A pioneer in the insurance comparison industry, today, Confused.com serves millions of consumers a year, helping them find the best prices to protect the things they love, power their homes and finance big purchases. At a time of rising living costs and economic uncertainty, consumers are increasingly seeking informed, trusted advice that enables them to make confident financial decisions. According to Mintel, 73% of UK adults have used a financial comparison website within the past year as they strive to find the best deals on financial products quickly and easily.

In such an aggressive and fast-moving sector, Confused.com must continually deliver a superior customer experience to maintain its competitive edge. This relies on understanding exactly what customers need and why, to ease anxiety so often associated with financial decisions. Being truly customer-centric is reliant on optimising data, as Nick Sharp, director of data and technology, Confused.com, explains: “Delivering a seamless customer journey, enabling real-time interactions, personalised experiences, and offering a range of tooling beyond the price comparison itself is all about being data-led. It’s about making decisions based on data insights.”

Confused.com’s traditional in-house data framework was frustrating this ambition. “When you have an on-premises infrastructure and simple integrations, you are dealing with silos,” says Sharp. “We wanted to bring that together to deliver a more cohesive customer journey. Making financial decisions can be overwhelming – our aim is to reduce that burden as much as possible.”

Working with a trusted partner

This need prompted the company to seek help from long-term partner Microsoft, which also works with many of Confused.com’s partners, giving it peace of mind that the technology company understood how it wanted to enhance customers’ experience. Confused.com chose to migrate to Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, a solution that enables it to manage and store its data securely, as well as giving it access to multiple applications, services and tools. “Microsoft’s maturity and range of assets made it appealing,” says Sharp. “The cost element was important too, as well as the huge support offered by Microsoft, which made it a very easy six-month migration.”

The migration to Azure, and becoming cloud native, has initiated a culture shift at Confused.com, putting technology at the forefront of the business and allowing it to innovate and challenge the market. “It focused minds on how technology could enable us to go beyond delivering the basic service and actually scale up what we were doing, helping us to derive greater insight and make a bigger difference to customers,” says Sharp. “It has empowered us to position ourselves as thought leaders, and that mindset is driving success.”

Considering Confused.com’s panel of partners was key to the decision. The company’s motor panel alone currently has more than 150 providers, and the numerous data feeds between customers and partners need to be robust and fast. “That was a driving factor for choosing Azure, as well as the ability to experiment, and scale,” says Sharp. “It was also about leveraging cloud technology and Azure’s out-of-the-box and customisable solutions.”

As Sharp says: “If we get the right message to the right customer at the right time, they are so much more likely to buy.” It was this need to deliver exactly what the customer is looking for at any given moment that also attracted Confused.com to Azure. Its generative AI enables companies to quickly build intelligent apps and scale them, training them to work with its customer data. “That is really where we’re seeing the uplift,” says Sharp.

For Confused.com, the technology has supercharged its marketing, improving spend by 10% through data enrichment and personalised offers and recommendations. “That relevance to customers shows we’re getting things right.”

Sharp adds that the integration of AI aligns with the company’s commitment to being a customer champion. “By leveraging AI for personalised services and gaining insights into customer needs, we can continue disrupting the insurance industry for the benefit of our customers.”

After all, people visit Confused.com seeking advice and reassurance. “For example, can we make any recommendations based on the information a customer has provided? If they are actively telling us they are interested in a product, or if there are any nuances we can respond to, we can be extra helpful,” says Sharp. “It allows us to anticipate what customers need and potentially save them even more time and money by alerting them to the most relevant product at the right time and at competitive prices.”

A key part of elevating technology to a more central role was using Azure’s AI capability to automate, freeing employees from repetitive tasks to focus on what Sharp describes as “the more gnarly stuff”. He says: “We can tackle the problems that haven’t been solved for customers – that’s where we can really add value – making that content relevant and personalised, and unearthing insights.”

Sharp adds that the impact of Azure goes beyond the company’s technologists. “All of our employees benefit from AI – ultimately it helps them to do their job better, spending more time helping customers to save money, and adding greater value.”

While use of Azure’s AI tools doesn’t remove the need for human input, Sharp says it is hugely valuable for generating ideas and starting conversations, as well as improving efficiencies. “It allows us to worry less about the infrastructure provisioning and scaling because that is all taken care of. Both AI and the cloud keep us operating at speed and meeting customer demand – that is where it matters and where we want our team spending their time.”

Reaping measurable benefits in the cloud

Since implementing Azure, Confused.com has reduced its analytics lead time by 50%, thanks to improved availability, speed, and richness of data, which is driving informed decisions. This benefits customers directly. “Customers rely on us for timely data products and services, they are not just simply getting a price,” says Sharp. “We are looking at the full customer journey, identifying friction points and experimenting and addressing them quickly, and we are able to swiftly respond to customer feedback.”

The company’s ceaseless drive to add value to customers has also been realised by Azure, allowing the company to introduce cashback and rewards, which are customised incentives rooted in data. “We are now able to give much more back to customers and make sure the experience is optimum,” says Sharp. “That additional capability has been enabled by our migration to Azure.”

Confused.com has big plans to continue building on its partnership with Microsoft and its success with Azure, and Sharp says it will carry on leveraging Microsoft’s latest off-the-shelf components and solutions to solve problems. “It’s a gamechanger knowing we don’t have to build everything ourselves or find our own solutions. We can tap into the expertise of a partner that truly understands our industry.”

He adds that the “ultimate dream” is simplification of the customer journey: “The more we can remove the friction points, the closer we can get to automatic switching. It’s great from a technology stance but it’s also great from a customer stance too. With so many people feeling the pinch at the moment, where people spend their money is important. So for us, saving people time, money and allowing them to make confident decisions, at no cost to them, is now more important than ever.”

Azure’s cloud and AI capabilities are playing a key role in ensuring that Confused.com remains dominant in a fierce market. “It is amazing being fully cloud native, and AI promises to be a very exciting next chapter,” says Sharp.

Read the report: Latest Trends in Cloud Migration and Modernisation

Explore the Microsoft UK AI Hub

Non-independent content produced as part of a commercial deal with Guardian Labs.

Header photograph: Gareth Iwan Jones/The Guardian

The post Staying in the fast lane: how Confused.com is leveraging AI and cloud technology to improve customer experiences appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Today their role hasn’t necessarily changed. However, the value organisations place on them certainly has. The focus is shifting from fitting customers around business processes to reshaping contact centres around customers’ needs.

For years, the role of contact centres was limited – often confined by traditional 9-5 working hours. It was predominantly aimed at driving down costs and improving efficiencies.

This was reflected by the way companies measured their success. They had KPIs ranging from targets for call volumes to queue times and abandonment rates. These inward-focussed efficiency metrics have, however, consistently failed to put the customer at the centre of the service.

In today’s increasingly digitalised environment, this is no longer sustainable. Nothing is more valuable than customer experience and customer outcome. Organisations are fast adapting to the idea that great customer experiences convert into customer loyalty and new customers. People increasingly sharing their positive and negative experiences online. As a result, financial institutions can no longer afford to underestimate their services.

