The months of September through November are always a busy time in the Microsoft Dynamic community. Between conferences, product releases, year-end preparation, and other demands, time can be short and your attention will be pulled in too many directions.

For Dynamics CRM users and professionals who want to continue their professional development without maxing out their schedules, we at MSDynamicsWorld.com are pleased to announce a new series of CRM webcasts featuring subject matter experts from around the Dynamics community. These events, listed below. are free to attend and feature a range of CRM-focused topics from development to sales to solution architecture and more. We will be adding even more as the season moves along.

Sign up for individual sessions or register once for the full program and save yourself some time. And if you can't attend a session live, you can always catch the recording later. Register to be notified as soon as the session is available on demand. 

• Becoming a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Technical Architect
  Tuesday, September 9, 2014 @ 12:00 PM EDT
• Power Up Your Sales Team With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013
  Wednesday, September 24, 2014 @ 12:00 PM EDT
• The Power of Dynamics CRM and SharePoint Together for Customer Service Organizations
  Thursday, October 30, 2014 @ 12:00 PM EDT 
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Release Management Best Practices, Revisited
  Wednesday, November 12, 2014 @ 12:00 PM EST
• The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Superhero’s Secret Utility: The XrmToolbox for CRM 2011/2013
  Tuesday, November 18, 2014 @ 12:00 PM EST

We look forward to seeing you live online!

We're less than 6 weeks away from CRMUG Summit 2014! All 180 sessions are locked and loaded, more than 120 speakers are ready to roll, the pre-conference training courses are filling up, Monday Night Football tickets are being purchased, and hundreds of Dynamics CRM users are preparing checklists of CRM issues they want to address in St. Louis.

CRMUG Program Director Tony Stein is particularly excited for this year's event.  He's been leading the charge with the Summit programming committee to put together an outstanding lineup for St. Louis.  Take a peek at this short video to hear first-hand from Tony - he shares what you can expect at this year's event, what the sessions are all about, some new tracks, who should attend, some great pre-conference activities, and more. It's uncut, unscripted, and unfiltered - just some straight-shooting about what you'll experience this year in St. Louis.  

Don't wait to reserve your spot at CRMUG Summit - registration rates will go up on Monday, September 8! Sign up today, and we'll see you in St. Louis!

CRMUG Summit 2014 - Experience It!

(Please visit the site to view this video)

One of the things that I get to do as part of my role at TSG, is to research into emerging technology and how it can benefit users. As part of the Spring ’14 Update Microsoft released the Unified Service Desk.

The Unified Service Desk (USD) is a desktop application that helps customer service agents provide phone, email, chat, and social media support to your customers. USD provides a configurable framework to quickly build an Agent Desktop application that's integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. With USD we can quickly make a customized agent desktop application by leveraging the User Interface Integration framework.

The Unified Service Desktop can be download from here.

The administration guide for the USD can be found here.

How do we install the Unified Service Desk?

First we need to install the base USD, this contains the general application framework, which includes connecting up to CRM, security, error logging, and base application. The installer we need here is the UnifiedServiceDesktop.msi. The installation for this is pretty straight forward, just next, next, finish :)

When we have installed that we need to deploy the package that we require, this is done via the second download which is the CRM2013-USD-PackageDeployer.exe self-extracting zip file. Once we have extracted the package deployer, we need to run the PackageDeployer.exe to install the USD solutions to CRM, along with the additional components to the actual USD we installed above.

Here we get the standard Package Deployer connect to CRM page, so we enter our server details and click Login.

Now we have multiple packages within the USD Package, these are a base package for CRM 2013, a CRM 2013 SP1 package with Product Updates (which includes scenarios based on the product update), and a CRM 2013 SP1 package. All options include sample data.

We will choose the CRM 2013 SP1 with Product Updates package, as this allows us to use some of the new features of service management, and click Next to continue.

Note: The new features demonstrated are, Entitlements, Service level agreements (SLAs), Routing Rules, Automatic case creation rules, Customer service schedule.

We can see that the package deployer validates the configuration, and we can click Next to continue.

Next we need to specify where the USD has been installed, as the Package Setup needs to install a number of custom controls. So we browse to the installed location of the USD and click Next to continue.

Note: If we want to install on to another machine, we would need to install the base version of USD and then copy across the USD folder from our master set up.

Clicking Next starts the installation process off.

