The Next Levels of Digital Transformation are Customer-Centric

Now more than ever, seamless digital customer journeys are critical for modern businesses looking to grow revenues. Leveraging the power of different technologies is key to creating the level of experiences today’s consumers are demanding.

Most modern businesses leverage marketing automation platforms such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 to engage with their customers at scale. In addition to CRM and data analytics functionalities, Dynamics 365 makes it easy to orchestrate sales and marketing activities by combining ERP capabilities with CRM.

Advancing the automation capabilities even further, marketers are looking to leverage cloud communications APIs to reach customers where they are. As messaging becomes an integral part of how people interact with their friends and family, consumers expect the same level of convenience and speed when communicating with businesses.

According to Sentient Decision Science research, customers use messaging throughout the buying journey to:

• Make a general inquiry (84%) and ask about a specific product or service (81%) in the pre-purchase phase
• Make a purchase (74%) and schedule an appointment using messaging services (71%) in the purchase phase
• Get product or service support (76%) or offer product feedback (79%) in the post-purchase phase

Engaging Customers on Their Preferred Channel

To simplify how the users of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Automate access popular messaging channels, cloud communications provider tyntec has developed a series of connectors for Viber Business, WhatsApp Business, and SMS. With these pre-built integrations, businesses can now quickly access the messaging channels right from their flows and send notifications, invitations, and personalized messages to engage their audiences and orchestrate internal activities.

As the new generations of customers are used to communicate through messaging platforms, this integration will make it easy for businesses to get their immediate attention.

In addition to using the right communication channel to get noticed and to maximize ROI, marketers need to capture the correct customer data and verify it for accuracy. As more business-critical interactions happen on mobile phones, customers’ mobile numbers are vital to engaging the right customer at the right time. To avoid failed attempts in reaching them, it’s essential to validate the phone numbers before triggering the action.

tyntec’s Portability Check service can also be easily accessed right from Microsoft Flow and Power Automate and enable users to validate phone numbers before sending messages to avoid failed attempts, which translates into better CX and higher ROI.

Microsoft Flow allows users to create and automate workflows across multiple applications and services without developers’ technical help, making it the perfect environment for tyntec’s messaging services.

Automating Marketing with Messaging

The main power of tyntec’s connectors for Microsoft Dynamics 365 is that you can use them alongside any connector (Adobe Creative Cloud, for example) that is in Power Automate. Using the Common Data Service feature, you can access any entity within your Dynamics environment.
The ease-of-integration brought by the connectors opens up limitless possibilities for marketers to create connected, seamless customer experience digital journeys — from customer acquisition and engagement to retention.

Learn more about automating your workflow by watching this short tutorial:

Digital Transformation – Future-proofing Your Business Outreach

To futureproof your marketing and provide a frictionless digital journey for your customers, it’s essential to take a strategic approach. Companies that plan their projects carefully from the beginning are more likely to shape positive and seamless customer experiences and increase value.

Start your digital transformation journey by following these steps:

1. Map out the customer journey and friction points

• Evaluate customer preferences. Research your customer base to understand which communication channels they prefer, ranging from texting to social chat apps and virtual assistants.
• Pick customer segments for deployment. Choose the most appropriate customer segment, divided along demographic or geographic lines where relevant. You may find yourself tagging different customer segments with alternative implementation strategies.

2. Identify opportunities to reduce friction with notifications and personalizations

Set short-term and long-term success criteria for the project, even if you are beginning with a narrowly-scoped proof of concept system.

Ask yourself a series of questions to help set these goals. These include:

• What kind of customer experience do we need to create?
• What do we know about our customers?
• What does the current customer journey look like?
• What are some early signs of success we can learn from?

3. Leverage technologies and align the internal-external team

Make sure you tap into technologies and tools that will help you create the kind of experiences you want. Today’s businesses have many choices when it comes to tech buying. Platforms like Microsoft Dynamics 365 can help businesses deploy solutions without having to tie up internal resources quickly.

For more advanced features, consider hiring external solution providers and integrators who can specify the requirements, integrate solutions, and speed up the implementation.

These technology choices will depend on the customer segment that you are targeting. Millennials hang out on chat apps, for example, meaning that you can use newly available tyntec connectors for WhatsApp Business and Viber Business.

4. Combine capabilities through simple integrations — and automate

Different platforms and tools provide different capabilities. With Open API standards, it’s easy to combine the powers of various tools. Make the most of it by exploring pre-built integrations, such as connectors, available on the platforms you’re already using.
Be creative with your use cases. By accessing the customer data, you can enrich the customer experience with personalization – and seamlessly orchestrate the internal activities triggered by the interaction.
Once you create new flows, find opportunities to expand the use and scale to other customer segments and touchpoints.

5. Measure business outcomes, including customer satisfaction, marketing costs, and revenue growth

Your success in marketing automation is mostly determined by measuring the right KPIs and scaling what works. Make sure you understand and set the measurements before execution. Whether you’re looking to raise customer conversions or improve workflow efficiency, you can set the analytics to measure the results so that you can determine what actions will lead you to desired outcomes.

Conclusion

By enriching the communication capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics 365 with tyntec connectors, businesses can create a seamless customer experience and reach the right people at the right time, no matter which communication channel they prefer. Scaling the experience is as easy as click-and-select.

The original version of this article was first published on V3Broadsuite.