product will be right but the relevance of that email is powerful.

When personalisation makes a customer feel valued, the result is a strengthening of the relationship between buyer and seller. A stronger relationship leads to shorter sales cycles, repeat business and a greater likelihood that your customer crosses the line to a loyal customer. Then, in time, an advocate.

How to personalise communications

The key to a personalised CRM approach is collecting and storing relevant information about every customer. Some of this data can be gathered during discovery, while some will only come out through interactions with the customer. However, without a CRM within which to centralise your data, aggregating this information can be tricky.

Customers can range from industrial scale or enterprise size to SMEs. While the products they purchase might be the same, the size of the order and their requirements will be fundamentally different. For example, delivery times, frequency of orders and payment terms may all change. Understanding the basic needs of each customer and categorising them accordingly will enable you to present each customer with the most relevant information. Relevance keeps customers engaged and reduces churn.

Every data point can be used to create a personalised and engaging customer experience. Something as simple as market segmentation allows you to focus on the kind of content you share. Another critical area of understanding is your customers’ pain points. Understanding and codifying specific issues allows you to provide solutions – a far more effective approach than the hit-and-hope hard sell.

The more data you have at your disposal and the deeper the segmentation, the easier it is to become a relied-upon and trusted supplier to your customers.

Personalised emails are a mainstay of most CRM tools; however, this goes beyond just using the customer’s name. Anyone with a database and free email tool can achieve this. Personalisation requires a deeper level of understanding and the processes to capture that crucial data.

With a good CRM, your options for recording relevant information are vast and no information should be considered extraneous. The focus is on building a long-lasting, trusting relationship.

Use the data you have to engage with your audiences in the way that matters most to them. If a company has a big sports culture, tailor your communications to ‘speak their language’. There’s nothing to stop you from creating a fun fact campaign to drop every day of a tournament if you think it will get you the outcomes you want.

Strategies for effective CRM personalisation

Building out this data can be challenging, especially if your organisation has data scattered across disparate systems. Data consolidation is key to both successful CRM deployment and personalised customer engagement. You also need robust processes in place, so your account managers or salespeople know what information to collect and how to record it.

These systems rely on your people having those key discovery conversations and building the rapport so that information can be gathered. This in turn relies on a business-wide approach to sales that is highly customer-centric and detail oriented.

Collect and analyse customer data

When you’re adding a new customer to your CRM, do your due diligence. You need the basics: the right name, contact details, industry segment, etc. All of this is foundation-level personalisation. Once you start having conversations with that customer, you can assign categories according to their needs and pain points. Capture data where you can, including how your audience interacts with your emails. You need to know how often they opened the email, what they clicked on and whether they converted off the back of that click.

Segment customers to tailor communications

The more data you have the deeper you can segment your audiences. Remember, your customers can sit in multiple buckets, which means they can be in multiple campaigns. And when it comes to data segmentation almost nothing is off limits. Record everything, you never know when it might come in handy. Once you know what your customer is interested in, you can – and should – tailor your communications.

But segmentation is only part of the process; you need to adopt a customer-centric mindset to go with it. That means sending them the content, offers and products they’re interested in. Not the ones you want to sell.

Automate communications based on customer actions or milestones

If you’re able to track a customer’s engagement with specific resources from across your digital estate, you could follow up with a personalised message. This could be a straightforward ‘I see you’re interested in X, would you like to know more?’ or you could look at ways to add value by anticipating their needs. ‘As you read XYZ, you might also be interested in ABC’. Remember to keep these automated messages personal – no one wants to feel like a cog in a machine.

Measure and refine

Customers, businesses, challenges – none of these are static. Circumstances change, and your personalised approach needs to keep up or you risk once again making that customer feel unseen. Use the analytics at your disposal to evaluate whether customer behaviours align with the data you have. Simple things like average order value, products purchased and order frequency. This is in addition to channel performance like email open and click-through rates. Analysing these behaviours can show where interests have shifted or if the customer is at risk of churning. We’d also suggest that you use the time freed up by business process automation to connect with customers one-to-one. Give them a call and have a conversation about their business, their needs, etc. Think of it as rediscovery. The effort you put in around your personalised communications allows you to move the relationship away from purely transactional.

