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Microsoft Dynamics Named to Leaders Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Microsoft Dynamics has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant of the 2010 Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers. To select its Leaders, Gartner (News - Alert) examined first the CRM business applications for customer service interactions offered by providers.

"Leaders demonstrate market-defining vision and the ability to execute against that vision through products, services, demonstrable sales figures, and solid new references for multiple geographies and vertical industries. Clients report that the vendors deliver a high level of value and return on their commitment. The development team has a clear vision of the implications of business rules, and the impact of social networking on customer service requirements," wrote Michael Maoz, vice president and distinguished analyst, Gartner Inc., in the report.

"A characteristic of a leader is that clients look to the vendor for clues as to how to innovate in customer service. The vendor does not necessarily drive a customer toward vendor lock-in, but rather provides openness to an ecosystem. When asked, their clients reply that this product has affected the organization's competitive position in their markets and helped lower costs. Leaders can demonstrate $50 million in sales to new customers during the past year.'

In addition to this news, Microsoft (News - Alert) is also introducing the Customer Care Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This new accelerator is designed to help customer care and contact center organizations to deliver a consistent customer service experience through the combination of data elements from disparate applications.

With the quick ease of access to information, agents are able to provide efficient service, which helps to improve overall customer satisfaction. At the same time, a corollary benefits is realized as it can help to preserve or increase profit margins.

Core business scenarios receiving support by Customer Care Accelerator include integrated desktop, desktop automation workflows, computer telephony integration (CTI (News - Alert)) and activity reporting.

With integrated desktop, the aggregation of information from diverse business applications into an integrated agent desktop allows users access to a 360-degree view of customer interactions. Fast access to business-critical information to service customers quickly helps to increase satisfaction and loyalty.

Desktop automation workflows help to minimize human error and streamline business processes. This eliminates the need for contact center agents to re-enter the same data in multiple applications and help to ensure a consistent customer service experience.

Caller screen pop-up information is supplied to agents to simplify customer telephony integration, while activity reporting provides contact center managers with the ability to quickly access agent desktop transaction reporting, identify process bottlenecks, streamline processes and automate routine tasks to improve overall call center efficiencies.

"Delivering a great customer experience is vital to building loyalty and business success," said Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM at Microsoft. "Microsoft Dynamics CRM delivers a powerful, yet affordable customer service solution to help businesses get a deep understanding of their customers, deliver high satisfaction and use outstanding service to generate new sales opportunities."

In other Microsoft news, the company is set to fight Google (News - Alert) Docs on its own cloud. As industry observer Michael Fitzgerald reports, "Microsoft will also offer free, ad-supported Web versions of Office applications," which he characterizes as "Microsoft's attempt to fend off a growing number of free Web-based office apps, including Google Docs and Zoho."

Earlier this week, Microsoft released the results of a study showing that regular password changes do very little to protect users. The study reveals that frequent password changes do nothing to prevent hackers from discovering what the password is - further, any hacker will be inclined to use the password right away, as opposed to waiting weeks or months for the user to change it.