Contact centres are transforming. From unempathetic, 9-5 services reliant on a standard agent script, to becoming a customer experience centre. They don’t just focus on a service but the total customer experience across an organisation.

This presents a new opportunity for financial services companies to become fully connected organisations driven by technology. Embrace solutions that connect and unify all their channels – from digital to physical and mobile. As a result, they can create seamless, connected customer experiences that distinguish them from their competitors.

Understanding the needs of financial services customers

To better equip contact centres to service customers, we first need to look at how the needs of these customers have changed over time.

The past few years have seen the customer landscape evolve and diversify significantly. Alongside more traditional customers, organisations are increasingly welcoming a new generation of tech-savvy, socially connected customers. They come with a fresh new range of expectations.

Empathy, passion and hyper-personal connections are key drivers behind their demands. They centre around being understood and supported throughout their customer journey. Failure to do so can have catastrophic effects for organisations. Not only will it risk customers leaving their service but also expressing their frustration online.

This means one thing:

The more you know your customer, the more you can tailor your service to them.

A customer who’s been with your organisation for decades will be likely to seek support through traditional landlines or your website. On the other hand, the younger, digitally savvy customers will want mobile and self-service options, pursuing a more digital experience.

So how can organisations make sure that all these needs and preferences are satisfied? Put simply, the more diversified the audience, the more diversified the services.

Breaking down silos in contact centres

To really drive customer satisfaction across your evolving customer base, you need to invest in omnichannel engagement. Encompassing anything from social media to instant messaging, webchats and physical customer support, customers choose their channel of preference.

But this hasn’t always been the case for organisations in the financial services industry. Organisations may have invested in technologies to support a growing number and type of customer-facing channels. However, these are often used in silos and operated by different vendors.

This leaves customer data confined. Additionally, it prevents agents from surfacing customers across multiple systems. Most importantly, it prevents organisations from leveraging customer insights and using them to better orchestrate the customer journey.

Organisations who adapt and unify these siloes will be more likely to succeed at improving the customer journey. Doing so will empower employees to be more collaborative and productive. It will also reduce time to serve customers and provide an overall higher quality of service.

But it’s not enough to change the internal ways of working. Organisations must improve the way they build relationships with their customers. Looking ahead, they need to improve their ability to capture interactions in the moments that matter. They must continuously adapt and improve using this new-found knowledge.

To do this, they need an infrastructure and technology foundation. One that can empower them to capture these moments, understand their context and orchestrate the best, most optimal route across any function. All to deliver fast, impactful and personalised services that convert prospects into long-lasting advocates.

The rise in automated self-service technology

In a world that increasingly relies on digital innovation and newly found tech capabilities, automation can play a key role in improving customer services and contact centres.

Until recently, these have had virtually no front-door filter standing between customers and operators. Self-service has only just started to become a reality, leaving agents to deal with more complex cases.

This is where automation comes in. As data-based insights and capabilities become the norm, organisations have the opportunity to identify the simpler customer queries. They can then direct them to self-service areas, virtual assistants and AI-powered services.

Conversational virtual assistants are a powerful tool. Especially when it comes to harnessing data to gain insights on the customer. This data can be used to understand customer demands, their purchase history and previous complaints and other crucial information that can help them address their query entirely autonomously.

If the customer wants to transfer to a human, all that data can be carried across. Using AI, potential knowledge articles and recommendations, agents can successfully solve a customer’s request.

AI can also assist with more complex tasks such as pre-authenticating customers before speaking to an agent. This time-saving feature benefits both the customer experience and a contact centre’s inward metrics. With the addition of voice-biometric technology, a virtual agent could also help detect and prevent fraud by comparing a customer’s voice against their customer profile. A more cost-effective solution to training agents on fraud prevention and extra reassurance to customers that their money is secure.

These kinds of innovations aren’t there to make calling a contact centre redundant. There will always be a need to speak to agents to help manage banking relationships or advise on future monetary decisions. But for simpler, everyday tasks, financial organisations can empower customers to self-service rather than waiting to speak to an adviser.

Challenger banks have been particularly good at pushing innovations in this way and raising the customer service bar. Many of them are truly revolutionising retail banking by reducing typical applications processes from a week to minutes. By promoting a digitally-native experience, more traditional banks are forced to reconsider their own customer experience.

Keeping customer data secure in the cloud

Data breaches happen far too frequently today. And as financial institutions can hold an entire customer’s wealth – from mortgages to loans to bank balances – there’s an enormous responsibility to ensure that data is kept safe and secure.

This presents an immediate challenge to spend millions innovating on an existing IT infrastructure. This may require a huge amount of capital investment and resources to maintain. We’re seeing many leading insurance companies and banks choosing to migrate their contact centre operations from on-premise servers to the cloud.

If you consider Azure for example, Microsoft has already spent billions creating a secure cloud solution and helped protect leading organisations from cyber-attacks, fraud and Denial-of-Service on an intraday basis. This reassurance makes migrating to the cloud not just a business decision for better data security, but also for greater cost efficiency by eliminating the many overheads that physical servers require.

The cloud also offers advantages when it comes to complying to financial regulations such as how organisations handle data, offer services and prevent financial crime. By working with a trusted cloud provider like Microsoft, a lot of this responsibly can be shared and evidence can be provided to show that data is being kept securely and systems are operating within regulations.

An all-in-one solution for financial services contact centres

Financial organisations are changing. Their reputation and global presence is increasingly tied to customer experience, online reviews and the quality of their services. As a result, they must reimagine their services with a new, more demanding and diversified customer base in mind.

At the same time, switching banks or insurers has never been simpler. Therefore, it crucial for organisations to innovate their contact centre and make the end-to-end experience as efficient and helpful as possible.

The key is to not consider every channel as a separate challenge. A 2021 Forrester report commissioned by Microsoft, Boost Your CX With A Better Integrated Contact Center, CRM, And Collaboration Systems, found that 74 percent of contact centre agents in organisations typically use four or more applications to service customers. This gives a disconnected experience for agents. But by implementing an all-in-one contact centre solution such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, financial organisations can manage their operation through a single platform. From initial customer contact to automated self-service with AI virtual assistants, to agent-guided case management and back office collaboration with Microsoft Teams.

This allows live agents to interact with customers on any channel. They have a complete overview of all previous interactions to give a frictionless and effective customer journey. It also helps to free up their time. So they can focus on the most complex and sensitive requests that virtual assistants aren’t equipped to handle.

Find out more

Envisioning the Future of Customer Experience

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service

About the author

Chris leads the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement portfolio for Microsoft UK within the Dynamics 365 Business Group. Chris is responsible for developing and orchestrating the go-to-market strategy across this portfolio for the UK geography to generate awareness, create excitement and drive business development. The Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement portfolio is a suite of intelligent front office business applications designed to accelerate digital transformation across sales, marketing and customer service.

The post How data and AI will transform contact centres for financial services appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Organisations that can connect and use their data are more resilient and adaptable, driving sustainable growth. But how? We’ve identified three ways your organisation can leverage data insights to turn into action.