CRM tools for personalisation

There are many ways that an advanced CRM like Microsoft Dynamics 365 can enable you to personalise your relationship with your customers. Here are just a few:

Name check – You can automate emails from your CRM to include things like your contact’s name, their business name, a reference to your last communication or their last purchase. All of these details can be completed automatically, and you can also select customers by market segment, region, past purchases, etc.

Power Automate Flow – This Microsoft tool can be integrated with Dynamics 365 to automate a customer journey based on conditional logic. For example, if a customer clicks on a resource on your website, automations can be triggered, such as a popup or a customer email, or an email to a salesperson suggesting they call the customer to follow up. Each action has a pre-programmed reaction, reducing missed opportunities and increasing sales and marketing efficiency.

Copilot – Another Microsoft tool, Copilot is an AI assistant that sits within the Microsoft ecosystem and can draw on your CRM, emails, documents, etc. to provide insights that help you develop a highly personalised approach to every interaction.

Integration – One of the best ways to maximise personalisation within a CRM (and increase user adoption) is to ensure it integrates with your existing platforms. That way, it’s easier to copy information from one place to another – sometimes as simple as one or two clicks – and requires far less effort on the user’s part to reap maximum reward.

When choosing a CRM, these are the kinds of capabilities you should be looking for. Add to this, the potential to add more as they are developed. If you’re already using an advanced CRM and don’t have all these tools, talk to your CRM partner. You should be able to enhance your system to create more potential for personalisation.

Don’t get left behind

Personalisation is a way to differentiate yourself from the competition and provide a superior customer experience. Significantly, it’s what your customers expect. From a sales perspective, it’s the difference between a trial-and-error approach and a data-driven, customer-centric strategy. You’re specifically targeting customers with information that is relevant to them. The result will be more sales, happier customers, and fewer missed opportunities.

Strategies like these are only possible now because of advances in digital technologies and AI-driven tools. The more these take off, the more customers will expect a personalised approach, and the more your business will suffer if you’re not personalising the customer experience.

If you feel like you’re barely scratching the surface of your CRM strategy, we can help. Speak to a member of the team to assess your current CRM usage and develop strategies to improve personalisation.

Let’s Talk

Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we help businesses like yours navigate Microsoft Dynamics 365 recovery and deployments.

Learn more

July 15, 2024
How AI is Revolutionising CRM Strategies and Operations
The better you know your customers, the more you can offer them. For SMEs in particular, the value of this resource should not be underestimated.

But just because the tools exist to mine this data gold, it doesn’t mean businesses know how to use them. One of the core challenges QGate helps people deal with is rescuing CRMs that are underperforming – either through low user adoption or a lack of understanding around the features and opportunities on offer. One way QGate can help address these challenges is through AI-based tools that help create efficiencies, generate insights, and generally leverage your data for improved sales performance.

The AI revolution in CRM

CRM systems contain some of your most vital and valuable data, ripe for AI-driven efficiencies.

AI can save you precious time and put you in a great position to increase sales, from aggregating and sorting relevant customer information to help you decide on marketing strategies or even product development to providing insights and sales forecasts that would previously have taken you days to write up.

Some examples of how AI can help your business succeed include:

Talking the talk

Many businesses use chatbots to help answer customer questions and act as a triage to direct questions to the most appropriate respondent.

Chatbots have come a long way in recent years, and the availability of AI-powered chatbots with natural language abilities ensures you can provide personalised service 24/7/365. And of course, your CRM can record all these conversations for further analysis and follow-up.

From the customer side, receiving a quick, helpful and ‘human’ response will help ensure customer loyalty.

