Dynamics 365 Customer Service Case Management – A Ticketing Application too!

Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Dynamics 365 Customer Service is used by Organizations for a variety of reasons –

  • Tracking Completion of Task Requests
  • Recording and resolving Complaints
  • Managing and Monitoring Service issues

While some of these reasons may be simple to work on and complete, others may be long-drawn, requiring multiple people to work on it and have it pass through various stages before closure.

Defining Tickets and Cases

While we usually interchange the words “Cases” and “Tickets” when referring to the above activities, Industry Standards have separate definitions for both.

Tickets” are simple with fewer statuses’, shorter gestation, faster turnaround, and simple closure activities when compared to “Cases”. Case components like Routing queues, Service Level Agreements, Entitlements [like Contractual scope] are not required on Tickets

A good example is a simple Internal Request raised by a peer for access to a server/ an application which can be termed as a “Ticket” versus a Service Request where a System error or Application error has been reported.

The former would be a simple Task to action and close, however, the latter may need to go through the initial investigation, escalation, Remote session, reporting, Resolution, review, Closure – a much longer lifecycle.

Can Users be trained to understand the difference between Tickets and Cases?

Usually, all complaints, requests, and tasks come through the same channel[s]. User understanding may differ from the Service Team’s activities. The user may be able to define the Issue, Product, but the Service team can define its Complexity, Routing, Team to work on it, etc.

This is the definition that segregates Tickets from Cases. So, Tickets and Cases cannot be segregated before they reach the Service team/ the customer service application.

The Dilemma

  • Can Dynamics 365 Customer Service which has all the tools to handle cases not be used as a Ticketing system too? Can it not cater to both, allowing simple cases to be closed simplistically without a lot of ado and ensure that complex ones need to have all processes of a case adhered to.
  • Will the application Need Customization?

The solution

Dynamics 365 Customer Service can be set up to jointly serve as a Case Management and a Ticket management system

Configuring the system correctly – simple automation and intelligent configurations can tone down the complex processes into extremely simple ones. The Onus of defining these criteria of when should tracking be done and when not required, can be removed from the Agent and added into the application automation

  • Step 1 – Implement the full Case Management solution
  • Step 2 – Create a lite Ticketing version

Case Management – full Customer Service Implementation

A typical Dynamics 365 Customer Service engagement leverages the core and ancillary components of the product to create an Omnichannel and seamless experience for Case Management

Implementations would go through below processes –

  • Configuring Case forms
  • Automating Case creation rules
  • Queue assignment automation
  • Entitlements set up
  • Configuring Service Level agreements and Timers
  • Managing Workdays, Work Hours and Holidays
  • Fine-tuning Dashboards and Reports
  • Training on Knowledgebase
  • Configuring and Branding the Customer Service Portal and processes
  • Setting up and training on Portal Chatbots

Ticket Management version – The “Lite” Solution

Pointers to create the “Lite” Ticketing system using Dynamics 365 Customer Service. The rule of thumb – remove all that is not needed and facilitate and automate any process to run in the background and ensure that tickets are closed faster

  • Identify sources of “simple” tickets.
  • Define Support teams to be able to handle these requests
  • Create queues to route tickets to these relevant teams
  • Create a shared support mailbox
  • Use an addon like “Email to Case” to exclude domains so that junk emails don’t create unnecessary cases
  • Set up automated emails to inform/ update internal Support staff and External customers
  • Enable Support staff with some standard auto texts and Knowledgebase articles to add on emails.
  • Create “lite” case forms for tickets
  • Remove overheads of entitlements and SLAs
  • Reduce status navigation
  • Facilitate case closures triggered as a background process, rather than making it data-centric detailed process
  • Retain and share value of Knowledge Base, Portal, and Chat Bots

Keep an eye out for exceptions and tweak.

You now have your 2in1- Case and Ticket management application, ready!

Final words – Dynamics 365 Customer Service is an application that can be configured to meet varying needs across the Organization– the keyword being ‘configuration’, not ‘customization’! It can work for simple and complex scenarios. It can be used across SMB and Enterprise Organizations!

Want to know how to empower your customer relationship by offering top-class service?

Install Google Analytics on your Dynamics 365 Portal in 3 Simple Steps!

Once your Dynamics 365 Portal is set up and Partners and Clients have been invited to collaborate, the next step is to review usage and understand what interests your invitees. 

The most simple and effective way to put this in place is via Google Analytics.