The hybrid world of work

We all have a lived experience of hybrid working, and it’s here to stay. In our latest Work Trend Index, we found that:

_{53% of people are likely to consider transitioning to hybrid in the year ahead if they haven’t already}

_{53% of employees are more likely to prioritise health and wellbeing over work.}

This means organisations need a new digital fabric for collaboration that brings together both digital and physical spaces. One that connects people and empowers them to balance their career and their wellbeing.  Organisations won’t be able to scale to this transition without a strong understanding of data.

Unilever provides their people – including individuals, managers, and leaders – with data-driven, privacy-protected visibility with Microsoft Viva. These data insights help Unilever improve the employee experience and promote greater work-life balance.

The hyper-connected business

We need that next level of real-time hyper-connectivity between businesses, and between consumers and businesses, where data and intelligence flow freely to tackle the challenges of supply and demand.​

According to our research, 80 percent of companies suffer with significant data silos. This prevents them from gaining meaningful insight to make business decisions. But by ensuring your data strategy combines the right capabilities and the right culture, you can identify opportunities, better serve customers, transform your products, empower employees, drive sustainable results and optimise operations. 

Access and unify your data

The more siloed your data, the harder it is to accomplish data governance. When you harness the streams of data being created on a secure platform, enabling better decision making and transformative processes.

Analyse, predict and orchestrate

Once you have unified your data you can leverage AI and Machine Learning. Run big data analytics to predict customer intent to purchase and identify segments that are at risk of churning. This can help identify new, or even protect revenue streams, improve operational efficiencies, create sustainable supply chains and drive a better overall quality of service.

Activate and measure

Take these insights and democratise access through your organisation. The people who will best put the data to use are the ones who deal with it day-to-day. By allowing both front and back-end employees access to that data, they can create low/no code apps that streamline operations and deliver better customer experiences.

Heineken gives their frontline employees customer data insights directly on a unified platform with Azure Synapses and Dynamics 365. This enables their sellers to gain much richer insights about their customer’s preferences to deliver the best possible purchase recommendations and provide a much more tailored buying experience.

Omnichannel customer experience

Technology has shaped both the online and offline experience for customers. And the more data silos organisations have, the more frustrated the customer becomes.

A hyper-connected business can link all the customer touchpoints together to create a 360-degree view. Employees can access this, meaning they can provide the best experience to the customer, no matter the point of they journey they are in, or how they’re getting in touch. AI and Machine Learning can then help drive richer data insights that can be used to delight and build trust.

Alpha XR Boots Alliance balances data and privacy to deliver more engaging and personalised experiences, to their patients and customers. By dramatically enhancing their customer personalisation, they can deliver the best tailored offers and content to the right customer, in the right context, at the right time and through the right channels across the entire journey.

Build sustainable growth with data insights

The events over the past several years have shown us that organisations that are able to connect and use their data are more robust and able to adapt to changing environments, harness potential and drive competitive advantage.​

Through empowering employees with the right culture, unifying and optimising your data, and building the omnichannel customer experience, you can turn data insights into action.

Find out more

Imagine business powered by data

Put your most important asset to work

The post How to turn data insights into action appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

The teams who develop and manage these solutions – developers – are at the heart of the organisation. They’re critical in enabling your organisation to respond to your customer’s needs.

And when it comes to digital innovation, speed is crucial but so is having a structured plan in place. At the same time, innovation is open to everyone. Therefore, organisations need the right tools to create a culture of innovation.

Professional developers can use Visual Studio and GitHub to modernise existing and develop new applications.

You can also empower a new stream of innovation– citizen developers. These employees understand a business process and want to improve on it but might not have the developer expertise. Now with Power Apps, they can use low/no code solutions to build what they need.

Here are six ways to build a customer-centric culture by empowering your developers.

Move to the public cloud

Innovation happens faster in the cloud. Whether you need to modernise existing applications, simplify complex environments or create new apps, you can benefit from the scalability and flexibility of Azure. Developers can build on a secure foundation in any language or foundation, from anywhere.

Simplify complex and distributed environments across multiple clouds and edge environments with Azure Hybrid cloud solutions. Bring Azure management to your entire IT estate and run Azure services anywhere.

As the UK’s leading omnichannel payments business, PayPoint needs to maintain business as usual while managing increasing demand for its services. With Azure, they were able to respond with agility and even develop and deploy new functionality without downtime to customers.

Shorten time-to-market

According to a Gartner survey study, positive customer experiences drive more revenue, higher employee satisfaction and greater customer retention.

Organisations have a strong sense of urgency in going digital. This is driving demand for tools and services that shorten time-to-market and drive those positive customer experiences.

With tools like Azure DevOps and Visual Studio Code, with automation through DevOps Pipelines, GitHub Actions, the ability to streamline business processes with Power Automate and more increases the efficiency of your developer teams. They can then focus on innovating the customer experience.

Reassess investments

Customers increasingly expect products and services that factor in what they care about – be that macro topics like climate impact, or micro impacts such as their experience interacting with your products.

To meet these demands, organisations must find new ways to deliver service at scale. They need to focus on and connect with the customer experience – no matter how many business units, systems, supply chains and processes that customer journey may span. And do this all while reducing costs.

This requires a new way of thinking.

Many organisations are starting by setting a strategic approach and thinking of themselves as a software company first. Then, they’re leveraging digital technology to deliver on their vision.

Solutions built using the Azure platform offer near-instant provisioning of resources. This lowers innovation costs and enables a faster time-to-market. In fact, Forrester found the average cost to develop an application is 74 percent less with Power Apps.

Empower developers

According to McKinsey & Company, organisations with developer velocity experience four to times faster revenue growth, 60 percent higher return to shareholders, and 20 percent higher operating margin.

Unleash the creative energy of developers by leveraging Azure innovation tools. This enables them to build productively, foster secure collaboration, and remove barriers so they can scale faster innovation at lower cost.

Help them build the skills they need to bring ideas to life with certifications and training. Give developers autonomy, decision making and automate back-end processes so they can focus on bringing innovation.

Drive citizen development

Over 86 percent of organisations already struggle to hire developers. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2023, there will be four times as many end-user or citizen developers, compared to experienced developers in enterprises.

Empower the people closest to the problem to become citizen developers and solve problems themselves. With low/no code solutions like Power Apps anyone, regardless of their technical capability, can work together on the same platform to create solutions with a high level of agility.

Heathrow Airport employees have eliminated 75,000 pages of paperwork and reduced data entry by nearly 1,000 hours through the low-code development of 30 apps, helping the airport reduce its costs.

Infuse intelligence

The applications that both developers and citizen developers are building are powering important customer centric business processes. By applying AI and machine learning, organisations can infuse intelligence with real-time personalisation and serve up customised algorithms.

Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, uses Azure’s integrated platform with AI to build an algorithm that predicts bed space utilisation. The data is then available on Power BI so healthcare employees can quickly and simply understand the insights.

Empower developers to build a customer-centric culture

By unleashing the full potential of developers and citizen developers, organisations will enable growth, solve a wide range of business problems, and drive digital modernisation.

According to McKinsey, organisations with a developer mindset have 4 to 5 times higher revenue growth and 55 percent higher innovation.