AI prompts

The kind of data analysis offered by AI goes beyond what most people would be able to manage themselves.

It’s possible to analyse everything from customer interactions, like clicks on your website, to customer sentiment, such as on social media or chatbot conversations, to empower salespeople to make the right offer at the right time. These nudges might include specific products or offer recommendations that help drive sales.

Sales forecasts

Gone are the days of spending hours – if not weeks – of your life trying to build a detailed sales report, including a forecast for the next quarter. AI-powered algorithms can analyse historical data and relevant market trends, providing comprehensive reports that enable you to plan and ensure you’re well-placed to meet demand.

AI can massively streamline some workflows and replace others altogether. However, to make the most of this opportunity, businesses must have a joined-up strategy that connects the dots across all CRM-based workflows.

It’s also vital that AI tools are provided with good, accurate data to help them work more accurately and efficiently. Implementing AI-powered CRM tools to improve the performance of a system full of inaccurate or incomplete data won’t bring the desired results.

Addressing common CRM pain points with AI

In our experience, there are five core pain points with CRM systems:
- disappointing ROI
- lack of strategic alignment
- operational inefficiencies
- low user adoption
- deteriorating relationship with the current CRM partner
AI can help address many of these challenges and support end users to get more from their system.

Disappointing ROI

A disappointing ROI is often the result of low or inefficient use of the system. AI-powered CRM automation helps reduce workloads – making the sales process more efficient – but also opens up new opportunities by delivering customer insights and prompting salespeople to create the right offer at the right time.

Strategically using these tools will empower salespeople to make data-driven decisions that increase ROI.

Lack of strategic alignment

When a CRM isn’t meeting its potential, it’s often because there’s no alignment between CRM use and business goals. Are you mining the CRM for relevant data to help meet those goals? Did you use CRM data to help inform your strategy?

If the answer to these questions is no, then you have, if not a problem, a missed opportunity. AI-powered CRM tools analyse your data to provide insights that can shape your strategy. Plus, they can automate many processes that help you reach your targets.

Operational inefficiencies

If people don’t know how to use the CRM fully, or they’re not aware of all the available functions, then they won’t see the value of it. They might even see it as just another job on their list – when, in fact, the AI-powered CRM tools within an advanced system like Dynamics 365 could reduce their workload.

Automating repetitive tasks and using AI assistants like Microsoft Copilot, which integrates with Dynamics, enables you to automatically input data with a simple click – for example, updating contact information or copying across meeting summaries or task lists. These features streamline workflows, enabling you to gain efficiencies.

Low user adoption

Low user adoption is usually a side-effect of other challenges – when users do not see the benefit of a system, they won’t use it.

Every CRM implementation should begin with a good roll-out plan and ongoing training. You can also utilise AI to support this process with personalised data-led recommendations, such as those prompts mentioned above, which increase user engagement and adoption rates.

Deteriorating relationships with current partner

If you have lost faith in your CRM supplier due to poor results, talk to our team. We can help rescue your CRM and empower you to achieve the performance you hoped for – or even better – using all the functionality (AI and otherwise) of your CRM system.

QGate’s approach to AI-powered CRM recovery & optimisation

We have a four-phase approach to helping customers rediscover the value and potential of their CRM, including AI-powered CRM recovery and optimisation. It begins with a system audit, where we seek to understand your business, goals and ambitions and how you currently work. We then conduct a thorough review of your CRM setup to identify the performance gap between where your usage currently sits and where you need it to be to meet your business goals.

At this stage, we’re looking at the quality of your data, how it’s structured, to what extent you’re using the features included in your CRM and your business processes. This leads us to phase two, in which we gather user feedback to understand pain points from the end user’s perspective, as well as areas for improvement. This helps us understand priorities as we move forward with fixes and enhancements.

Phase three is where we customise and optimise your CRM based on the information gathered in the first two phases. Depending on your priorities, this might include adjusting workflows, improving data quality, or integrating with other systems to enhance functionality.

