Bringing Omnichannel to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Bridging the Gap between Customer Demand and Existing Technology
The Expanding Definition of Customer Engagement: The Customer Perspective In the blink of an eye, the world of customer care has changed. Dialing a toll-free number to connect to a live contact center agent is rarely anyone s first choice as consumers increasingly embrace digital alternatives. Reminiscent of the introductory sequence to the popular television show The Big Bang Theory, where the history of the world is shown in a 20 second sequence, customer care s progress from the simple phone call to today s omnichannel world has happened in less than a generation. The graphic above shows 2016 results from Dimension Data s Contact Centre Benchmarking Report, widely acknowledged as one of the most relevant, authoritative, and comprehensive customer engagement data points of its kind. Dimension Data has been tracking the progress of contact center technology through in-depth interviews since 1997. The table illustrates that in just one year, from 2015 to 2016, the percentage of telephone contacts handled by respondent contact centers was down from 65.7 to 57.7 percent. For years, pundits have predicted the end of the live agent, voice-driven contact center. It was initially predicted that voice would be replaced by email. And then by chat. And then by social media or mobile applications. And most recently by video, a la Amazon Mayday or the availability of American Express video customer care on the ipad. What instead has happened is that a combination of these digital media choices is replacing voice - countless combinations of channels for different types of consumers and interaction types. What has become increasingly clear in the past few years is that consumers not only use multiple digital channels, they typically use several of them to complete a single purchase or support interaction. Before the advent of the Internet, customer journeys were often linear, with very little channel hopping. Today 2016 McGee-Smith Analytics, LLC. All rights reserved Page 2
customers regularly move from web self-service, to chat, to phone, to email and back again in hopes of successfully completing their interaction all at a high cost to the business. The Escalating Challenge of Customer Care: The Provider Perspective Although much has been written about the habits of the digital consumer, or the millennial buyer, few organizations would claim to have the processes in place to meet their increasingly complex requirements. On the one hand, as mentioned in the 2016 Dimension Data Global Benchmarking Report, organizations indicate that they expect to offer an average of nine different customer services channels by 2017. But only 36 percent say that they can track a customer journey that spans multiple channels today, and only 17 percent can locate problem hot spots that impact customer experience. One of the problems that companies face is the speed with which change is occurring. Keeping up often means adding siloed solutions for a specific media channel, such as web chat, for example. While standalone or outsourced solutions may offer a short-term answer, they can create longer-term problems of inefficient routing, incomplete reporting and ultimately, a higher operating cost. Digital Transformation: Differing but Complementary Objectives of CMOs and CIOs In 2016, the converging dynamics of consumers demanding better services and companies recognizing the limitations of ad hoc, patchwork solutions, have resulted in the term digital transformation now elevating to the top of to-do list of both CIOs and CMOs worldwide. What companies have quickly discovered is that digital transformation will rarely be accomplished in a single project, and involves many separate goals and processes. CMOs expect that resources invested in digital transformation will allow them to understand the behavior of their customers better, personalize the customer experience and engage with customers to build lifelong relationships. The goals haven t changed in the past decade or so, but the tools required by CMOs to meet these goals have. Marketing automation, web personalization and customer lifetime journey management have taken on new meaning in the digital age. From a CIO perspective, modernizing IT infrastructure and improving operational agility typically top the list of objectives. That said, the ability to support product and service innovation with increased agility is an associated goal. The last few years have seen Uber disrupt the taxi and rental car industries, AirBnB take on the hotels, and alternatives like Netflix become the entertainment provider of choice for an escalating proportion of viewers. CIOs are under pressure to create an environment that allows product management to find ways to compete with emerging often digital competitors. Even as CIOs and CMOs align their objectives, it is with a new understanding that the digital transformation journey is never done. Once companies have committed, it is important to constantly measure progress and pivot as conditions require. Digital transformation is not a project; it is a mindset, a culture shift, a new way to do business. The Mounting Imperative to Connect Contact Center and CRM Traditionally, CIOs have selected and managed contact center infrastructure while CMOs have directed the deployment of customer relationship management systems. Beginning in the 1990s, the two types of applications began to be loosely integrated. In progressive companies those that could afford the typically million- dollar integration cost - a CRM record for a calling customer might be popped to a contact center s agent desktop. Over time, the CRM desktop became the hub for more and more contact 2016 McGee-Smith Analytics, LLC. All rights reserved Page 3
