The future of customer service in your business
We live in a connected digital world. The advent of new technologies has changed the way we conduct our business. In the past, a customer contacts the customer service team to register a grievance; the business agrees to address the problem in the stipulated time. The future is about resolving customer concerns and proactively avoiding situations before they become concerns.
“Customer service is an opportunity to exceed your customer’s expectations.” — John Jantsch
Businesses should exceed customer expectations; a solution which gives a 360-degree view of customer information, right from marketing, when the customer buys a product or service, or incident management. Businesses need solutions to make smart business decisions based on available information. And one of those solutions is Microsoft Dynamics 365 with Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and Field Service, all packaged together within a single business ecosystem.
The following business scenario demonstrates the benefits of implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Business scenario:
Before implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365
Rob has moved into his new home. He is impressed by a marketing advertisement from a broadband provider called ZingZong. He buys a new home broadband connection from ZingZong. After a few days Rob starts to experience intermittent internet connection followed by the service being completely unavailable.
Rob contacts the ZingZong broadband support team. The customer service representative speaks of a service outage in the area, and suggests it will be resolved by the end of the day. Rob is upset because he works from home and cannot progress on his work without an internet connection. The next day, the problem is resolved, internet service is restored, and Rob is able to carry on with his work from home.
After a few days, Rob starts to experience a similar problem. A similar assurance is given by the support team; that the issue is most likely to be resolved in a day’s time. Rob becomes frustrated when the outage appears to recur more frequently, it is affecting his work. Rob takes out his anger on the customer service representative about the quality of service provided and his inability to progress on his work.
The broadband customer support team apologetically express they are in a helpless situation. They can only read out the outage notification on their system, because field work and customer support requests are managed in two separate systems. The customer support team do not have visibility of work carried out in the field and cannot give a justified explanation to Rob.
Rob was disappointed with the internet service and hence he decided to switch broadband provider.
ZingZong, a prominent broadband provider, have lost a customer. This is due to systems not being integrated, the customer service team lacked visibility of the problem; they could not see any details on efforts to resolve the recurring problem on the field.
“If we don’t take care of our customers, someone else will.” — Unknown
After implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365
ZingZong plans to replace their current system with the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform to fulfil Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and Field Service. With this new implementation, both people and processes in the business have good visibility of information throughout the customer journey. ZingZong start to see benefits after implementation, with significant increase in the number of customers. The customer experience has improved after implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Joe opts for a new home broadband connection with ZingZong. After few days Joe notices his internet connection is not available. Joe contacts the ZingZong broadband support team. A customer service representative looks at the system and notices a technical failure in Joe’s area.
With Microsoft Dynamics 365 in place, support staff can drill down to see details of field work and field agents actively working to resolve the problem. Support staff sends a message to a field agent to contact Joe on completion of his work, to explain the problem and to also ensure suitable measures have been taken to avoid similar problems in the future.
Joe receives a call from the technician confirming that the problem has been resolved. The field agent informs Joe a monitoring device has been installed to foresee and avoid similar problems in the future. Joe is impressed with ZingZong’s proactive approach. Joe is a happy customer, because he now understands the cause of the service failure and how it was diligently solved. Joe recommends ZingZong’s broadband service to his friends. This demonstrates how a business can win more customers by providing great customer experience.
“Customers may forget what you said but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.” — Unknown
Disclaimer: Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