Finally, we reinforce user training and support to ensure everyone is empowered to use the system to the best of its ability. We can offer ongoing training sessions and a helpdesk for CRM-related queries if required.

The future of AI-powered CRMs

Looking to the future, it’s easy to imagine a time when you will have an AI assistant managing many of your tasks. You might come into your office in the morning and ask your assistant – is today a good day to approach X company? – and rely on your assistant to draw on what they know of a contact’s calendar, business and market context, plus history with your own company, to give you an answer. Better yet, they will probably be able to trawl your CRM to tell you (without waiting for you to ask) which customers should be on your target list for the day. With AI tools developing at speed, all of this will be on the radar sooner rather than later.

For SMEs, this means less time wasted and more time selling, shorter sales cycles and more personalised, higher-value deals.

Of course, just as with existing CRM technology, availability does not necessarily equate to a good user experience. It remains important to align CRM use with business strategy, to take the time to communicate both things to end users and to support people to get the most from their CRM. Also, bear in mind that not every system will suit every business, so take your time before investing to ensure you have selected the CRM and integrated tools that work for you.

If you have questions, we’re always happy to advise. Get in touch with our team today for further advice and information.

Start the Revolution

AI and CRMs are natural partners: one a data mining and analytics superstar and the other a hub for all your customer-related data. Their co-evolution will bring tremendous benefits to businesses – but only if businesses are both open to and aware of the value on offer.

We’re excited about the transformative potential of AI and highly focused on providing a kind of ‘translation service’, bridging the gap between the two and empowering businesses to make the most of the services and solutions available to them. If you’d like to talk about how AI-powered CRM can transform and supercharge your business performance, get in touch.

Let’s Talk!

Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we help businesses like yours navigate Microsoft Dynamics 365 recovery and deployments. Learn more
April 3, 2024
What is Business Process Automation (BPA) and how can it help my business?
What is Business Process Automation (BPA)?

Business Process Automation (BPA) is a powerful tool that you can use to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and drive growth. BPA involves using technology to automate repetitive tasks and introduce workflows, reducing your need for manual human intervention, and increase accuracy.

How can I use BPA and how will it benefit my business?

Invoice processing – Organisations spend significant time and people hours manually processing invoices. BPA can automate this by capturing invoice data, validating it against purchase orders, and routing it for approval. This can help to reduce human input errors, improve speed, and reduce costs.

Customer service – BPA can help automate time-intensive customer service processes, such as ticket creation, enquiry routing, and response. This can help to reduce wait times and provide a more seamless customer experience. For example, a chatbot can be used to handle common customer inquiries, freeing up customer service reps to handle more important and complex issues.

Sales – Automate lead generation, qualification, and follow-up processes, resulting in reduced time and people required to manage leads. This leads to improved conversion rates and increased sales productivity. For instance, an automated lead scoring system can be used to prioritise leads based on their likelihood to convert, making the sales process more efficient and effective.

Supply Chain Management – Automate inventory management, order fulfilment, and shipping processes. An automated inventory management system can be used to track inventory levels and automatically reorder when stock levels fall below a certain threshold, ensuring that products are always available for customers.

HR – Onboarding, payroll, and more can all be simplified. By automating these processes, organisations can reduce administrative tasks, improve compliance, and provide a better employee experience. For example, an automated onboarding process can be implemented to streamline the hiring process and reduce paperwork, making it easier for new employees to join the company.
What should I consider before implementing any type of BPA?

Process Analysis: Before implementing BPA, analyse your processes to identify which are suitable for automation. You need to identify bottlenecks in your business and which areas will benefit most from it. This analysis can help identify areas where you can improve optimise operations.

Scalability: You need to ensure that the solution can grow with your business, and that it can accommodate changing business requirements. This is particularly important for businesses that are expanding, as they need to ensure that their BPA solution can continue to meet their growing needs.