We can see the progress of the installation, and see that the first step is to disable a number of plugins, and then the managed solution entities are created in CRM that are required by the USD.

We can see that updates are applied to the managed solution entities.

The updates include a number of data import files that are the sample data.

Finally we see that the various relationships are created, the plugins that were disabled are now enabled, and the installation is now complete.

Once the Unified Service Desk has been installed, and we look at the solution within CRM, we can see that a number of solutions have been imported.

 

What does the Unified Service Desk look like?

When we launch the USD from the desktop icon, we get the now standard WPF login form, which allows us to specify our server either On-Premise or Online / Office 365.

We are then presented with a customer service dashboard, which gives us a number of KPI’s, which from the sample data and configuration we choose earlier, is all centred around case management.

Scrolling down we see a list of the case that have been assigned to our user, which is effectively our case backline.

If we click on as case, we get the standard CRM form within the main panel. We can then expand out the Left Nav panel by clicking on the arrow, and see our Call Script which takes us through a new of predefined actions and makes the process flow really nice to use with the main panel updating as and when we need to perform an action.

As we process say through the Request for Service process, we can perform a number of actions either in sequence or if we like out of sequence, with the final action being to Resolve the case and Close the current session, which ends the Session Timer.

We also get a tab called My Work which shows us activities, or any items we can work on within our queue.

We have a Search tab, that can be set up to allow a number of entities to be searched, giving us a simplified enquiry mechanism, which obviously uses the standard CRM default views.

From the USD we can also have activity reminders be displayed in an Outlook style popup.

A handy technical tab, is the debugger which is available from the cog menu option. This shows us our action calls, along with action data and parameters.

We also get to see any debug information from the debug output sub-tab.

And get to see a number of data parameters that are specific to the USD session we are using.

 

How Configurable is the Unified Service Desk?

The Unified Service Desk is very configurable, there are a number of new menu options within the Settings area of CRM that allow full control of call scripts.

We can specify an Agents call script, along with the possible answers that we can accept. The answer will then determine the tasks the agent must follow to progress say a case.

We can customise the menu toolbar, to include a number of different options, icons, and various actions which can be configured to have conditions associated within them to when they are available.

From a customisation perspective we can create a number of custom action scripts, which are JavaScript functions, which we can call from various event actions.

One of the great features about using the USD, is that we can create more complex client side controls, which we just can’t really do through web resources and JavaScript within standard CRM. A couple of examples are CTI (Computer Telephone Integration), or maybe Webcam Integration to allow us to take a customer photo when registering them at a customer service desk and storing it as the Entity Image on the contact record.

In the example that we have installed we have an SLA Timer that is displayed in the Status Panel.

As part of the CRM SDK Templates for Visual Studio, we can create a number of different UI and USD Controls, Adapters or a Panel Layout.

A full example of creating a custom hosted control can be found on MSDN here.

How do we Enable Tracing?

We will occasionally get problems that we need to debug, so we can enable tracing within the UnifiedServiceDesk.exe.config file which is located within the same directory as the Unified Service Desk, e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM USD\USD

To enable tracing, we simply set the various setting to Error, Warning, Verbose or All.

<switches>
       <!--
       Possible values for switches: Off, Error, Warning, Information, Verbose
                     Verbose:      includes Error, Warning, Info, Trace levels
                     Information:  includes Error, Warning, Info levels
                     Warning:      includes Error, Warning levels
                     Error:        includes Error level
       -->
       <add name="EventTopicSwitch" value="Error"/>
       <add name="Microsoft.Uii.Common.Logging" value="Error"/>
       <add name="Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.CrmConnectControl" value="Error"/>
       <add name="Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.Connector.CrmServiceClient" value="Error"/>
       <add name="Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.WebResourceUtility" value="Error"/>
       <add name="Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk" value="Error"/>
       <add name="Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk.Dynamics" value="Error"/>
       <add name="Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk.CommonUtility.UserProfileManager" value="Error"/>
       <add name="UnifiedServiceDesk.KPIControl" value="Error"/>
</switches>
<sharedListeners>
       <add name="fileListener"
            type="Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.Connector.DynamicsFileLogTraceListener, Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.Connector" BaseFileName="UnifiedServiceDesk"                                    Location="LocalUserApplicationDirectory" />
       <add name="USDDebugListener" type="Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk.Dynamics.UsdTraceListener, Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk.Dynamics" />
</sharedListeners>

From the Shared Listeners section we can see that the log files will be created within

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\USD

Full walk through articles are available on MSDN here.