Prerequisites: 

  1. You have updated the portal information on Google Analytics and have your Tracking code snippet from Analytics ➤ Settings ➤ Admin Panel ➤ Tracking Info ➤ Tracking code.

  1. You have the required permissions on Dynamics to administer the Portal  

Setting it up: 

  1. From your UCI interface, navigate from the app selector to “Dynamics 365 Portals” ➤ Administration (Tab) Enable Traffic Analysis 
  2. Paste the code snippet copied (in the prerequisites) from Google Analytics. Save 
  3. Clear your Portal cache and you are set. You have implemented Google Analytics! 

(Patience! The first data trickle may take 20 to 24 hours)

Enhancements: 

Build out a quick Power BI Analytics dashboard on Dynamics! 

Ref. How to create and set up your Google Analytics account on this link 

Want to know how our Dynamics 365 Portal have helped create amazing customer experiences?

Setting up a Simple Case Management System on Dynamics 365

The article assumes that you are a Dynamics consultant and does not try to technically guide you, but guides you so that you can quickly implement without missing key components 

There are 3 main areas to focus on when setting up Case Management on Dynamics 365.

 1. Case Settings 

  • Case creation 
  • Parent- Child Cases 
  • Queues and Routing 

 2. Contract/ Service terms 

 3. Knowledge Management 

Case Settings 

Two notable components of this section are Queues and Teams:

  • Teams (not linked to MS Teams) are groups with a common skill or belonging to specific departments, etc.  responsible for certain tasks 
  • Queues are support workloads that can be segregated by criteria. E.g. Priority and normal queues, premium customer queues‘specific product’ queuesBasic support queue, etc. 

Once a case is logged, queues help segregate them and assign it to certain teams. Agents can pick up cases from the queues to which they are assigned. 

 Case creation 

SourceWhile Dynamics supports the below sources for automatic case creation EmailSocial activityTaskPhone callAppointmentService activityCustom activity, apart from Manual case creation and creation from email, a prerequisite for other sources would be that they need to be Integrated.

Subject: this can be a multilevel tree view but- this is different – it can only be added from Service Settings. 

Conditions for case creationWhen an email is received, some configurations/ scenarios to handle.  

  1. Create records for emails from unknown senders. 
  2. Create a case if a valid entitlement exists for the customer 
  3. Create cases for activities associated with a resolved case 
  4. Send automatic email response to a customer on record creation 

Parent-Child Cases 

They are used to track multiple issues for a customer or track the same issue that’s affecting multiple customers or where work needs to be done by various departments for closure. While each case has its own details, a child’s case cannot have another child. The closure on such cases needs to be configured.

Options:  

  1. Close all child cases when the parent case is closed 
  2. Don’t allow parent case closure until all child cases are closed 
  3. Allow parent and child to be independently closed 

Queues and Routing 

At the very base, there are 2 kinds of queues – Public and PrivatePrivate queues are specific user queues and the Public queues are those which are accessible across Organization teams.

Queues are used to have central storage of work and can be classified by:

  1. Different products or services 
  2. Different subscription levels (regular, premium customers) 
  3. Various activity categories 
  4. Different geography 

Routing: Cases and activities can be set up to be automatically routed to Queues or be manually added to them. Rules for automatic routing can be set up and cases regrouped under queues. Routing rules can be used to even ensure that spam and unsolicited emails to a mailbox don’t create cases.  Agents or Teams can be given access or set up that everyone in the Organization can access them. 

Contract/ Service Terms 

A few important concerns which most Organizations have:

  • Are cases of priority customers or on Premium support being handled as such 
  • Are agents able to identify and pick up critical cases from the general cases 
  • Are Service KPIs being adhered to and cases being resolved timely 

To ensure that the above concerns are assuaged, this section is critical and the key to ensuring that customers get the right value for their investment and Organizationsactual customer delight. 

Service Level Agreement (SLA) 

SLAs are used to measure KPIs of the Service agreement with the customerSLAs are associated with entitlements and the latter to cases. While Standard SLAs track minutes to failure, Enhanced SLAs set up, lets you Pause SLA time when the case is on “Hold” and Initiate Action (On SuccessReminder for upcoming breach, and Service Level breaches). Enhanced SLAs can be set up based on Geographies from where the case is raised, Org. working hours, and adding multiple conditions for a KPI to apply. 