Build a growth mindset culture where developers can drive innovation from anywhere, powered by a comprehensive portfolio of technology that complements your business needs.

We are the only company that has that full stack that spans across the breadth of both tech adoption and tech capability to build, and ultimately increase your chance of succeeding.

Find out more

Resources for leaders:

Watch the webinar: Unleash your developers to innovate

Take the Developer Velocity Assessment

Imagine digital innovation that makes a difference

Deliver a seamless experience with real impact

Build a growth mindset

Make app building easier

Resources for developer teams:

Explore the Dev Hub

Watch Microsoft Build on demand

Get certified

About the author

Denise leads the the digital and app innovation team, working directly with customers to uncover new opportunities. She has over 20 years’ experience in transformation leadership and business change delivery. With a proven ability to drive growth, innovation and performance turnaround across complex organisations, she has delivered new cloud services, automated processes and ways of working across the largest banking system in the UK.

The post The developer-customer connection: Why dev-centred cultures are customer-centric cultures appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Data can help an organisation identify new opportunities and uncover hidden efficiencies. The business world is no stranger to disruptions and changes, and when you extract as much value from data as possible, your organisation will be able to move with speed and gain competitive advantage.

Data maturity helps empower employees to collaborate, gain new insights and take action to deliver operational efficiencies. It can help teams be more innovative with their product development. Ultimately, this leads to delivering a better customer experience.

95% _{of surveyed organisations have deployed big data initiatives on a department or enterprise level}

To drive tangible outcomes, leaders should build a solid data foundation to start maximising opportunities. By fusing the power of Azure data and AI with Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, organisations can start to unlock new insights and more critically – take action.

But what stage are you on in your journey? And how do you leverage the right tools to stay agile and deliver the results you need and drive innovation?

_{Data-driven organisations are growing at an average of} 30% _{or more annually}

What stage is your organisation in your data journey?

1. Good
   • Better understand your customers, employees and use data to drive collaboration.
2. Better
   • Identify needs and trends, and adapt quickly to new business models, drive efficiencies and reduce costs.
3. Best
   • Empower employees with insights and drive meaningful change.

Step 1: Good

Customers have high expectations of brands. They want to be heard, understood and have personal, meaningful experiences.

73% _{of customers will consider switching to a competitive brand after one bad experience.}

How can leaders meet these goals in an ever-changing world?

• Make customer experience an organisation-wide priority.
• Be agile enough to respond to customer needs quickly.
• Respond honestly and authentically.
• Meet customers in the channels they expect.

When you unify and centralise your customer experience technology, you’ll gain insights to build deeper customer relationships.

Royal Enfield offers a frictionless experience to both its potential and existing customers at different touchpoints, ensuring they can access their data on the spot instead of starting anew each time.

75% _{of organisations have proved that customer satisfaction leads to revenue growth through increased retention or lifetime value.}

These insights will help employees deliver a more personalised experiences to customers. They will also be able to make decisions faster and with greater confidence, to deliver insights to the right stakeholders and the right time.

Rolls-Royce provides targeted and actionable insights at the point of need to inform business decisions, such as which factors will have the most impact on fuel performance.

How?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Voice

Helps you better listen to, understand and satisfy your customers. When combined with the Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite, it will help collect customer feedback across channels and form more authentic customer relationships.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Get a 360-degree view of customers and identify new unfound segments to support customer retention or create new revenue stream. Optimise and orchestrate real time personalised journeys to create fans improve loyalty.

Power BI

Gives every employee within the business the ability to respond in real-time with data-empowered insights on a secure platform.

Step 2: Better

To make sure your organisation continues to meet changing expectations, leaders must collaborate across business functions to align data goals and initiatives. At the same time, continued disruption, and budgeting means cost saving measures are critical.

64% _{of IT leaders say they’re using two or more analytics solutions}

When you consolidate your data, you’re creating a single source of truth for the enterprise. And by combining it onto one tool like Power BI, you’ll reduce costs.

PwC provides their clients with the data they need to on one platform. They use Azure to process the data and push it to Power BI, before shutting down (to save costs). From there, clients can view their data across customisable dashboards from anywhere.

48% _{of business goals driving data initiative investments is to improve decision making}

Power BI

Align your data across organisational silos. Employees can easily self-serve to get the data they need when they need it. Take advantage of cloud tech such as AI and automation to create cross-team reports that gain more insight. Plus, industry-leading data security capabilities help keep your insights protected.

_{The average time-to-insights is} 27% _{faster with Power BI}

Step 3: Best

Now you’ve laid the groundwork for a data-driven culture, you can use these insights to drive meaningful change and adapt at speed.

45% _{of users want real-time data aggregation and analysis}

To fully take advantage of your data, leverage automation and AI tools to process, aggregate and analyse data in one place in real-time. This, combined with user-friendly tools allows any employee to pull insights that are relevant for their role, right when they need it.

82% _{of users agree that self-service analytics is a top priority at their organisations}

This gives rise to the citizen analyst. Employees can get the answers they need while reducing the burden on IT staff. This better places your organisation to make decisions at speed.

66% _{of users say these capabilities are critical when evaluating new tools and solutions}

Data and AI can also enable predictive analytics, helping you respond quicker to upcoming changes, uncover new opportunities and better support customers. Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Commerce or Dynamics 365 Marketing can help you find new segments to market to, or drive customer retention with Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

_{Preemptive digital transformations have a} 50% _{higher ROI than reactive ones}

Identify operational inefficiencies with analytics to streamline and optimise back-end tasks, for example, monitor equipment health in manufacturing or healthcare or reduce manual tasks. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain can maximise your supply chains operations.

Analytics can also be used to amplify your organisation’s work. Take, for example, healthcare. AI is being used to analyse medical imagery, leading to quicker diagnosis and helping doctors focus on patient care.

Move forward with confidence

Making data-driven decisions with the right technology will help you make bold business moves with confidence. As a result, you’ll empower your employees, deliver better customer outcomes and stay agile in a fast-paced environment.

Find out more

Discover how to build a data strategy:

Imagine business powered by data

Learn how to put your data to work

Get data-driven insights

Get fresh perspectives on business modernisation:

Watch Microsoft Envision UK on demand

Explore data management solutions:

Power BI

Dynamics 365 Customer Voice

About the author

Chris leads the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement portfolio for Microsoft UK within the Dynamics 365 Business Group. Chris is responsible for developing and orchestrating the go-to-market strategy across this portfolio for the UK geography to generate awareness, create excitement and drive business development. The Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement portfolio is a suite of intelligent front office business applications designed to accelerate digital transformation across sales, marketing and customer service

The post KPIs and ROI: Quantifying the impact of data management in your business appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

But despite being so vital to a brand’s success, frontline employees are often the last to be reached by the technology that retailers invests in. Typically, we see C-Suite and head office getting all the latest tech, while it takes time to trickle down to the shop floor. This has two major impacts.

