Customer service: Optimizing customer support for your company
Customer loyalty through customer service
Customer loyalty through customer service
Customer loyalty is a key driver of business success—it can mean the difference between growth and stagnation. Effective customer service software with a strong focus on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) plays a vital role by helping businesses manage and strengthen customer relationships.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service at a glance
Dynamics 365 Customer Service is a customer data platform that helps your support team manage service requests and tickets while communicating with customers through multiple channels.
Tickets and requests can be efficiently and automatically assigned to the right person or team using unified routing.
The knowledge base serves as a central hub for instructions and FAQs. Version control and translation features ensure your content stays accurate and up to date.
You can also provide customers with a self-service portal, enabling them to resolve simple issues independently and track more complex cases.
Service conditions and service levels can be mapped using Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and permissions, giving your team a clear overview of ticket priorities at all times.
Overview of the advantages of CRM software in customer service
- Optimized management of contact information (contact management)
- Tracking customer interactions in a centralized database (sales correspondence accessible anytime)
- Efficient customer relationship management (CRM)
- Automated reminders for important appointments
- Sending follow-up emails
- Clear overview of support cases for the sales team
Well-managed customer service builds trust and strengthens loyalty. CRM tools play a key role in enhancing customer relationships. Dynamics 365 Customer Service, part of Microsoft’s Customer Engagement suite, provides the technology to make customer service efficient and effective.
What is Dynamics 365 Customer Service?
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service is a module designed to automate customer support processes. It delivers an intelligent, end-to-end solution that ensures consistent and connected support across all channels. The platform enhances case and knowledge management by enabling personalized service and providing a 360-degree view of each customer. Dashboards and reports offer clear insights into the performance of your customer support teams.
What are the benefits of Dynamics 365 Customer Service?
A high level of automation saves your support team valuable time that would otherwise be spent on administrative tasks. The software also helps your company build long-lasting customer relationships.
Key advantages of the customer service module within the CRM software include:
- Personalized interactions from sales teams directly via the CRM on the customer’s preferred channel
- Customer feedback analysis
- Optimized support through continuous integration of new insights
- Real-time adaptation to customer sentiment
- A 360-degree customer view within the CRM
- Modern self-service options for your customers
- Direct access to a centralized knowledge base
- Publishing knowledge and tips via community portals
- Seamless integration with other systems
- Support for digital assistants
What features does Dynamics 365 Customer Service offer?
Case management
Cases or inquiries are customer requests that your support team needs to handle. These can include questions, tickets, issues, or any other type of assistance required after a purchase. Case management helps you organize, prioritize, and monitor progress and workload. Dynamics 365 Customer Service documents the entire process—from initial incident capture through resolution to the final solution.
The platform includes several components to help your team manage cases efficiently:
- Business process flows ensure consistent data entry and standardized steps for every case.
- Routing rules automatically assign cases to the right person or team.
- Knowledge articles are suggested based on keywords, and similar support requests are displayed for quick reference.
- Queues act as containers for organizing and storing cases and activities awaiting responses. Cases can be grouped by topic, complexity, or other user-defined rules.
Service-Level-Agreements (SLAs) & permissions
Service-oriented companies often offer service contracts that define the level of support customers are entitled to, including response times and resolution deadlines. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in customer service specify these timeframes and track compliance. Displaying deadlines directly on customer issues and cases helps your organization meet expectations consistently.
With permissions, you can store agreements on the scope of support for individual customers directly in the system. This ensures you always have a clear overview of requirements and can act accordingly.
Omnichannel service
This feature enables communication with customers through their preferred channels, ensuring consistent and connected interactions across all touchpoints—such as phone, email, chat, text message, or social media. By leveraging omnichannel capabilities, you can deliver personalized, high-quality customer service and significantly enhance the overall customer experience.
Self-service portals and online communities
Today, many customers prefer to find answers on their own. Microsoft’s customer service solution provides exactly that—a platform where customers can independently create tickets, access a structured knowledge base with a powerful search function, and exchange information with other users or experts in online communities. This enables them to resolve issues quickly and efficiently without waiting for direct support.
Chats
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service offers two chat options. First, you can integrate chatbots to handle routine cases without involving human agents. Second, a live chat add-on enables your support team to communicate directly with customers in real time.
Clear dashboards and analysis options
Dashboards give users an instant overview of the key information needed for business decisions. Data can be quickly analyzed and shared with other Microsoft Dynamics support agents via the knowledge base, ensuring easy access to customer information and enabling effective, customer-focused support.