center agent activity. Instead of requiring agents to manage multiple applications, contact center functions - especially those related to making and taking voice calls - began to appear inside the CRM desktop. What has become increasingly apparent in just the past two or three years is that agents require easy access and control of multiple customer interactions from the CRM desktop. As contact centers have steadily added email, web chat, social media interaction management and text messaging to the agent task list, the complexity of understanding what and where the customer has interacted with the firm has exploded. Best practice dictates having all of these channels managed by the agent through the CRM agent desktop, where customer activity can be combined in meaningful ways with customer information. Microsoft Dynamics Becomes Dynamics 365 As one of the leading providers of customer relationship management, Microsoft has watched its customers face challenges moving beyond voice-only customer care to omnichannel support while attempting to more tightly integrate CRM insights into agents workflow. For Microsoft, with its broad portfolio of collaboration, CRM, ERP, vertical and business intelligence applications, a new vision for enterprise software was required to help organizations be successful with digital transformation. Microsoft Dynamics 365 is the company s next generation of intelligent business applications to enable organizations to grow, evolve and transform. The new 365 nomenclature is part of bringing the Dynamics brand closer to the Office 365 product portfolio. Dynamics 365 unifies CRM and ERP capabilities by delivering new productivity-driven applications that work seamlessly together to help manage specific business functions. The overarching goal is to enable users to engage customers, empower employees, optimize operations, and reinvent products and business models all on an adaptable cloud platform, Azure. Microsoft Dynamics and CaféX As seen in the graphic, Microsoft recognizes that third-party applications play a fundamental role in delivering on the Dynamics 365 vision. In October 2016, Microsoft revealed plans to enhance omnichannel functionality within its cloud CRM solution, Dynamics 365, with the help of a new partner and a recently developed solution, Live Assist for Microsoft Dynamics 365, powered by CaféX. Microsoft s vice president for Dynamics 365 research and development, Jujhar Singh, said Omnichannel is at the heart of any customer engagement strategy. CaféX has become the preferred omnichannel 2016 McGee-Smith Analytics, LLC. All rights reserved Page 4
solution provider for Microsoft Dynamics 365. The integration of CaféX and Microsoft Dynamics will, says Singh, allow escalation from chat to co-browse to voice and video - extremely differentiated functionality. Another differentiating aspect of Microsoft s partnership with CaféX is that the omnichannel capabilities will be provisioned side-by-side with Dynamics 365. CaféX is integrated into the Dynamics 365 single sign-on and fully integrated with its management portal. This extends to customers who can go to the website to request a free trial during enrollment, participants can choose CaféX Live Assist as part of any Dynamics 365 trial. Like Microsoft Dynamics 365, CaféX omnichannel capabilities are hosted in the Azure cloud. The combined solution embeds real-time customer interaction channels within the Dynamics 365 Unified Service Desk and web clients. The level of integration that has been accomplished is the result of months of co-development. In addition, the two teams have created a joint engineering roadmap. Immersive Chat The key initial feature being delivered by CaféX Live Assist is an immersive chat solution. Why the term immersive? Because web chat has been around almost as long as the Internet itself. But chat usage has grown significantly over time, especially with the widespread adoption of mobile devices. Chat technology has improved and more people have come to appreciate chat s convenience and functionality. J.D. Power reported in July 2016 that for mobile users the most common customer activity (other than researching on the company s website) was online chat, used by 44% of survey respondents. The use of chat far exceeded the use of other digital channels, e.g., email (26%), user forums (23%), and social media (7%). With chat and other types of messaging exploding in usage, companies choosing Live Assist will be able to deliver not just simple chat but an integrated chat/co-browse solution. Customer frustration with websites or mobile applications can have a profound negative impact on customer satisfaction, adoption of these digital channels, and the ability to profitably serve customers. To ensure customer success on web platforms, co-browsing software helps mitigate possible problems while also offering the agent opportunity for cross-sell or up-sell if warranted. Dynamics 365 plus CaféX Live Assist also offers context passing, single-sign-on and auto-provisioning within a single agent console. 2016 McGee-Smith Analytics, LLC. All rights reserved Page 5
Bridging the Past with the Future Microsoft s plan for Dynamics 365 includes a smooth migration for their current customers, who have deployed millions of licensed seats based on premises-based technology. The company will offer customers connectors if they want to use a hybrid of on-premises and cloud solutions and a migration path when they are ready to move to the cloud. Capabilities intrinsic to the CaféX platform will play an important role for contact centers using traditional contact center solutions today. Organizations with existing voice-only, premises-based contact center infrastructure based on the technology of market leader companies like Avaya, Cisco and Genesys will be able to quickly add cloud-based omnichannel capabilities using CaféX Live Assist for Microsoft Dynamics 365. This will not only allow voice and immersive chat interactions to be handled by a single agent interface, it will allow escalation from chat to voice when needed. About CaféX Many of the world s most sophisticated organizations choose CaféX to leverage advanced customer experience applications that can operate across multiple channels and mediums. Unlike some solutions that can provide only one option, premises-based or cloud, CaféX is able to support both deployment models. CaféX technology can also tightly integrate with contact center call control and routing applications, which, for example, could be from a leading vendor like Cisco, Avaya or similar technology provider. This interoperability makes omnichannel deployment a much simpler and more cost-efficient task. About the Author Sheila McGee-Smith, the founder and principal analyst at McGee-Smith Analytics, is a leading communications industry analyst and strategic consultant with a proven track record in new product development, competitive assessment, market research, and sales strategies for customer care solutions and services. Her insight helps enterprises and solution providers develop strategies to meet the escalating demands of today s consumer and business customers. She is the contact center track chair for Connect. Her views on the market can be found regularly on NoJitter.com and through her Twitter feed @mcgeesmith. 2016 McGee-Smith Analytics, LLC. All rights reserved Page 6