Firstly, the majority of frontline workers feel underappreciated by their employers. According to a recent Retail Trust survey, The Health of Retail report 2021, many feel insecure, undervalued and uncertain in relation to their careers. In fact, 84 percent say their mental health has deteriorated since early 2020. And while this is undoubtedly connected to the impact of the last few years on the high street, there is work to be done to bridge the gap between the different levels of retail organisations, from C-Suite to the shop floor.

The other major impact is on the customer experience. Without the right tools in place, the in-store experience can feel impersonal and disconnected. Especially when comparing it to the increasingly personalised online shopping space. Here, consumers have become accustomed to being served highly personalised recommendations.

For me, empowering employees means giving them the right tools to do their best work. And in retail, that means the people on the shop floor having the right technology at their fingertips to allow them to access every type of information that customers need and expect.

Here I want to talk about some of the ways that retailers can start to empower their employees with technology. And as a result, create better customer experiences and a happier, more productive workforce.

Meeting customer expectations in-store

Like every industry, retail is still navigating the new ways of the world. Within that context, there’s a lot of uncertainty about what the future of the industry looks like and where we all fit in that jigsaw puzzle.

But one thing that has been shown clearly is that consumers are itching to get back into shops. The question is: what do those shops now look like?

Up until now, in-person retail has retained quite a consistent format. You go into the shop, you pick the product you want, you go to the checkout, and you leave. And that’s been okay until the last few years, when suddenly consumers started wanting more personal experiences.

That’s the impact of online shopping. Consumers go to the website of their retailer of choice. They get recommendations based on the data the company collects over time. Or they’ll get it personally by email. The challenge is to match this kind of personalisation in-store. And there are great benefits for retailers who manage achieve it.

Research suggests that customers will purchase more from a retailer if they shop both on their digital and in-store spaces. It underscores the importance of omni-channel retail. It also outlines a clear agenda for retailers moving forward: Striving to achieve intelligent retail. One where you connect to customers, your employees, and then your data as well, so that you can have that personalised experience in the store.

We’re already seeing many established retailers making their high street stores more like experience centres. So if you wanted to buy a Surface, for example, there’s the Microsoft Experience Centre in London. Here, you can come in and see the different devices, learn how you can interact with them, and try out accessories in-person. You may not buy the device there; you’re actually more likely to go home and order it online. But we’re definitely starting to see a blend of those online and physical channels.

It’s going to take time for everyone to catch up, especially if you’re a retailer with hundreds of stores nationwide. But devices are a great place to start with the transformation to a more blended, omni-channel shopping experience.

The importance of devices to omni-channel retail

As a society, we’ve become more used to having things instantly available at the tips of our fingers. Whether that’s a smartphone, a tablet, or a laptop, devices are what have driven the expectation. This is now being translated into retail.

With this rising expectation, retailers who don’t empower their employees to respond quicky and accurately to customers in-store are going to suffer.

Frontline retail employees need to be able to do on-the-spot inventory checks, so they don’t have to go and rummage around in the store room or warehouse, looking physically on the shelves to try and find something that could have been checked in seconds on a handheld device on the shop floor. Without those devices, they often find themselves less well-informed than the customers coming into their stores.

Devices have benefits for retail employees beyond their interactions with customers too. Retail spaces are often large. Having a designated device for communication between team members who could be scattered across the building space, or even on different sites, will make the operation more integrated and seamless from an operational point of view too. They will enhance the connection between the different levels of an organisation, helping to bridge the gap between the C-Suite and shopfloor.

This will empower employees to feel more integral to the business. At the same time, leadership teams can make better decisions based on a more accurate understanding of stores, because they’re able to get feedback from them directly.

And then of course there are the sustainability benefits of devices. M&S is a great example of a UK retailer that has embraced devices, allowing it to achieve its goal of going paperless. This is just one of many benefits the company is now reaping from its push to integrate new technologies across its operations.

Devices designed for the hybrid retail space

The ultimate role of devices in the retail space is to help create a great experience for customers. Whether that’s ordering something in for a customer online, checking inventory levels, or even checking what shifts people on a team are working so managers can make sure that the shop floor is filled with the right people at the right time. All of it comes back to enhancing the in-store experience.

But there’s an increasing understanding that within every retail space, there are different types of workers, and they have different needs. Frontline workers don’t want to walk around the shop floor with a laptop, because it’s heavy and there’s a security risk in putting it down in a busy retail space. Similarly, an information worker in the back office isn’t going to want to use a foldable in-your-palm device.  

At Microsoft, we’ve packaged this understanding into a cohesive offering for retailers. We’ve got lightweight, on-the-go devices like the Surface Go that are designed specifically for frontline workers who don’t want to be tethered to a PC. We’ve got other Surface devices designed for information processing, as well as Surface Hubs that can help improve in-office and hybrid collaboration – meaning everyone feels included.

And because our devices are specifically made to complement the Microsoft software stack, it means that retailers get the best experience from things like Microsoft Teams and Power BI when using them on their Surface. It helps to keep our employees connected with each other, and empowers them serve customers quickly and efficiently.

I am confident that this empowerment will translate into the evolution of the role of frontline workers, who can be there to genuinely support people with disabilities or accessibility needs, becoming much more of a helping hand to customers in-store. There always will be a need for that kind of support, as we adapt to the new world we find ourselves in.

Find out more

Learn how to harness digital for the future of retail

Personalise your organisation’s customer experience strategy

Microsoft Cloud for Retail

Device Decisions – The future is hybrid – considerations for IT leaders in the changing workplace

Technology can help unlock a new future for frontline workers

About the author

Joseph runs the Product and Marketing Strategy of our Surface Devices and Accessories for our Small Medium & Corporate (SMC) customers in Microsoft UK.

The post Empowering retail employees: How to transform the frontline appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Demand for this bespoke treatment has increased. Today’s expectations are for hyper personalisation across all channels of engagement between the customer and organisation. This move towards an omnichannel model has increased the scope in which companies can reach customers in new ways. 

Where should a business start in this vast landscape of customer touchpoints to craft a personalisation strategy that leads to customer delight and long-term loyalty? Let’s examine this now.

1.    Understand your customers

The goal is to make every customer feel that the service they are receiving is 100 percent customised to them. However, this isn’t always achievable due to time and budget constraints.

Instead, a crucial step is to analyse your own data estate. From your customer relationship management (CRM) system, to social channels and customer engagement (CE) platforms. Integrating this data for analysis with a Customer Data Platform (CDP) can help to surface rich insight by creating a single customer view that generates individualised personas. 

Predicting customer behaviours using these data-driven personas can allow businesses to segment their customers more effectively in order to better align customer treatment strategies. 

2.    Embrace omnichannel experiences

The ways that customers engage with your business continues to expand. This offers a huge opportunity to benefit from the increased customer data flowing into your business.

Unifying this data into a consolidated customer profile that can carry across any customer touchpoint is fundamental to a business’ personalisation efforts. As a result, conversations are more targeted and relevant. Additionally, customer service agents gain a greater understanding of the events leading up to a customer interaction if this unified omnichannel profile is accessible and properly collated.

3.    Make the most of innovation to personalise

AI adoption for customer service has been widespread. However, its full potential to drive personalisation lies beyond the simple Q&A functionality that has become a popular standard.

