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Raising the CRM bar: Two different approaches

Chris Gonsalves says this week's Microsoft and Shoretel moves in the space show promise

Customer relationship management (CRM) has come a long way from its roots as a basic tracker of sales and support calls, and efforts to evolve it into a multifaceted platform that handles every customer contact takes the technology in interesting directions.

Two CRM players made moves this week with the rollout of platform functionality and a clever CRM/unified communications crossover that takes visibility of sales and marketing intelligence to the next level.

First up, the folks in Redmond unveiled a new set of capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013. Due next quarter, the improvements are focused on marketing campaign management, customer care and social listening, and aim to help organisations improve engagement, match buyers with products and services, and nurture ongoing customer relationships.

The vendor is adding its Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, the automation technology formerly known as MarketingPilot, into Dynamics CRM with features such as a visual campaign designer, updated lead management and scoring capabilities, scalable email marketing tools and improved marketing analytics. The capabilities will be offered in 35 markets and 10 languages, Microsoft staffers say.

On the customer care front, Microsoft is plumping up Dynamics CRM 2013 with a new unified service desk application that automates repetitive tasks and lets call centre agents handle multiple interactions at once.

For those looking to personalise and improve the customer experience, Dynamics CRM enables users to deploy customer service capabilities with a shared knowledge base in a variety of formats including self-service support portals, Facebook, Twitter, web chat and video capabilities.

And because social has become such a major part of the customer experience, Microsoft has added what it calls Microsoft Social Listening, which lets organisations attempt to measure sentiment across social channels and analyse and act on market intelligence from conversations on social media.

With Social Listening, users can track product, brand, competitor and campaigns in real time. Microsoft Social Listening will be offered as part of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online professional licences at no additional charge; on-premise customers can get Microsoft Social Listening for an incremental cost, the company says.

"Businesses want solutions that give them market insights and the ability to deliver amazing customer experiences," said Bob Stutz, corporate vice president for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

"The new Microsoft Dynamics CRM update democratises social listening, adds new marketing capabilities for more impact and enables businesses to deliver outstanding customer service. With this new release, we are essentially changing the CRM game."

Also taking a shot at changing the CRM game are the telephony specialists at ShoreTel, who've introduced a clever mashup of their unified communications offering that's tightly integrated with CRM market leader Salesforce.com.

The applications are available in two flavours, dubbed ShoreTel for Salesforce for on-prem IP-PBX systems and ShoreTel Sky for Salesforce for cloud telephony implementations. The goal of tying the systems together is to give organisations a 360-degree view of sales, support and marketing customer interactions, most of which begin - and end - with a phone call.

The visibility gained by mating ShoreTel's UC and Salesforce CRM should help improve collaboration among sales, support and marketing teams with a commensurate boost in customer satisfaction and business outcomes.

"Finally, phone data is aligned with business data in the CRM system," said David Petts, senior vice president of worldwide sales at ShoreTel.

"Automatic logging of all sales activity, regardless of a sales person's location or device, together with prompts for agents to schedule follow-up actions can lead to closing deals faster and higher overall sales team productivity. For example, a road warrior using a mobile phone with ShoreTel Mobility software will still have the activity logged."

In the interest of resolving customer support issues quickly, the ShoreTel-Salesforce integration provides a comprehensive history and recordings of previous interactions. That obviates the need for customers to repeat their complaints as they are transferred from department to department.

That same functionality also allows organisations to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns by tracking all customer touch-points during the buying cycle.

"The ShoreTel integration to our CRM system furthers our goal of creating a 360-degree view of the customer," said ShoreTel client Joseph P Larizza, chief administrative officer at Fieldpoint Private Bank and Trust in Connecticut, USA.

"It's very powerful to have call data married with business data. It also enhances our employees' ability to stay connected with the information they need when they are working remotely."

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