Configurable real-time dashboards display essential CRM metrics, such as KPIs (e.g., total cases, active, resolved, or escalated cases). You can also generate detailed reports for customer service managers, including the number of incoming cases broken down by channel, agent, or priority. These insights help identify trends, uncover new business opportunities, and provide valuable data on customer behavior for marketing and sales forecasting. Additionally, agents receive intelligent, AI-powered recommendations for next steps in the sales funnel or customer communication.
Comprehensive knowledge management
The knowledge base allows you to create and manage content from various sources, such as social media or service interactions. If a customer portal is set up, customers can directly access these articles and find solutions on their own. Detailed analytics help measure the effectiveness of individual articles and ensure they are continuously updated with relevant information.
Customer Voice
Customer Voice enables you to track, collect and analyze customer feedback in real time. This tool captures and configures feedback through surveys, helping you identify trends and take action to boost engagement and satisfaction throughout the customer journey.
With sentiment analysis and insights from customer service data, you gain a clearer understanding of market mood and can continuously improve service quality across your organization.
CRM integration into existing customer service processes
Integrating CRM into existing customer service processes is a key step toward improving customer satisfaction. By connecting email, chat, and social media within a CRM tool, you create a centralized database of customer information for your business. This significantly enhances communication efficiency across channels and enables employees to respond quickly and effectively to inquiries, delivering high-quality support for every issue.
This is what Dynamics 365 Customer Service looks like
Aproda as a Microsoft CRM partner for customer service
Long-term partnerships are the foundation of success. Benefit from our transparency, commitment, expertise, and focus on sustainable business relationships—values we uphold in collaboration with our trusted partners.
Knowledge leadership is central to our work. We invest in continuous training for our employees every year to ensure we deliver modern, future-oriented software and system solutions that make our customers successful.
To provide everything from a single source, we rely on strong, sustainable partnerships and work with leading providers such as Microsoft.
Award for Microsoft in ‘The Forrester Wave™’
In the first quarter of 2024, Microsoft was recognized as a leader in customer service solutions in the Forrester Wave™ report. Forrester evaluates and compares various providers of customer service solutions, and Microsoft achieved the highest scores in business intelligence, process management, and collaboration.
The report states: “Microsoft's vision goes beyond customer service and is based on three principles: engagement must be personalized using AI, customer service must be highly collaborative, and results must lead to improvements. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service realizes this vision.”
This recognition underscores Microsoft’s commitment to integrating modern, AI-powered capabilities into Dynamics 365 Customer Service to enhance customer experiences and improve the efficiency of service organizations.
License costs for Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise
85.10
in CHF | per user/month
-
Advanced AI-powered customer service resources for agents and self-service for complex scenarios.
- Advanced AI-powered customer service resources for agents and self-service for complex scenarios.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional
44.80
in CHF | per user/month
-
Optimized case management resources for agents and self-service in simpler scenarios
- Optimized case management resources for agents and self-service in simpler scenarios
These prices apply to annual licenses with yearly billing.
Frequently asked questions about Customer Service CRM
What can Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service do?
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service helps businesses streamline support processes, boost team productivity, and strengthen customer loyalty.
In which use cases is it helpful?
The software can be applied in a wide range of scenarios, including B2B and B2C customer service, e-commerce, patient support in healthcare, insurance claims management, G2C (government-to-citizen) services, call centers, case and incident management, and various help desks such as IT, facilities, or HR.
Does the tool work with or without AI?
AI-powered recommendations can be added as advanced features, providing intelligent guidance for profitable customer communication within your business.
What is the difference between Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Customer Service?
Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM includes a wide range of business management functions, such as sales, marketing (customer insights), services, and project management.
Customer Service is a component of Dynamics CRM focused on customer support, with the primary goal of optimizing interactions and improving the overall customer experience.
Is Dynamics 365 Customer Service available in the cloud?
Yes, Dynamics 365 Customer Service is a cloud-based solution.
Is there a trial version of Dynamics 365 Customer Service?
Yes, there is a free 30-day trial version. If you are interested, please contact us. We will be happy to assist you.
What about data protection in Dynamics 365 Customer Service?
Data protection is fully ensured, as the product is GDPR-compliant. Customers can use a portal to independently update their data, delete information, or restrict further processing, among other options.
Riccardo Marciello | Solution Sales Specialist
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