This post should have given a good overview of the Unified Service Desk, how it can be used and some of the types of customisations that can be made to it.

@simonjen1

I recently wrote a post about the Unified Service Desk which can be seen here. One of the great things about the USD is that it handles the connectivity to CRM, and allows us to create custom hosted controls. As CRM 2013 introduced the Entity Image I thought I would create a Webcam Control that sits within the USD to allow users to capture a customer’s picture and save it against their record in CRM.

This example uses some example Windows 8 Webcam Capture code, by Samuel dos Anjos, which can be downloaded here. The example uses Windows Image Acquisition, and accesses the default webcam capture device within Windows 8 with native driver calls and without the need for additional third party controls.
The example also assumes that USD is installed and configured as per my previous post, and the USD is on the local Windows 8 Development machine which has Visual Studio 2013 installed.

First we need to create a new USD Custom Hosted Control project:

Once we have created the project, we need copy across the WebCamCapture.csproj file from Samuel’s project. Then we rename the UserControl1 to WebCamControl to better reference latter in our USD Custom Control.

We also need to add a small public method to the WebCamControl to allow use to obtain the image that has been captured, so we open the WebCamControl.cs file and add the following to the bottom:

publicbyte[] GetImageData()

{

    System.IO.MemoryStream memoryStream = new System.IO.MemoryStream();

    ImgWebCam.Image.Save(memoryStream, System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Jpeg);

    return memoryStream.ToArray();

}

Here we are simply using a memory stream to save the image to, and then we return the byte array which we need to save to CRM.

In the main CameraControl project we need to reference the WebCamCapture project so that we can use the control.

In the USDControl xaml we add a grid to lay everything out correctly, three buttons, and the WindowsFormsHost control which contains our WebCamControl:

<USD:DynamicsBaseHostedControl x:Class="TSG.MSCrm6.USD.CameraControl.USDControl"

             xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

             xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

             xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"

             xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"

             xmlns:USD="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk.Dynamics;assembly=Microsoft.Crm.UnifiedServiceDesk.Dynamics"

             mc:Ignorable="d"

             Height="800" Width="800"

             xmlns:controls="clr-namespace:WebCamCapture;assembly=WebCamCapture">

    <Grid>

        <Grid.RowDefinitions>

            <RowDefinition Height="auto"/>

            <RowDefinition Height="*"/>

        </Grid.RowDefinitions>

        <ToolBarTray Name="ProgrammableToolbarTray" Grid.Row="0" Focusable="false"/>      

        <!-- this is where any toolbar assigned to this control will go -->

 

        <Grid Grid.Row="1">

            <Grid.RowDefinitions>

                <RowDefinition />

                <RowDefinition />

                <RowDefinition />

                <RowDefinition />

            </Grid.RowDefinitions>

            <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

                <ColumnDefinition />

                <ColumnDefinition />

                <ColumnDefinition />

            </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

            <WindowsFormsHost Height="500" Grid.RowSpan="2" Grid.ColumnSpan="3" Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row="0" Width="500">

                <controls:WebCamControl x:Name="WebCamControl" Height="500" Width="500" Margin="0,0,0,0"/>

            </WindowsFormsHost>

            <Button x:Name="btnStart" Grid.Row="4" Grid.Column="0" Content="Start" Click="btnStart_Click" Height="50" Width="100"/>

            <Button x:Name="btnStop" Grid.Row="4" Grid.Column="1" Content="Stop" Click="btnStop_Click" Height="50" Width="100"/>

            <Button x:Name="btnSave" Grid.Row="4" Grid.Column="2" Content="Save" Click="btnSave_Click" Height="50" Width="100"/>

        </Grid>

    </Grid>

</USD:DynamicsBaseHostedControl>

 

We name the controls accordingly and create three Click events.

privatevoid btnStart_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{

    this.WebCamControl.Start();

}

 

privatevoid btnStop_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{

    this.WebCamControl.Stop();

}

 

privatevoid btnSave_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{

    var session = (AgentDesktopSession)localSessionManager.ActiveSession;

    if (session != null&& session.Customer != null)

    {

        var entity = ((DynamicsCustomerRecord)session.Customer.DesktopCustomer).InitialEntity;             

        var img = this.WebCamControl.GetImageData();

 

        using (var serviceProxy = this._client.CrmInterface.OrganizationServiceProxy)

        {

            Entity newEntity = newEntity(entity.LogicalName);

            newEntity.Id = entity.Id;

            newEntity["entityimage"] = img;

            serviceProxy.Update(newEntity);

        }

 

        MessageBox.Show("Saved");

    }            

}

Within the Start and Stop events, we call the WebCamCapture control’s Start and Stop methods.

