First-class customer service throughout the entire life cycle

Customer orientation or customer service is still too strongly focused on the sales process. Marketing has ever better ways of addressing customers based on information and behavioral patterns, and salespeople have ever more data about the customer at their disposal to put together individual offers. However, real customer focus begins after the sale with support for implementation, optimal use of products, and handling customer inquiries and support.

«The customer at the center» is the core of the digitization strategy at redIT and that is why we had the entire customer lifecycle in focus from the very beginning. After the maturity analysis, it quickly became clear that the customer service system we were using (support tickets, service management…) no longer met our requirements. The main reasons were::

• The service processes were not consistently supported
• Communication with customers was not personalized enough
• The system was complex and therefore prone to errors
• Lacked a holistic view of customer interactions
• There were no meaningful analytics and dashboar

redIT already decided on the Dynamics 365 & Power platform as a strategic business application platform two years ago and therefore we started with the implementation of D365 Customer Service in January 2021. This was preceded by several cross-team requirements workshops in which the functionality of the new customer service system was developed. It was important that we did not limit ourselves to the core system (ticketing) right from the start, but focused on the entire customer service process, including on-site service deployment, end-to-end. The customer master data was already stored in the D365 system, so we could focus on the service processes and the communication/interaction with the customer, since all D365 applications access the same database (= Dataverse). This is an advantage not to be underestimated and has accelerated the implementation enormously. By using Power Automate (= cloud-based workflow services and low-code development), the redIT-specific service processes could be easily replicated, so that we had a first prototype up and running just three weeks after the implementation start. This allowed the core team to run through the processes on the actual system and we were able to apply agile project management with weekly sprints. The experience with the sprints was very good and allowed us to continuously manage and measure progress. After 8 weeks, we were able to start testing the new ticketing system and go live after another 3 weeks.

Below are the top 5 benefits of the new solution – customer service:

1. 360 degree customer view

With the new system, all employees have access to all available customer data. For example, each salesperson has an overview of all customer inquiries in the respective customer context and can help process inquiries more quickly. All applications are cloud-based and optimized for mobile use. This means that every employee can work independently of time and location. The classic «data silos» are thus avoided.

2. Integration with Outlook, Teams

Seamless integration with Outlook / Teams optimally supports collaboration between service staff and customers. Every communication and interaction is recorded in a timeline and can be tracked by all parties involved. Employees can also access D365 directly from Teams and can thus take full advantage of all the opportunities for collaboration in the project team.

3. SLA Management

D365 Customer Service offers extensive options for mapping and managing even complex service level agreements (SLAs). Through the close link to the current service contracts, every employee has an overview of the services provided to the customer. By easily customizing the underlying processes with Power Automate, an individual trigger and time management system can be created.

4. Converting requests into work orders

Requests can be easily converted into work orders for service staff, either manually or automatically. The D365 Field Service application offers a range of functions that comprehensively support the management of work orders. The various work steps are again recorded in a timeline, so that all employees and customers are informed about all activities at all times.

5. Comprehensive analyses and dashboards

D365 Customer Service not only offers work and process dashboards, but also enables comprehensive analyses to be made of the various requests. This helps the service team to identify request patterns and act proactively, for example by adding relevant articles to the knowledge base or informing customers about specific issues in advance.

The experience with the new customer service system based on D365 Customer Service has been very good. We have been able to reduce the turnaround time of service requests by 10% and the new system helps us to continuously expand our customer service offering.

Are you in the process of modernizing your customer service system? We would be happy to support you. Please contact us.