Microsoft Employs Single CRM Platform to Build One of the World's Largest Multi-language Service Solutions 

Situation

More than six thousand Microsoft Commercial Service and Support (CSS) representatives field 1.2 million service requests per year. Many of these are complex issues from savvy technology users and repeat callers. CSS representatives have been using a 12-year old legacy Clarify system to provide support and recently began exploring ways to improve customer satisfaction and shorten issue resolution times.

The Clarify solution required seven instances to support commercial service activities globally. This resulted in separate data silos that made it difficult to share information among agents and managers. The legacy platform also lacked the multi-language capabilities that division executives needed to support the company’s global language support and services model. These challenges led managers to seek a platform that would help Microsoft provide even more effective support to customers anywhere, at any time.

Solution

Managers applied a very formal selection process based on their business drivers and technical criteria. “We needed a platform that was extensible, would integrate easily with other systems in our environment, included robust workflow capabilities and could support our global 24/7 operations,” says Brett Dean, principal solutions manager for Microsoft. “We selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM over the SAP CRM solution we put it up against for these reasons and because we could bring it to market much faster.” Managers will use the multi-tenancy features of the new solution to consolidate seven instances of their service support database down to one. Moreover, they’ll utilize the multi-language capability to support worldwide service operations.

Benefits

The solution’s multi-tenancy feature allows IT managers to implement and use a single CRM platform. In turn, employees across the enterprise will gain a global view of customers. “The multi-language feature allows us to provide more effective service to multinational companies by empowering service personnel to speak to customers in their own language from the first call through resolution,” explains
Dean. By introducing best-practices workfl ows in tandem with in-language support, Dean expects service agent productivity and effectiveness to increase markedly. From an IT perspective, “The platform is so fl exible and extensible that we can easily achieve at least 12 integration points with other systems and applications inside Microsoft,” says Dean.

Company

Microsoft Corp.
http://www.microsoft.com/

Vertical Industry

Software

Segment

Large Business

Country / Region

North America
APAC
EMEA
LATAM