Personalised experiences are the new business reality

Choice and competition continue to intensify across every aspect of commerce, causing customers to become ever more discerning. Chris Stewart-Smith explores how organisations can optimise engagement and keep customers coming back. But with so much noise, how can a business excel?

The answer lies in the way customer data is harnessed. Combining information from transactional, behavioural and observational sources can provide a joined-up view of individual customers, allowing personalisation at scale. This focus on customer experience should be at the core of every organisation’s digital transformation ambitions.

Only then can it build meaningful relationships on a personal level.With the right insights, marketing, sales and service professionals can deliver exceptional one-on-one interactions, helping retain customers and build loyalty. It’s a process that’s often over-simplified and receives more than its fair share of lip service, but there are practical ways to cement customer relationships and achieve goals.

It begins with the system

Customer relationship management (CRM) has been around for a long time. It’s at the core of understanding customers’ wants and aspirations on an individual level. Without CRM systems, businesses fail. But CRM has evolved, and what used to be a game-changer could now be outmoded. The ability to track individual customer interactions is no longer enough.

Better connected, to deliver more

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights makes it easier for businesses to retain customers, build loyalty and gain momentum. Not only does it unify data to get a single view of customers and optimise engagement, it also makes use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to discover emerging trends. Quick-start machine learning templates are available to predict churn or the next best action. As a result, new insights are available instantly, so opportunities can be seized as they arise. Growing issues can also be understood and acted upon at an early stage, before they become critical.

Using the Microsoft Power Platform of Power Bi, Power Apps, and Flow, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights enables users to analyse, act and automate. Customer data can be set free with Microsoft Power BI to turn seemingly unrelated sources of data into visually immersive insights. Custom apps can be created with embedded customer insights using Microsoft PowerApps. Automated workflows can be triggered in response to customer actions using Microsoft Flow. And with out-of-box connectors it’s easy to adapt the solution to any business requirement.

It’s a system built on trusted foundations, and based on Microsoft expertise. Have you considered what Dynamics 365 Customer Insights can do for your customers?