Integration: BPA solutions need to be integrated with other systems and applications within the business. This integration is necessary to ensure that the solution can work seamlessly with existing systems and applications.

Security: BPA solutions involve the automation of business processes, which means that they handle sensitive data. You need to ensure that your solution is secure and that it can protect sensitive data. This involves implementing appropriate security measures, such as encryption and access controls, to ensure that data is protected from unauthorised access.

Employee Buy-In: BPA can have a significant impact on employees, as it can change the way they work. You should ensure that employees are involved in the implementation process, and that they are trained on how to use the new BPA solution. This can help to ensure that employees are engaged and supportive of the new way of working, which can improve the overall success of the implementation.

Cost: Implementing BPA can be expensive, and you should consider the costs involved in implementing and maintaining the solution. Be certain that the benefits of implementing outweigh the costs of living with the pain, and that the solution provides a good ROI.
What are the future trends and innovations in BPA?

Intelligent Automation: With the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), we can expect to see more intelligent automation solutions. This will involve using AI and ML to enable systems to learn and adapt to changing conditions, allowing for more personalised and efficient workflows.

Process Mining: Process mining is a technique used to analyse business processes based on event logs. This technique enables businesses to identify process inefficiencies and bottlenecks, and to optimise their processes accordingly. We can expect to see more process mining solutions in BPA, providing businesses with valuable insights into their processes.

Low-Code/No-Code Solutions: Low-code and no-code platforms enable users to build and deploy applications without requiring extensive coding knowledge. Microsoft PowerApps are a perfect example of these. We can expect to see more BPA solutions adopting low-code and no-code platforms, making it easier for businesses to automate their processes without requiring extensive technical expertise.

Collaborative Automation: Collaborative automation refers to the integration of humans and automation solutions to perform tasks collaboratively. This approach can help to improve efficiency, reduce errors, and provide a better overall experience for employees. We can expect to see more collaborative automation solutions in BPA, enabling businesses to optimise their processes with the help of both humans and automation.

Cloud-based Solutions: Cloud-based BPA solutions provide businesses with the flexibility and scalability they need to manage their processes effectively. We can expect to see more cloud-based solutions in BPA, making it easier for businesses to manage their processes from anywhere, at any time.

So, we know BPA can help businesses to achieve operational efficiency, optimise their operations for growth, and gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. By leveraging technology to automate complex and repetitive tasks, businesses can streamline their processes, improve accuracy, and free up time and resources for more strategic tasks. This can lead to improved overall performance and productivity, allowing businesses to focus on what they do best.
April 18, 2023
Unlock the Power of your Processes: How RPA Can Transform Your Business

All businesses face a common challenge – they often have to deal with high volumes of repetitive tasks, which not only consume time but also lead to human errors.

These tasks arise due to anything from data entry, inefficient undocumented uncontrolled processes, and ineffective systems to customer needs, service inquiries and support requests. As a result, employees must spend a considerable amount of their time on carrying out these tasks, which affects their productivity and more importantly their job satisfaction.

Ultimately, carrying out these tasks results in a suboptimal customer experience due to delayed responses, errors, and inconsistencies in service delivery.

People are not cheap to employ, and neither should they be. Whether you are a services business where your people and their expertise are your product or otherwise, it is essential to keep your people for things only people can do – going that extra mile for your clients and your business.

In today’s digital age, customers (and employees) expect fast and seamless services that are delivered with accuracy and consistency. This means that we need to find ways to automate repetitive tasks and optimize their processes to deliver a better customer and employee experience. Not only that, but the transition to remote working has also meant businesses need to find ways to maintain their service quality and productivity in a distributed environment.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is an emerging technology, that is essentially the culmination of lots of different technology solutions. AI included, it can help your business automate tasks and processes, resulting in improved efficiency, productivity, and customer experience. This could be anything from a CRM, ERP or finance system to smaller activity specific applications that execute business specific needs.