Within the Save event we get the current Active Session, and validate whether a Customer has been selected by the standard USD Search feature. If a customer has been selected, then we get the initial CRM entity, we get the Image Data from the WebCamCapture control and simply assign the byte array to the entityimage property and call an Update on the CRM entity.

To ensure that we only allow users to save a captured image for a customer, we modify the NotifyContextChange event, that is called every time the context we are working on changes within the USD.

publicoverridevoid NotifyContextChange(Microsoft.Uii.Csr.Context context)

{

    base.NotifyContextChange(context);

 

    var session = (AgentDesktopSession)localSessionManager.ActiveSession;

    if (session != null&& session.Customer != null)

    {

        EnableButtons(true);

    }

    else

    {

        EnableButtons(false);

    }

}

Here we are simply checking to see if a customer has been selected, and if it has then we enable the three buttons we added earlier.

Before we can use the control, we need to add it to CRM so that when the USD starts, it knows that it needs to load it, and to display it.

So we go into CRM, and Add a new Hosted Control:

1.       We specify the name, and display name

2.       Set the USD Component to USD Hosted Control

3.       Select Application is Global

4.       Assign the Control to the MainPanel Display Group

5.       Enter the Assembly URI as TSG.MSCrm6.USD.CameraControl

6.       Enter the Assembly Type as TSG.MSCrm6.USD.CameraControl.USDControl

7.       Click Save.

That is pretty much it!

How do we test our Controls?

Now we want to test our custom control, so we all we need to do is set the Startup project in visual studio to the TSG.MSCrm6.USD.CameraControl project.

We set the build output path to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM USD\USD folder so that the dll’s are deployed when we debug.

Then we set the debug Start Action to Start External Program and browse to the USD application:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM USD\USD\UnifiedServiceDesk.exe

Finally we can start debugging which will in turn start the USD application up, and we see our custom hosted control as a new tab within the USD.

Now we can click on the Search button from the top menu, and Select an Account from the Accounts list, which causes our context to change and enable the three buttons on the Webcam Control.

Then we can click the TSG Webcam Control tab, click Start and then Stop to capture the customer’s picture, and finally click on the Save button to upload the picture to the customer record in CRM.

Hopefully you can see that it’s quite easy to create a custom hosted control in the Unified Service Desk.

Until next time…

@simonjen1

If sales, marketing and customer service were siblings, sales would typically be perceived as the outgoing one; marketing as the favorite that gets the biggest allowance, and customer service as the child that stays in his or her room most of the time doing homework, never really asking for much attention. If you’re old enough to have watched The Brady Bunch, sales equals Cindy; marketing equals Marcia, Marcia, Marcia and Jan is customer service.

But everyone knows that Jan is really smart. She has things she’d like to say and can hold her own in a conversation, but it just hasn’t been her place to take center stage. After all, Marcia’s the cheerleader and she wins all those trophies….

But I’m here to tell you that Jan (customer service) deserves just as much attention and a bigger voice. A lot of people think so. And as a brand, being more proactive about giving the usually quiet kid the microphone can result in big benefits.

The Talk around Proactive Customer Service

Proactive customer service has been a talking point for many years. In 2012, Forrester Research VP and Principal Analyst Kate Leggett pronounced it one of her Four Ps of Customer Service (painless, personalized, productive, proactive). Fellow Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Art Schoeller also produced a fantastic research note discussing its monetary benefits.

But proactive customer service never really received the attention it deserved until conversations around customer-centricity and customer experience as brand differentiators started to become more amplified.

When the power began shifting from the brand to the customer, especially with the emergence of social and mobile as public-facing customer engagement channels, brands had to begin thinking more about putting customer service out front and giving it a more pronounced, proactive voice.