Conversational AI’s ability to learn about customer interests and preferences, and then re-engage with personalised product recommendations at key stages of the buying process has become a key personalisation capability for companies to adopt.

The more simplistic virtual assistant functionality also has its place. For example, where customers need to action more simple tasks, such as getting an update on an order status. These systems complement the more complex analytical use cases. AI should be thought of as augmenting existing processes that extend the consistency of your company identity. 

4.    Personalise – but don’t overdo it

It can be a fine line to tread between providing a customer with bespoke service and appearing to be compromising their privacy.

Location-based personalisation techniques such as offers/greetings sent to apps on consumers’ phones when they pass by a store can come off as invasive.

At the same time, be as transparent as possible when it comes to informing consumers how and why their data is used. Regulations like GDPR have helped created industry standards for this. However, companies can always look to bolster trust with their own in-house messaging and policy statements.

5.    Don’t lose the human touch

The capabilities of AI and data analytics are crucial to develop the insights necessary for understanding customers, building profiles and offering bespoke offers and interactions.

However, businesses should not over rely on these automated capabilities. The moments that matter are often those of one-on-one human connection. Take time to establish a comprehensive culture of communication that is agile to change. This is essential to empower your customer service agents with the empathetic skills they need to help find resolutions for customer that are personal and valued.

Personalise your customer’s experiences

The ways that personalisation will be felt across customer service will continue to evolve. Either from ongoing trends of increasing digital touchpoints or unexpected factors. Being agile to change is key.

At Microsoft, we work with customers across industries to implement modular solutions that fit in to existing customer service ecosystems to unlock new personalisation capabilities.

Find out more

Download our e-guide: Create outstanding experiences in moments that matter

Watch our webinar: Envisioning the future of customer experience with guest speaker and Senior Forrester Analyst Vasupradha Srinivasan

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Customer Service

About the author

Chris leads the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement portfolio for Microsoft UK within the Dynamics 365 Business Group. Chris is responsible for developing and orchestrating the go-to-market strategy across this portfolio for the UK geography to generate awareness, create excitement and drive business development. The Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement portfolio is a suite of intelligent front office business applications designed to accelerate digital transformation across sales, marketing and customer service

The post The top five ways to personalise your customer service appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

We’ve always had accessibility standards ensuring we use closed captions and subtitles but we needed to think beyond that. Like many organisations, our accessibility journey is ongoing. It adapts as we learn and get feedback from our employees, partners, and customers. As Storytelling & Digital Destinations Lead, I continually challenge myself and my team to reimagine our websites, pushing to create great experiences that everyone can access.

Through our AI for Good cohort, we were made aware that for over 70 million Deaf people globally, their first and preferred language is sign language. Sign languages are structured differently from spoken and written language. As a result, some Deaf people have difficulties understanding content in written form. Many rely on friends and family to access the information they need. For example, getting a COVID vaccination is not a simple task when booking and follow-up information is in written text and healthcare staff are wearing facemasks (reducing the ability to lipread).

Despite our focus on accessibility and ensuring all content has subtitles and closed captions, this identified that our content was still inaccessible to a broad group of people.

“BSL is not the same as spoken English or written English, says Tim Scannell, Signly ambassador. “A lot of companies say English is good enough, because they think that Deaf people can understand English like a first language. We’re trying to show that the Deaf grassroots BSL community don’t necessarily understand English well.”

As part of the Deaf BSL community, Tim and Signly have been researching into the impact of the lack of BSL services. “They [BSL users] would always talk about having to bother somebody who is hearing that they knew.” Tim says. For some, this may be the children of Deaf adults, which then changes their relationships and increases stress and anxiety for both. “It also took Deaf people sometimes long time to understand.” For example, if a hearing customer had an issue with their bank, they could go into the branch, or call and get it sorted quickly. “A Deaf customer, however, will go into the branch and the bank would give them written information to read, or they [the bank] wouldn’t know about booking an interpreter or very rarely that would happen. But most don’t know how. They just apologise and say they couldn’t. A Deaf person just wants better communication.”

Learning about Signly

Technology has the power to help everyone. Therefore, it’s clear that we need to make sure that no one gets left behind. That’s why at Microsoft, we’re always looking at ways we can improve accessibility.

We were introduced to Signly when they became part of our AI for Good programme. Instantly, I knew they’d be a key partner to help us further our inclusion goals.

What do Signly do? Their technology translates written text to sign language. It removes this barrier, making content more accessible and is all run on Azure.

“A lot of firms think about just providing the typical accessibility features and think it’s okay, and it’s always because of the wrong perception that Deaf people are okay with English,” says Tim. “If people only think about the options they’ve set up. That’s not going to work. They need to think sometimes outside of the box.”

And Signly thinks innovatively. Signly allows users to self-serve, view or request sign language translations on webpages. The AI for Good programme helped Signly scale their app. Lloyds Bank became the first UK organisation to offer a translation website in British Sign Language.

“Signly covers the fixed information you have on a website so that you make less calls to need an interpreter,” says Tim.

With only around 1000 interpreters in the UK, it’s important we use technology to assist them in their roles while empowering BSL users. Both the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) and the World Association of Sign Language Interpreters (WASLI) express how machine learning or AI signing avatars should not be used when the information being delivered is live, complex or of significant importance to the lives of Deaf citizens. Signly helps free up BSL interpreters to focus on those moments, while giving BSL users equal access to the information when they need it.

Improving access for everyone with sign language

The Microsoft Apprenticeship Network was built to help connect apprentices and organisations together. To bridge a digital skills gap, the UK needs over three million people in tech careers by 2025. Apprentices are key to this.

At the same time, we need to ensure that our new talent is diverse and inclusive. According to the NHS, people who are Deaf or experience hearing loss are more likely to be unemployed. And in employment, 74 percent surveyed felt that their employment opportunities were limited because of their hearing loss. This means we’re missing out on diverse perspectives, building new talent and driving inclusive innovation. We’re also missing out on the potential economic output. If we don’t address these employment rates by 2031 the UK economy will lose £38.6 billion per year.

The low code tech behind the solution

The beauty behind Signly is its simplicity. As a low code solution, it can be easily added to any website. You can translate the pages like we did. So, when you launch you are automatically accessible for everyone. The service also works on demand. Users can request websites to be translated when they need it.

“We use Azure to create a ‘Signing Studio,’” explains Mark Applin, Signly CEO. “It grabs the English straight from the website and fires it straight into the teleprompter for the Deaf translator working from a home studio.”

From there, the video goes back to Azure, and straight onto the web page. And when you update your website, a notification is automatically sent to Signly to update that section. This means all your users are getting the right information at the right time.

The BSL user experience

When Tim showed the website to other BSL users, he said they were amazed and relieved. As one Signly user said: “Wow. That’s wonderful, that’s really beautiful. I’ve had a problem with all kinds of things, whether it’s doctors or banking and nobody will help me with the English. And I don’t know any of that in English… I have to go to Citizen’s Advice. There’s just barriers everywhere. All the companies just won’t help you.”

“People were getting emotional just to see something in their language.”

