In today’s connected world, those companies capable of creating a unique experience for their customers and exceeding their expectations, are the ones that differentiate themselves and set the bar for their competitors to follow.
By David Steyn, business manager: customer engagement at Decision Inc
Getting insights from the data at hand has long been considered the proverbial secret sauce to accelerating digital transformation efforts and creating tailored solutions for both B2B and B2C customers. People want to be engaged in relevant ways on the channels they prefer.
There’s an implicit contract between the end user and the organisation – the end user provides the data through interactions and the organisation uses the data to tailor products to fit their needs.
Driving customer insights with Microsoft Dynamics Sales Module
Of course, this requires the business to use tools that can streamline their sales force and empower them with the insights necessary to turn leads into paying customers. This is where the likes of the Dynamics 365 Sales can provide an organisation with the means to manage its salesforce more effectively and get insights far beyond its customers’ buying habits.
But what constitutes a ‘good’ solution and how does a company know it’s getting value for money in its investment? Here are a few considerations of features to look for.
Unifying the customer data
It all begins with data. By unifying data, a company can gain a full understanding of its customers.
When combined with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, the organisation can curate a timeline of individual customer interactions, identify relevant behavioural signals in the buying process, and through automated predictive analytics, understand key factors influencing actions and KPIs, such as churn, customer lifetime value (CLTV), net promoter score (NPS), and customer sentiment.
Lead management
Once these insights come to light, sales teams can develop real-time personalised journeys that automate the best experience for each customer. Part of this entails orchestrating the experience to quickly advance the customer to the next step of the journey and accelerate the entire pipeline for advanced lead identification to continue the cycle.
Easily keep track of opportunities and accounts
A solution that is worth its weight in gold will also deliver the means for the organisation to track its sales opportunities and forecast the sales pipeline. In this way, the company will be able to see which opportunities are likely to close and which ones are at risk of being lost. This is essential for managing the sales pipeline and ensuring that as many deals as possible are closed.
Furthermore, accounts management becomes a key component in the sales process. This lets the business track customer accounts and contact information in an integrated environment. Having an accounts management feature is essential for keeping your customer data organised and accessible. With this in place, decision-makers can quickly find the information they need when they need it.
Enable world class customer service management
Finally, companies should consider sales solutions that can incorporate customer service management. This provides the means to track and manage customer service requests. With this in place, the business will be able to have a view of which customers have open service requests, view the status of each request, and provide updates to customers on the status of their service requests.
Ultimately, having an integrated sales solution that leverages existing data with sophisticated analytics to deliver invaluable insights from a central location is vital for a company to gain competitive advantage. It comes down to not only managing a sales force more effectively but also enhancing the customer experience and reducing churn.