An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure

Now more than ever, it’s time to stop looking at customer service as primarily a cost center (reactive), and start thinking of it as a product and an asset (proactive) that can help generate revenue through increased customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Consider this:

• Just a 10% improvement in an enterprise company’s customer experience score can translate into more than $1 billion in increased revenue. - Forrester Research
• A 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 95%. - Bain & Company
• Customer expectations for proactive service are continuing to grow. According to a recent Customers 2020 Report, “the customer of 2020 will be more informed and in charge of the experience they receive. They will expect companies to know their individual needs and personalize the experience. Immediate resolution will not be fast enough as customers will expect companies to proactively address their current and future needs.”
• Consumers 18 to 29-years-old are more likely to use a brand’s social media site for customer service interactions (43%) than for marketing (23%). - J.D. Power and Associates Social Media Benchmark Study

Speaking Up and Getting Results

According to the findings of a recent Harris Interactive survey of more than 2,000 consumers, 87% of U.S. adults are receptive to being proactively contacted by an organization or company when it comes to service and support. Of those surveyed, nearly three-quarters (73%) who have had a pleasant surprise or positive experience with proactive communication from a brand report they had positive change in their perception of that organization; 62% said they took action as a result of that positive experience.

The utilities industry is a terrific example where proactive customer service and engagement is making a big difference. Many major providers are now using all available channels including IVR, social, mobile and their websites to let customers know of outages, service issues and other proactive communications. And the results from J.D. Power’s 2014 customer satisfaction study speak for themselves, with satisfaction rating increases for 79 of 93 providers due to this proactive communication.

Giving Customer Service a Voice

Through more connected CRM solutions, proactive communication across multiple channels is getting easier. Brands can now in real-time promote proactive customer service information and updates on their website, social media properties, via email, mobile and IVR messaging.

Beyond that, customer service doesn’t have to be a one-way conversation. More and more companies are giving customer service an equal voice with marketing to respond to customer questions, concerns and feedback. And customers are rewarding this effort. For example, a Bain & Company survey shows that customers end up spending 20% to 40% more with companies who engage and respond to social media customer service requests.

Notes Kate Leggett in Navigate the Future of Customer Service in 2014, “In the age of the customer, executives don’t decide how customer-centric their companies are — customers do.” Inform customers. Empower staff. Encourage customer service engagement and feedback. Give the typically quiet kid the microphone. Make sure customer service has an active voice as part of your brand.

More Customer Care Content You May Be Interested In:

• Parature 2014 State of Multichannel Customer Service Survey Report
  
  
  

CRMUG has SharePoint MVP’s on a Road Trip to CRMUG Summit 2014.  

Critical Path Training and their SharePoint MVP’s will be taking a road trip to teach SharePoint 2013 Academy classes on October 13th & 14th in St Louis. 

Ted Pattison, Matt McDermott and Christina Wheeler will roll into town on October 13th and 14th as part of the Academy Pre-Conference Training program.

These SharePoint roadshow classes are a compressed lecture and demo only format of their regular SharePoint training classes. They are great for folks who are limited in the time they can spend out of the office or working within a limited budget.

Step-by-step labs are provided in the course manuals so you can reinforce what you learned when you get back to the office.

These 2 Day classes are only $799 for CRMUG Premium Members. Click here to learn more about registering for these great courses.

Building Business Solutions with SharePoint Designer Roadshow
Taught by Matthew McDermott, SharePoint MVP
This 2-day course will teach you how to build powerful SharePoint 2013 business solutions without having to engage in any custom development. You will be amazed by exactly how far you can take things with SharePoint 2013 just using the out-of-the-box features and functionality once you have a solid understanding of the platform. This course has been specifically designed for business users using SharePoint 2013 in either an on-premises environment or in the Office 365 environment.

SharePoint 2013 for Site Administrator's Roadshow
Taught by Christina Wheeler, SharePoint Diva
This class is designed for site administrators and site collection owners who need to learn the ins and outs of managing sites and site content in a SharePoint 2013 environment. The course begins by examining the responsibilities of a SharePoint site administrator where students will learn how to manage and configure site collections and the sites that they contain. The course also teaches students how to design lists and document libraries using advanced techniques involving the use of custom site columns and content types.

Building BI Solutions using Excel and SharePoint 2013 Roadshow
Taught by Ted Pattison, SharePoint MVP
The Building BI Solutions with Excel and SharePoint 2013 Roadshow is an intensive 2-day course for business analysts and power users that want to learn about the fundamental concepts and tools used to create business solutions using the Business Intelligence (BI) features of Microsoft Excel 2013 and SharePoint Server 2013.

These are exciting times at Microsoft. For a guy like me who has been in the business applications space for quite a few years, working with some of the stalwarts of this industry, I can honestly tell you –  there is no more “business as usual”.  We’re shaking things up, and people are taking notice. 