– Tim Scannell, Signly ambassador

The future of our accessibility journey with sign language

Working with Signly has shown me the massive opportunity it has in democratising access to everyone. Our values are right there on our website. We aim to help everyone achieve more. And we want to not just talk the talk but to walk the walk. Signly helps us achieve this goal. This is the start of a journey. This pilot is a good first step to see how we can scale the technology across other websites. In the future we can even perhaps scale it to our partners and customers.

“I think with Microsoft being such a massive leader, it could have a huge impact on so many other firms and organisations and what can be done. Every website should have sign language content. It makes deaf people feel accepted,” says Tim.

Another Signly user agrees with Tim. “It [BSL on websites] would be a massive benefit. Less stressed, I’d know how to communicate. I wouldn’t constantly have to ask what does this mean, what does that mean. It would give us equality. I can learn at the same time.”

How Signly could transform other industries

It’s also a great opportunity for the public sector to deliver important information to BSL users. For example, the NHS could use it to provide fixed information around vaccinations, as suggested by a Signly user: “They [The NHS] send me a leaflet about the vaccine, and I said, ‘I just can’t read it’. I’ve not had any information about the vaccine. I keep saying ‘where is the interpreter?’ They’re all wearing masks and I can’t lip read them. If I had a bad reaction, I don’t know what to look out for.”

Media companies can also leverage the technology, to provide more equitable access to news and content. “You miss things on the news…The BBC website should have sign language on the news [page]. And the NHS,” adds a BSL user.

Your accessibility journey will be constantly evolving as you learn. It’s important to remember that implementing inclusive designs in your services and products is not a ‘one and done’ job. It’s a continuous process that you must update and approach in new ways. And working with companies like Signly, you can easily scale out these innovations. This endeavour is a stepping stone for us at Microsoft. It’s one we are proud of and hope to expand on.

Find out more

Learn more about Signly

Our accessibility commitment

Help Signly and take part in their social impact research

Resources to empower your development teams

Accessibility fundamentals

Learn the basics of web accessibility

About the author

Great stories demand heroes, emotions, and insight. As Storytelling & Digital Destinations Lead at Microsoft UK, Victoria Oakes places these principles at the heart of Microsoft UK’s content output. In this role, she drives to unify messaging and content across Microsoft using insights at the heart. Through her passion for engaging copy, visual storytelling, and data-driven insights, she truly cares about content being useful, interesting and easy to digest. As a philanthropy advocate, Victoria strongly believes in using technology for social impact, strengthening empowerment and inclusion for all and environmental sustainability.

The post How to empower even more people by challenging accessibility standards appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

I recently joined in a panel discussion with business leaders in the telcom and tech industries who spoke about how organisations can start planning thier own customer experience transformations.

“In an industry where you have a lot of competition and very low switching costs; products and services are becoming increasingly commoditised. Telcos need to differentiate in customer experience to grow,” says a telecom industry lead.

The future state of customer experiences

Customer expectations have outpaced their present experiences. This makes ensuring positive experiences vital for a brand’s reputation and profitability.

A 2018 PwC report into customer experiences found that 43 percent of customers surveyed would pay a premium for greater convenience, while 42 percent would pay for a more friendly experience.

Pair with this the importance of telecoms updating their infrastructure and moving to 5G – now has never been a better time for organisations to reduce silos and create unified data streams. An organisation needs to ensure all their employees have access to and can understand data to provide these pivotal customer experiences.

However, what we are seeing is a lag between business strategy and the technological upgrade needed to support it.

“You can spot all the exciting opportunities in the horizon, but it’s difficult to execute those given the current tech and infrastructure that telcos are operating on,” says an industry expert. “There is a real job to be done around modernisation within IT and within architecture.”

So how do telecoms modernise and develop better customer experiences?

A truly integrated customer journey

“Designing and delivering innovative new products and services that create demand, reasons to stay beyond switching costs, and then reasons to recommend means not just meeting – but exceeding – every single interaction,” says a telecom industry lead.

They add that omnichannel has gone further, into opti-channel – where each touchpoint has a thoughtful role to play in the customer experience. However, the challenge is the handovers – where critical information gets lost between agents or touchpoints and the customer gets frustrated.

Take advantage of a solution such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 that integrates data from across all silos – sales, marketing, supply chains, and more into the customer journey. When the customer is at a certain touchpoint, all the information needed to help that customer is there. It can even provide predictive insights, so you can help the customer before they realise they need assistance. This means your employees can focus on providing quick, reliable and personalised service.

Engaging customer experiences that generate trust

Telecom firms handle a lot of unique data around customer identities. And security is highly important to customers and your reputation. “When we look at identity across any industry right now, it’s about the security and privacy of the end consumer and the trust that you have. That is part of the experience,” says an industry expert.

There’s still a stereotype that privacy and security hinder employee productivity. But with solutions that have built-in intelligent security, you can actually enable productivity. AI and automation take over low-level monitoring, so IT teams can focus on more important tasks. Integrated security that authenticates users and endpoints works in the background. This means employees can get on with their work, while data stays protected.

Empower customer experiences with AI and analytics

“The focus has morphed from [analytics] being an afterthought to ‘I need to do this because it’s important for my business,’” says an industry partnership leader.

AI and analytics are helping telecom firms build new data-driven operation models within their organisation. It can help augment customer touchpoints and create stronger brand experiences. A chatbot powered by AI, for example can answer frequently asked questions. An app can help a customer onboard and activate new products and services instantly. Putting this data into your employees’ hands means they can provide better and more personalised experiences. It also can be used to streamline operations. This gives employees more time to spend with customers or more time creating innovative services.

“If you can reduce the call handling time, if you can give more specific and relevant service more rapidly, that is a huge improvement on your customer satisfaction score or NPS score. That translates directly into revenue,” says an industry expert. “Giving sales associates access to those kinds of data points is absolutely critical. There is a significant area here of augmenting the physical experience.”

From there, you can use the data collected to start turning insight into value and discovering where business opportunities lay.

A 360-degree customer view

For employees to provide the best customer experiences, they need to have a full view of customer data. Reducing silos and unifying data is the best way to do this.

“The single customer view and the customer data platform project are absolutely critical,” says an expert. “Effectively building the single customer view and then having a way to have systems and data visualisations to be able to democratise that across the business.”

Our industry partnership leader agrees. “I think the most important point is democratising data,” they say. “Standardising data and making it simple to use in the form of APIs.”

Solutions that present data in easily digestible ways, like Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Power BI ensure your employees are confident interacting with and understanding it. Power Apps empowers your people to be able to build low and no code apps and solutions.

Part of democratising data is to ensure that your employees have the skills to do this. Make a digital literacy programme available, leveraging a mix of self-service, on-demand and online training to ensure everyone gets re- and up-skilled.

Effective customer experiences are the new premium services

“The limiting factor to innovation and the customer experience used to be our own imagination. But we can literally design and build anything we come up with today,” says a telcom business leader.

Reduce silos, unify business data and integrate secure solutions that provide 360-degree customer views. You can then easily create experiences that delight and engage customers throughout their lifecycle. This data can be used to drive real value, turning telecom firms into real drivers of business and create new partnerships, innovative products, and build sustainable growth.