Entitlements 

Entitlements are in layman terms, “contracts” governing support engagements. They are translated from the signed Work Orders and used to track the kind of supportcustomers are eligible for. Key configurations on entitlements:

  1. Support terms – number of cases or hours 
  2. (if) support per Product or Service type purchased 
  3. Eligibility per channel of engagement -phone, email, etc. 
  4. Service Level applicable 
  5. Customer Contacts eligible 
  6. Contract Duration 

A customer can have multiple entitlements and each entitlement can reference multiple casesEntitlements can be made mandatory on Cases, to prevent any cases being handled out of the contract. 

Knowledge Management 

Knowledge Base 

Dynamics Customer Service has a native Knowledge Base Creation, Management, and Publishing mechanism.  

review mechanism to approve and publish articles is available where a certain role can create, and another approveKnowledge articles can be classified under categories and can be defined as Internal or External.  

If using the Dynamics 365 or PowerApps Portal for customer service, KBs marked as Internal, will not be displayed there. Internal KBs can only be viewed within Dynamics. 

Cases and KBs are closely linkedusers can search through existing KBs while on case record and select a KB as the solution for case resolution.  

The next steps after setting up Case management on Dynamics would be to:

  1. Expose the application to customers using the Portal 
  2. Set up ‘chatbots on the portal for an omnichannel experience. 

Want to know how our Self Service Portals have helped create amazing customer experiences?

Create PDF documents from Dynamics 365

Generate PDF Documents from Dynamics 365

Generation of PDF documents from Dynamics 365 is required at many steps within Dynamics 365 processes – ideally to keep a record of a state of a record or to share with users – internal/ external.

Some common ways to generate documents was via Document templates, SSRS reports and Mail merge [ soon to be deprecated]

SSRS Report generator: Within the ambit of Dynamics, this is the only tool that allows the generation of documents in multiple formats. Though involving multiple clicks from the end-user, it gets the required output.

However, even if a basic document is needed to be generated via SSRS, the task of building, correcting, and deploying an SSRS report using data from dynamics is not a task for the Business user. Requests always needed to be routed via the development team and many a time takes up multiple iterations to get a perfect document out.

The bottom-line: While popular, SSRS is a Report generator tool and is an overkill if used for document generation

Document templates: This continues to be the most popular mode of document generation on Dynamics. Basic templates can be quickly created, and a single click can publish the data and download the file. While one issue of “no document generator” was resolved, another problem was identified.

Using templates, the downloaded file format is only available as a Word file – a format good for editing, but not for sharing. The user still needed to use a pdf converter offline and then share or save a non-editable copy

One of the most sought-after features on User Voice was the request for a PDF document generator from within the application

While no timeline was set for this release on the app, various ISV’s offered their own custom solutions, which could output documents in different formats.

So, on one side was the OOB solutions which involved multiple steps from the users end to generate the document, and on the other were the  3rd party add-ons which though involved investment could do the same job in a couple of clicks.

PDF generation with 9.x

Finally, with the major 9.x release and the move to the app model, Microsoft released the PDF generation feature on the Sales app [but only on the Quote record for now!]

While it’s the document templates that are selectable for output as pdf, the navigation has been made easier.

Rather than navigating to the template and then having a button for pdf output, Microsoft has separated the Word Template buttons and the PDF buttons

2 new PDF buttons (‘Create PDF’ & ‘Email as PDF’) available on the Ribbon directly. Clicking on the dropdown lists down all Word Templates published to be available on the entity.

Create & Email PDF

These buttons do exactly what they say.

Create PDF: Automatically creates a PDF document for the selected Document Template and opens it up within the browser on the screen.
Email as PDF: Opens up a draft Email record with From, To, Subject & Regarding fields auto-populated, and the PDF document attached.

Users can manually make the necessary changes to the Email and send it.

Steps to enable the PDF features

The feature while currently available only for UCI is disabled by default
To enable PDF generation on the  Quote entity, browse to ‘App Settings’ area within the ‘Sales Hub’
Within this area, under ‘Sales Administration’, you should find the ‘PDF Generation’ setting.
Set it to ‘Enabled’

Note: In some CRM instances the location may slightly differ based on the sitemap customizations.

Enable PDF Feature

While at the moment, the PDF generation feature seems to be limited only for the Quote entity, we can be sure to see this on the other entities soon!

The Future of Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation

Planner, Project Service Automation, Projects, Finance, and Operations – the Final Vision

The 2019 release wave 2 investments have been focused on providing modular offerings where capabilities across Microsoft Project, Project Service Automation, and Finance and Operations service industries are to complement each other in a seamless fashion when combined and provide a simple go-to-market story that is easily consumable.