I do feel a little uncomfortable with the use of “robotic” and “robots” to describe RPA, it does conjure images of car production lines with huge robots building cars. This is not it. Essentially, it is software typically residing in cloud platforms that uses low code no code technology that can be configured to your individual business needs. RPA is used to perform any tasks that has logic and a trigger to them removing these rule-based and repetitive tasks that would otherwise require human intervention.

“If a machine can do it, it will be done faster, better and more consistently with the same result every time. Automate everything! and it will increase your business value.”

Alastair Jupp

So, what are the benefits?

RPA can help free up employees’ time, enabling them to focus on more value-added activities. This improves employee satisfaction and productivity, resulting in better service delivery to customers. Second, RPA can help minimise errors and inconsistencies, resulting in a more accurate and consistent customer experience. Finally, RPA can enable businesses to maintain their service quality and productivity in a distributed environment, supporting remote work.

“Focus on improving customer AND employee experience, particularly in the areas where they intersect, RPA will do this for you.”

Alastair Jupp

I have talked about adding business value but not explained how thus far. Imagine you achieved automation in every area possible of your business, any potential buyer of your business will see the benefits of how your core business runs itself and your people are happy, engaged and focused on great customer experience building. This is valuable and it will directly impact the appeal and valuation of your business.

The best part about RPA is that it has developed a long way, and the pricing has reduced. It is now accessible to any ambitious business, big or small, cash rich or not, that wants to add business value, improve customer experience and ultimately, have a more satisfied workforce, happier customers, and a more valuable business.

More about RPA solutions

How we help clients implement RPA

March 24, 2023
How CRM can help you to deliver agile customer service and improve the customer experience
Delivering exceptional customer service is more important than ever. Poor customer service creates a negative impact on your organisation, resulting in the loss of customer loyalty, repeat business, profits, reputation and even good employees.

Ensuring that your customer service is up to scratch is more challenging as the number of communication channels has expanded. Long gone are the days of just letters, telephone calls and face-to-face interactions. Companies must now be able to deliver omnichannel service across their customers preferred routes including email, live chat, and social media.

As the number of contact channels has increased, the challenge of storing and organising of data has also increased. The details and purchase history of a single customer may now be spread among several channels and multiple employees.

Increasingly, businesses are looking at how artificial intelligence (AI) can help to augment customer support. Chatbots and customer self-service can be used alongside service agents to streamline and automate your response to routine customer enquiries and frequently asked questions. The benefits are 24/7 availability to your customers, fast response times and the freeing up of customer service agents to work on more complex issues.

Achieving all of this without an effective customer relationship management (CRM) system is impossible. CRM is a powerful software solution which offers a range of capabilities to help improve your customer experience:
- Keep in touch with your customers with personalised communications across multiple channels
- Deliver a consistent and high-level customer experience
- Use data to help you to understand your customers better and build targeting marketing strategies
- Send relevant information automatically through grouping of customers or triggered by specific events
- Provide attentive customer support by utilising automation and AI to provide swift, focussed responses to customer issues
Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM for Customer Service

Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides an agile customer service solution that will increase productivity, reduce costs, identify sales opportunities and improve the customer experience.
- Provide Self-service Support – Offer your customers immediate access to the right content at the right time on the right channel
- Personalise Customer Service Engagements – deliver consistent, connected experiences across multiple channels from a unified agent desktop
- Empower service teams with tools for Increased Productivity – enable agents to resolve customers’ issues swiftly
- Analyse and learn from comprehensive support insights – track success against KPIs and adapt quickly.
Free Microsoft Ebook

Five Ingredients to Ignite Always-On Service

Maintain quality of service when customer demand spikes

Improve efficiency and automation to reduce costs

Support remote teams to work effectively

Deliver connected, valuable customer experiences

>> Download the Ebook
Next Steps
- Find out more about Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Service
- Learn more about the QGate CRM Implementation Approach
July 21, 2022