Last week, Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet revealed what she referred to as a “barrage” of deliverables coming from Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Though ideally we would have preferred to release this information ourselves, we are happy to see the excitement about what is to come. With the power of Microsoft technologies behind us, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM team continues to deliver on a rapid release cycle that is driving innovation into our products at a significant clip--all in our efforts to redefine what a CRM solution can mean for businesses and for the customers they serve. 

Code names are one thing, but to get the real story about how we are changing the way marketing, sales and service teams can succeed together, look for our next major announcement coming soon. But that’s not all, stay tuned for even more exciting things from Microsoft Dynamics CRM as we head toward Convergence EMEA in November. 

Want to join us in Barcelona? Sign up today! 

https://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/convergence/europe14

Bob Stutz

When it comes to service and support, customers don’t long for conversation. They want answers, fast.

According to Parature’s 2014 State of Multichannel Customer Service Survey, customers rank the top two aspects of a satisfying customer service experience as:

• Getting my issue resolved quickly (41%)
• Getting my issue resolved in a single interaction (26%)
  
  

So, what is the key to delivering on the above? At the heart of every efficient (and hopefully first contact) resolution is knowledge. It is a simple foundation that, if developed and managed correctly, can be used both internally and externally - and distributed from a single source across almost every internal or external customer-facing channel including phone, IVR, email, live chat, mobile, social, support portal and more. 

Knowing How to Make Knowledge Work

The challenge for most brands is not the lack or development of knowledge, but rather the single-source management of and access to the right knowledge in real time. Says noted CRM analyst Esteban Kolsky in a new white paper for Parature, from Microsoft, “not having access to the right information is the most critical time-waste of preparing any answer for a customer.

“If the information is not available quickly, it is nearly impossible to deliver against expectations. Using knowledge management appropriately to fulfill the need for the right information leads to meeting expectations,” advises Kolsky.

The benefits of successful knowledge management in customer service, thinking in terms of both the internal (employee) and external customer, are almost too numerous to list, but include: higher customer satisfaction scores, increased customer loyalty and trust, improved efficiency and effectiveness, increased employee engagement and decreased churn, as well as noticeable gains in both revenue and cost savings due to self-service deflection of frequently asked questions from high-cost, high-touch channels such as phone and email.

Even brands’ SEO rankings have received a boost from well-managed and frequently updated customer service content - and customers, in turn, can find the answers they’re looking for even if they’re not seeking support on a brand-owned property. According to the same multichannel customer service survey mentioned above, more than 84% of 1,000 consumers say they have used the search engines to first look for the answers to their customer service questions. 

Knowledge’s Rich Return on Investment

For a real-life customer service knowledge management success story, search no further than Ask.com, a burgeoning brand that over the last few years, has developed a highly-successful multichannel customer service knowledge management offering to serve the hundreds of thousands of visitors that come to the site each month.

Ask.com Global Customer Care Manager Eric McKirdy recently calculated the ROI from just one of the brand’s customer service knowledgebase articles, selecting the most-viewed article which now has been accessed more than 4.5 million times. Calculating that the average annual starting salary for a CSR in their area at $40,000/year, and that it would take a CSR perhaps two minutes to answer the same question on the phone or by email with each of the 4,642,840 (and growing) customers… that’s 64 cents per answer for a $2,971,418 return on investment for this single piece of self-service knowledge.

New Esteban Kolsky White Paper Builds the
Business Case for Knowledge Management

A new white paper from noted CRM analyst and ThinkJar founder Esteban Kolsky not only effectively outlines the benefits of knowledge management for customer service (as well as sales and marketing), but walks readers, brands and organizations through the five steps of justifying a new or greater investment.

For any brand or organization looking to increase employee effectiveness and customer service resolution times, as well as deliver current and consistent answers, information and messaging across all major customer engagement channels, this complimentary white paper on knowledge as the key to better customer service is a must-read.

Dynamic Communities, Inc. – the independent administrative organization behind the user groups for Microsoft Dynamics® AX (AXUG®), Dynamics CRM (CRMUG®), Dynamics GP (GPUG®), Dynamics NAV (NAVUG™), and Dynamic Partner Connections (DPC) – announced today that Hal Howard has been hired as the Executive Director.  Hal will start his new role next week.      