The service industries module in Finance and Operations is especially strong in project accounting, with revenue recognition and customer-facing invoicing that leverage date-effective exchange rates and a rich sales tax.

At some point in 2020/21 support for PSA, 3.x clients will get withdrawn and clients will have to transition to Project Online on CDS and Sales Extensions for Project.

For individuals and teams working together on tasks, the Planner will last as the beginning point. The Planner is not a component of the new Project service but the Planner will be added into the new Project service. The Planner Plans will also be present in Project Home, Roadmap, and for reporting across all work.

Work in Progress

In preparation of this vision, changes have been happening across the 3 main applications – Projects, Project Service and Finance and Operations

Users will be able to have access across the 3 applications and based on the Source of Information, be able to work on it, or read information updated from other apps.

Impact on Dynamics 365 Project Service and the Upcoming PSA features

In Q1 2020, MS will replace PSA’s Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), Gantt, and task scheduling capabilities by leveraging these from the new Project service experience.

Once the new integrated experience is available, there is an announcement expected which will define a new way of acquiring the capabilities encapsulated in the current PSA offering.

The PSA subscription will take place by a mixture of Project Online subscriptions and a Dynamics 365 subscription.

Upcoming Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation (PSA) features

Extending the new Project Service and Dynamics Sales Extensions for Project with the Project Financials capabilities in Dynamics 365 Finance will provide a comprehensive offering for project-based organizations.

This initiative will center around combining the existing capabilities in Project Service Automation and Dynamics 365 Finance to complete the business processes for projects.

  • Ability to set up split-billing for project contracts
  • Ability to set up not-to-exceed limits for project contracts and quotes and enforce them during invoicing
  • Ability to set up billing and charge ability options for work breakdown structure (WBS) tasks
  • Support for retainers on project contracts
  • Point-of-origin-based project operations

project based services

Dynamics Sales Extension for Projects

The 2019 release wave 2 will construct on the new project service and will bring the Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation ability with Microsoft Project in a single experience.

This will incorporate abilities such as bookings, sales, pricing, costing, time and expense capture, and approvals and project actuals. These abilities will be packaged as a solution representing Dynamics Sales Extension for Projects.

Importing Multi-Select Picklist Data in Dynamics 365

Multi-select picklist data was one of the most requested features in the Dynamics community and was introduced in Dynamics 365 from ver. 9.0

The issue

Although introduced, importing multi-select picklist data can be a problem using the CRM Import Tool. Below is the sample CSV file with a multi-select column named ‘Hobbies’.

Multi-Select Picklist data

Although it as 2 distinct values in the ‘Hobbies’ column (data in the multi-select field is available in the field separated by a semicolon), the CRM Import Tool does not consider the same. Refer screenshot below.

map fields dynamics 365

Importing the above will result in CRM automatically creating a new option set value called ‘Running; Swimming’ which is not the intended purpose.

The good news

The CRM Import Tool supports both CREATE and UPDATE of records. Although the tool does not support multi-select picklist data during record creation, it does support multi-select picklist data during the update of records.

Workaround steps

  • On the CSV file which you plan to import (for record creation) add a new column (e.g.: Unique Id) and populate it with a sequential number value.unique id dynamics 365

 

 

  • Create a similar field in CRM (datatype: whole number) on the entity.
    While mapping the columns during Data Import ensure the map the ‘Unique ID’ column with the newly created field.
    Do the map of the Multi-select field. (We will be handling this after the import)
  • Now proceed with the Import. Once successfully importedyou should have all the records created in CRM with the ‘Unique ID’ field.
  • Include the ‘Unique ID’ field and the Multi-select field in a new view and sort it based on the ‘Unique ID’. Now export the view to Excel as a ‘Static worksheet’.
  • You now have 2 files:
    • Original import file
    • Exported data file from CRM
  • Ensure that the data in both files have been sorted by the Unique ID field. Carefully copy the multi-select column data from the original file and paste it over the multi-select column on the file exported from CRM. (Do not overwrite the header column)
  • Simply import back the updated file using the CRM Import Tool. CRM will identify it as an updated job and update back all the records in CRM with the multi-select values.

Alternatively, you could even use the ‘Open in Excel Online’ feature to do the same.

