The newly released Dynamics CRM 2016 includes leaps-and-bounds improvements in the areas of intelligence and analytics, with enhanced integration with Azure, Office 365 and mobile, and better assistance from Cortana. An exciting area where things continue to improve is Customer Service. Here, the new version includes an Interactive Service Hub, with updated forms and dashboards.
This puts companies in a position to seriously considering managing their customer service operations within Dynamics CRM, moving away from bespoke solutions. This makes sense, as they are already maintaining their customer account data within CRM (this data often began as a lead or opportunity). So why move to another system to manage support tickets and service, if CRM is already the single point of truth for customer data, and if Microsoft continues to expand this area with more powerful functionality?
Um... one point that is holding back many organizations is the lack of advanced business processes. In the wish-list that caps his overall positive reaction to Dynamics CRM 2016, Chuck Schaeffer writes: "Microsoft CRM continues to lack of a business process management (BPM) tool that can automate even simple routing and approval processing."
Being able to create advanced business processes around customer service is especially crucial to delivering stellar customer service. Why? Because all customer interactions are essentially processes - step by step actions that take place in time, involve several parties, are governed by business rule logic, and must include alerts, SLAs and notifications. These are the core elements of business processes. Dynamics CRM does have some native process building functionality, but it does not match the capabilities included in a BPM (Business Process Management) suite.
Some companies have actively searched for a CRM customer process solution. One such company, South West Water, a leading UK utilities company, has found it in PNMsoft, a Microsoft Gold ISV. PNMsoft provides a process management development environment specifically tailored to create Dynamics CRM workflows. This is a visual environment with powerful IT and business user capabilities. PNMsoft is helping companies like South West Water create intelligent process-based solutions to meet their customer service challenges (read Case Study).
Here's what an advanced CRM workflow looks like using PNMsoft's solution:
Customer Service continues to be a challenge for nearly every organization. Combine the improvements seen in Dynamics CRM 2016 in this area, together with a BPM solution, and you may be on the right path towards transforming your customer experience.
For more information about Dynamics CRM Customer Service processes, see this article.