Hal is the former Corporate Vice President for Microsoft Dynamics ERP R&D, a position he left in July 2014 after working for Microsoft for twenty years.   Hal was responsible for leading the research and development teams for Dynamics AX, Dynamics GP, Dynamics SL and Dynamics NAV.  Under his leadership, the team transformed and modernized the products and expanded Microsoft Dynamics’ presence globally.  Prior to joining the business solutions unit in 2003, Hal worked on both Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft’s online services.  He holds 8 patents for various technologies across these products and services.

While at Microsoft, Hal was an advocate for Dynamics users.  He was involved in the formative stages of AXUG ten years ago, and has participated in Chapter meetings and the annual Summit conferences for the Dynamics User Groups.   

As the Executive Director for Dynamic Communities, Hal will focus on engaging first-hand with the Dynamics user and partner communities to support individuals and organizations in their efforts to optimize how the Dynamics products impact business.  He’ll lead member research initiatives, oversee programming strategies to match the User Groups’ educational offerings with the needs of Dynamics users and partners, and will be an advocate for delivering community feedback to the Microsoft Dynamics teams.

“I am thrilled to be joining Dynamic Communities,” Hal said of his new role.  “I have always believed that a vibrant community of users and partners is essential to building great products and maximizing the value of those products for the community.  As an R&D leader, I fostered feedback and interaction with the community at every step of the process.  When I look back at the growth of the user groups, they have been essential to the success of Dynamics.  When I look forward, I believe the same will be true and I look forward to helping take it to the next level.”

 “On behalf of our members, we couldn’t be more excited to welcome Hal to the team,” said Andy Hafer, CEO for Dynamic Communities. “He brings an unsurpassed understanding of the Dynamics products and an even stronger passion to help and give back to the Dynamics community.  Our members can expect to interact with Hal in a number of ways, including face-to-face during sessions and in the hallways at our conferences, virtually during our webinars, through roundtable discussions, via our online communities, and more.  It’s clear, when talking to Hal, that he misses being able to simply listen to Dynamics users and partners and to help wherever he can to drive Dynamics innovation.”

Members of AXUG, CRMUG, GPUG, NAVUG, and DPC will have an opportunity to meet Hal in St. Louis this October, as he will take an active role in hosting the user and partner communities at Summit and The Partner Connections Event 2014.

Hal can be reached at hal.howard@dynamiccommunities.com.  You can also connect with him via the online communities for AXUG,CRMUG, GPUG, or NAVUG, and follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn.  

At the risk of offending the people I work most closely with on a day to day basis, I do have to admit that the part of my job that I most enjoy is talking to customers.  Only when I can get out on front of someone who is looking to rely on our products to run their business can I see first-hand how excited they are about what we can do together to help their business succeed in a complex market. 

Lately, a lot if not all of those conversations involve marketing.  Partly this is indicative of the times we live in—the role of marketer is mission critical given changes in how customers are buying.  But mostly this is because we are delivering a solution to the market that is frankly the only end-to-end solution out there.

What do I mean by end to end?  First, start with the marketer…with Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, marketers can turn their budgets and plans into campaigns executed across multiple channels that deliver highly qualified leads to sales.  Now, let’s look at the sales side of the house, we are giving your sales team incredible transparency into how the prospect was marketed to, what tactics were they targeted for, and as a result, they can see what their customer is interested in, what activities they participated in, how they have engaged with you, what whitepaper they have downloaded, what webinars they have attended – the examples are endless. Think about how important is it that your call center agent also has line of sight into all of your activities across marketing and sales so that if you have a problem, they know how to better service you.  But whereas visibility is one thing, intelligence is another.  By being able to track these processes across marketing, sales and service we’re helping customers develop the insights that tell them exactly how they can more effectively and efficiently work together to optimize the customer journey.

Let’s be clear, this isn't just giving your team the ability to see a marketing calendar, we give them the unprecedented ability to see what marketing campaigns are in flight, what the tactics for the campaign are, which of their accounts is targeted, even allowing them to help refine targeting.  Whereas our competitors seem to want to keep these business functions siloed, even giving them their own separate ‘clouds’, at Microsoft we recognize the need for marketers, salespeople and service agents to align their efforts.  Only by working synergistically together will your organization truly be able to deliver amazing and personalized experiences to your customers every time.  Is it time to get your act together?  Tell me what you think.

To read more about what is coming, download the Release Preview Guide.

To see what is available today, take a test drive.

Bob Stutz