Limitations of Multi Select pick Lists

  1. The default value for a multi-select picklist cannot be set from within Customizations; however, you could use a custom code approach to set a default value.
  2. You could define any number of options for a multi-select picklist, however, only a maximum 150 options can be selected for a multi-select picklist field
  3. Although a multi-select picklist is available as a ‘Trigger’ for workflows, it cannot be used within a ‘Check Condition’ on a Step.
  4. Bulk-Edit does not support multi-select picklist fields.
  5. If you plan to use the CRM SDK to create/update multi-select picklist values, ensure that you are using the ver. 9 or above of the SDK assemblies.

More details on how to interact with multi-select picklist via CRM SDK here

By partnering with us, we will help you leverage the advanced functionalities of Dynamics 365 to empower your business and improve business efficiency.

 

Microsoft PSA License Changes

Dynamics PSA has seen an enormous adoption and development in the past 2-3 years when it was launched. With some major releases integrating the app with the CDN services and releasing impressive UI changes, PSA has hit some high points with an adoption 

While PSA as a stand-alone SKU, provides an end-to-end project management solution, when used as a part of the Customer Engagement plan, becomes the critical Delivery link between Sales and Invoicing. 

The Customer engagement Plan comprises of Project Service, Field Service, Customer Service, and Sales – it’s a suite of apps.  

Today, using just the Customer Engagement Plan license, an organization can work the entire length of the sales cycle through to invoice generation. There are a smooth collaboration and handover between the sales team, the project team, and Accounts within PSA.

This license plan may see another change soon.

Microsoft has finally made an announcement – albeit, not a detailed one, on how it is planning to “restructure” the dynamics PSA License – putting an end to at least some strong rumors floating around the web that Microsoft plans to remove Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation from the business applications portfolio and license it differently.

PSA is not going away but Microsoft is about to decouple the whole Planner and Task scheduling functionality from PSA and move it directly to the new Project Service

In Q1 2020, we will replace PSA’s Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), Gantt, and task scheduling capabilities by leveraging these from the new Project service experience. This will provide a truly differentiated and world-class experience, bringing the best of Microsoft Project and PSA capabilities together into a seamless offering

While we will have to wait until Microsoft reveals some more, I feel, that the Project Manager, managing Tasks and schedules, will be the one most adversely affected. This seamless process of Quote to Invoice will now have the key Project management piece of tasks and schedule removed. 

Soon, there will not be any project scheduling experience in Dynamics part of the offering on the product, that experience will entirely come from the Project Online license.

  • While Microsoft has promised that the combined SKU of Project Online + Dynamics will be priced comparably to the current full PSA license we will have to wait for another quarter before we have clarity on these.
     
  • Apart from the Analytics and Integration with Dynamics 365 apps, Approving of Time and Expenses and Task and Resource Scheduling were the 2 main actionable sections in PSA.  If that is now an opt-in and priced higher, customers would lose the core benefit of the app. So while MS may restructure the background processes and replace the existing ones with the mature Project services, they will most likely price it the same, so that existing and Potential PSA users don’t have to re-strategize their application bundles
  • The decoupled licenses, if priced higher, may benefit those Organizations who have not been using the complex Schedule Board and the nascent task scheduling. Now they would pay less and only pay for what they use.
  • The Announcement does not clearly mention if there will be some functional and transitional changes for existing PSA users from an application perspective. It may be a hurdle to cross for Partners and customers if there is one.
     
  • Project managers managing Large projects probably did retain their Project Online License alongside PSA and integrated it in some ways with it. They should continue to use Projects. There seems to be deeper integration with Dynamics coming our way in the upcoming releases.

Reference: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/bdm/2019/05/22/the-future-of-dynamics-365-for-project-service-automation-psa/ 

Steps to enable Multi-Language for Portal

1) Enable the required language on the Dynamics CRM instance

The user would need to have ‘System Customizer’ OR ‘System Administrator’ role to perform the action below

Go to Settings -> Administration -> Languages

Select the desired language to be installed and hit the ‘Apply’ button

In the screenshot below ‘Spanish’ language has been enabled.

Note: This action can take time depending on the number of languages selected and is ideally recommended to be performed during non-peak hours.Lag-setting

2) Within your Dynamics CRM instance go to Portals -> Websites and open the required website record which needs to be enabled for multi-language.

3) Click on the ‘+’ button next to the ‘Supported Languages’ sub-grid to add a new ‘Website Language’ record.

2

4) On the ‘Website Language’ form set the below fields and save the record.

Portal Language: Newly added language in #1 above

Publishing State: Published

3

Note: This action would automatically generate new records (related to newly provisioned language)  for all the language enabled OOB Portal records, however, it won’t have the translated values. The translation would need to be done manually.

