Microsoft is offering new capabilities in marketing, customer care and social listening that are now globally available as part of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM spring wave of updates in 54 markets and 42 languages.
This new release delivers a comprehensive solution that provides businesses with marketing, sales and customer care capabilities that are seamlessly integrated with leading productivity applications, such as Microsoft Office 365, Yammer, Lync, Skype, SharePoint and Power BI for Office 365.
In addition to the availability of Microsoft Dynamics Marketing and Microsoft Social Listening, Microsoft also released updates to Microsoft Dynamics CRM that include a new Unified Service Desk. For on-premises customers, the company delivered these new capabilities as part of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Service Pack 1. Microsoft further announced it plans to expand the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online service to additional markets in Europe, Asia Pacific and South America in the third quarter of calendar year 2014.1
"Microsoft Dynamics CRM has made unbelievable progress over the last few years, and the amazing capabilities in this release deliver significant value to our customers as an important component of the Microsoft Cloud for business," said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft, in a statement. "Through innovative business applications in the cloud, businesses can better meet their customers' needs and thrive in a changing world."
"We focused our development efforts on understanding what our customers need to deliver amazing customer experiences” said Bob Stutz, corporate vice president, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, in a statement. “We redesigned our user interface, implemented a six-month rapid release cycle, made three acquisitions and built many new features — all culminating in the wave of releases we are bringing to market today."
The expanded availability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to markets in Europe, Asia Pacific and South America begins this month with the availability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online in Turkey. This global expansion gives customers a new online CRM solution in their market.
With Microsoft Social Listening, sales, marketing and service professionals tap into social conversations to get real-time feedback on their brand, products, competitors, campaigns and issues that might be relevant to their business.
“Marketers can track sentiment related to your brand and understand how their marketing tactics are resonating,” wrote Stutz in a blog post. “Sales people can stay on top of the competition while watching for social buying signals. Service teams can delight customers by providing real-time social care. We don’t think your social tool should be relegated to just a select few individuals in your organization, we believe the power of social listening should be given to everyone.”
Microsoft is also enabling a complete range of functionality for customer service professionals. This includes self-service capabilities in the recently acquired Microsoft Parature offering to the multichannel capabilities coming in the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online update and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Service Pack 1 for on-premises customers, including the Unified Service Desk. Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables companies to provide relevant, responsive and personalized customer service.