Find out more

Empower your employees to thrive

Discover how to build a data-driven organisation

About the author

Passionate about the transformation technology can bring, Stuart is an Industry Lead for Media and Telecommunications within Microsoft, where he relishes any opportunity to offer his entrepreneurial spirit and natural storytelling ability to challenge organisations to ‘refocus the lens’ in order to create a successful impact through the adoption of innovation.

He is a lead spokesperson for innovation within the media industry and has played both sides of the fence. Stuart started his career as a BBC Journalist before moving into a number of roles in media production. From here, the pull of technology innovation took him into development and R&D, then corporate strategic management and change consultancy for some of the biggest media brands around the globe.

Over the last 20+ years, Stuart has helped deliver major business transformation having held significant change roles at companies ranging from the BBC, Endemol Shine Group, to Sony.

The post How to make customer experience the key differentiator in telecoms appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

To rise to the challenge, firms are increasingly using technology to support their new ways of working. They’re empowering staff, improving client experiences, and driving the practice forwards.

Firms are exploring ways they can empower their people with data visibility to streamline key workflows and drive new levels of efficiency. By doing so, they can create those much-needed personalised client experiences. An experience that is faster, more responsive, and more familiar to their client base.

Adopting the right strategy and the right technology is pivotal in meeting new client needs and moving your firm forwards. A 2019 PwC survey found that eight of the top ten law firms identified technology as the key challenge to growth in the next two to three years.

There are five scenarios where law firms today should be looking to introduce efficiencies that enrich and differentiate client experiences through technology.

1.      Earn trust in uncertain times

Workplace transformation and technology adoption has accelerated. Innovation is becoming a critical capability for the modern in-house legal function. But to deliver successful outcomes it’s essential to build a long-term strategy – one that leverages measurable business insights to make clear decisions.

Your clients need to trust the decisions you make. Your employees need to be trusted and empowered to make those decisions. Reduce silos and gain insights from data across the firm. This not only enables your employees to make better decisions faster but meet the needs of your clients proactively. Earning and building trust takes time. An intelligent platform that works across devices will help deliver a consistent approach to the right contact, with the right information at the right time. This will help to build solid client relationships and allow firms to differentiate from competitors.

2.      Provide personalised client experiences

Clients value genuine working relationships. They also need to feel confident that the team representing them understand their requirements. Personalisation is essential to building lasting client relationships. However, currently face-to-face meetings and events have been put on hold. This means you need to consider other approaches to nurture client and working relationships.

The industry is seeing the shift to virtual work play out on LinkedIn, where engagement on the platform has increased. Understanding and learning about your clients and their challenges through a platform they are using everyday can help you transform your firm into a client-centric business.

Share your business insights across all your silos such as marketing, business development, and lawyers. This will help create better services and solutions. It will also enable you to create personalised experiences across all touch-points and provide better services that help clients as they need it or even before they realise they do.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 reduces silos by bringing together disparate data sets across your business to make informed decisions, faster. It covers all the critical areas for law firms and the entire client journey such as Marketing, Business Development, Finance and Operations and HR.

[msce_cta layout=”image_right” align=”right” linktype=”blue” imageurl=”http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/industry/blog/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2021/01/WIN20_PRO_RemoteWorking_030-scaled.jpeg” linkurl=”https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-gb/what-is-dynamics365/” linkscreenreadertext=”Discover Dynamics 365″ linktext=”Discover Microsoft Dynamics 365″ imageid=”45110″ ][/msce_cta]

3.      Understand your data and be agile to client needs

A recent survey by The Law Society’s Law Management Section suggests law firms are forecasting a 10-20 percent drop in revenue for the 2020/2021 financial year. Data holds the key to making timely, considered decisions. However, it is important to bring together data silos across legacy systems. This will provide a clear single client view.

One of the UK’s largest listed legal businesses, DWF, recently broke with tradition by going digital first.

“We had to be brave to step away from proven technology that the legal sector uses, but we had to in order to take DWF forward and give our clients the service they want today. By adopting this system, we are taking case management to the next level and transforming how all our staff work…It’s enabled our employees to see a complete picture of their clients and make informed decisions. That’s good for both parties.”

Samantha Charman, Head of Applications and Development, DWF

Microsoft Power Platform enables your firm to analyse data, build agile solutions, automate processes and surface knowledge at speed. The platform allows your firm to meet changing client needs in an agile way as well as empower your employees to make faster decisions.

[msce_cta layout=”image_right” align=”right” linktype=”blue” imageurl=”http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/industry/blog/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2020/09/WIN20_HOME_FAM_Surface_Pro6_0018.jpg” linkurl=”https://powerplatform.microsoft.com/en-gb/” linkscreenreadertext=”Be more agile with Power Platform” linktext=”Be more agile with Power Platform” imageid=”40373″ ][/msce_cta]

4.      Automate repetitive tasks to free up time for your employees

Efficiency is key for sustained success across organisations and industries. Especially to become more agile and resilient. Therefore, automation has become a high priority for law firms. It can help reduce the time-sapping administrative processes found in the legal industry.

The Allen and Overy Legal Benchmarking Report 2020 states that “the proliferation of legal technologies means that it is more feasible than ever to automate and streamline legal processes.” Yet only a small percentage of firms have invested resources into building a strategy in this area.

Robotic process automation (RPA) is gaining momentum to free up employees’ time to focus on higher–value work. Alongside this comes a growing demand for turning insights into opportunities and automating daily activities.

Put simply: the more you reduce unnecessary admin the more time you have for your clients.

5.      Provide confidence in data security

Data breaches have grown in intensity in 2020. The National Cyber Security Centre handled over 700 security incidents last year, compared to 658 in 2019.

Cybercriminals are more likely to take advantage of vulnerable businesses who have been forced to use legacy technology remotely. Therefore, clients need more assurance that their data is secure at all times.

With a cloud-based technology platform built on Microsoft Azure, your firm and your clients can have the confidence that their data is safe and protected, without compromising on anytime access for all approved staff.

Discover the way to make every client interaction count

Remote working doesn’t need to be a barrier to creating enriched, differentiated client experiences. It’s also likely that new measures of remote working and flexibility will continue to be expected by your clients and your employees, creating a hybrid working environment.

By making every client interaction count through adopting the right technology and supporting the best talent, your firm will be able to increase competitiveness, lower operational risk and truly embrace modern ways of working.

Find out more

Discover new ways of work with Microsoft Dynamics 365

Learn now to adapt your business now and for the future with Microsoft Power Platform

Reimagine an agile, smarter law firm with Microsoft Dynamics 365

Discover new ways to reimagine your law firm

About the author

Craig is a Microsoft Business Applications specialist aligned to the Professional Services and Legal sector. He has over 15 years’ experience in the software and services industry and is focussed on helping law firms through their workplace transformation journey. Craig is passionate about helping firms realise their strategic goals and understanding how the latest software innovations layered with data and AI can add value through the delivery of outstanding and increasingly distinctive client experiences.

The post How to build exceptional client experiences as a law firm appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.