E.g.: There will now be 2 records for each ‘content snippet’ record. Open these records (related to the newly provisioned language)  and update the values with the translated text. Do the same for all the other required entities.

4

5) The language menu should now be available on the Portal. Changing the language on the Portal would automatically refresh the portal with the translated values.

5

Microsoft CSP Pain Points Lead Partner To Develop Partner-Facing Solution

Recent press coverage and article from Scott Bekker at Redmond channel partner details a conversation with Ismail Nalwala and the value of Work 365 as a solution for CSP partners. Whether you are direct or indirect Work 365 can help partners run an efficient cloud business as described by Rosalyn Arntzen from Amaxra.

Being Customer Zero On Dynamics 365 – A Microsoft Partners Perspective

Digital Transformation and Customer Experience are two areas that are on top of mind for executives and CIOs everywhere. Dynamics 365 is one of those applications that is at the center of Digital Transformation for Microsoft and its partners. Being a Microsoft partner is not an exclusive club. It’s a challenging marketplace with tight margins and innovation happening rapidly both at Microsoft and with partners. However, there are some perks of being a partner like receiving the Internal Use Rights (IURs) to some of the best technology products like Office 365 and Dynamics 365. The idea is that Partners need to be customer zero, use the products to be able to sell the products. Dynamics 365 formerly Dynamics CRM or CRM online, is one of those products which can be used to run your entire business! As we released Work 365 for Partners I was recounting our journey– which involved us trying to make the most use of the application to keep us relevant and stay ahead. In reflecting back, we were Digitally Transforming while attempting to deliver great Customer Experience.

As a Microsoft Partner, we had access to early versions of Dynamics CRM. Today we are using Dynamics CRM in every function of our business but it wasn’t always like that. I wanted to share in this article our own journey to see if I can relate this back to other partners who are thinking of where to start or get feedback from those that are ahead of us on what we could be doing.

We started with the Sales module to have a contact management system in place in late 2010. We went from Contacts to Opportunity Tracking and then onward with implementing one thing after the other and eventually getting the whole company to use the system from Sales, Service, Delivery to Accounting. As a Dynamics app developer, we needed a way to deliver and manage Work 365 licenses. The manual license delivery and trial processes were time-consuming and error-prone. Once we built this license delivery mechanism in Dynamics CRM, our system was no longer just a data repository but more of a provisioning and business critical application. The graphic below depicts the different functional pieces we implemented over the years to digitize our business.

Work-365-csp-platform

After we implemented a piece of functionality we would then continue with the rounds of

  • Tweaking and adding fields and forms
  • Setting up notifications and workflow automation
  • Fixing and managing permissions

The most important thing for us was the more functional areas we added the more user adoption we had and the greater the ROI. We started to see the complete 360Degree of our customers and provide better customer experiences with every new service and functional line. We integrated 3rd Party Partner applications like ClickDimensions for marketing Automation, Xperido for document generation, DocuSign for signature and contract management. And every year we had to work with the inevitable upgrade cycles with new feature and compatibility.

Our approach to Digital Transformation was not to invent a Digital strategy but to digitize our current strategy. As a Microsoft CSP, we needed a way to keep up with the growth, provide great service, differentiate ourselves and keep our costs low. We used the Netflix model which I will discuss specifics in a separate article. Our strategy was:

  1. Create differentiated products and services
  2. Streamline our service offering and our systems to manage the cost
  3. Provide multiple service channels to customers including self-service

To that effect, we leveraged our experience of developing apps for Dynamics, e-commerce and Dynamics 365 configuration to create Work 365 to manage our CSP and customer-facing services.

Back to the Beginning

Our biggest learning along with our Digital transformation journey as a Microsoft CSP partner:

CRM implementations are never done and you must work at it endlessly to improve and fine-tune the processes.

Leverage the IURs and create application density to realize the investment. Application density happens by implementing connected processes in one system where users across different functions have efficiency gains from access to data, reduced training costs and process automation.

Don’t worry about developing a digital strategy- but more importantly digitize your current strategy. Be the customer zero in using the Cloud services and products so that you can train the teams and serve it up to your own customers.

Please share your thoughts about how you use your application IURs, tackle Digital transformation and provide exceptional customer experience.

About the author
Ismail Nalwala
CEO

Click on the link to view the original post – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/being-customer-zero-dynamics-365-microsoft-partners-ismail-nalwala/