Drive loyalty and growth with the manage customer relationships business process area

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Applies to: Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Customer Voice

This article provides an overview of using Dynamics 365 to manage customer relationships and drive loyalty and growth. Strong customer relationship management requires collaboration across Sales, Service, Marketing, and Operations to maximize customer lifetime value.

Effective customer relationship management starts when Sales classifies and documents new customer accounts. Prospects can be nurtured so that they become clients. Sales is also responsible for structuring customer hierarchies to represent organizational relationships. Account managers and cross-functional teams are assigned to manage key accounts and develop growth strategies.

As customers begin engaging, Customer Service provides ongoing support across channels such as email, chat, phone, and in person. Service agents have access to the full customer history and can therefore deliver personalized experiences. Marketing creates segmented customer journeys to guide customers through educational touchpoints. Operations fulfills orders and returns.

Throughout the customer lifecycle, teams track satisfaction metrics and loyalty through surveys and interaction analysis. This data helps identify upsell opportunities and prevent churn. Dynamics 365 empowers teams to work together seamlessly and gain unified visibility into all customer interactions. Proactive relationship management is vital for maximizing lifetime value, profitability, and traceability.

Key stakeholders

  • Sales reps: Manage accounts.
  • Account managers: Develop strategic relationships.
  • Customer service: Provide support (linked to the Service to cash end-to-end business process).
  • Marketing: Create customer journeys (linked to Run Marketing Campaigns).
  • Operations: Fulfill orders (linked to Inventory to Deliver).

Manage customer relationships flow

The following diagram illustrates the key steps in the manage customer relationships business process area.

Each solid gray rectangle on the diagram represents an end-to-end business process. The solid blue rectangle represents the business process area. The diagram shows the subprocesses for the business process area. The arrows on the diagram show the flow of the business process in an organization. If a subprocess can lead to more than one other subprocess, the parallel subprocesses are shown as branches.

Flow diagram for the manage customer relationships business process area, which is explained in the paragraphs after the image.

The following steps are illustrated in the business process flow diagram.

  1. Start

  2. Prospect to quote end-to-end process

  3. Manage customer relationships business process area

    1. Create and classify customer accounts

      • Create and manage contacts, prospects, and customers
      • Convert a prospect to a customer
      • Create customer hierarchies
      • Create relationships for accounts
      • Assign account managers and build cross-functional teams

    2. Create relationships between customers

    3. Manage loyalty programs

      • Measure customer satisfaction and loyalty
      • Provide sales and service support
      • Develop account plans and strategic initiatives
      • Assist customers through their journey

    4. Organize contacts in organization charts for a customer

  4. End

There are upstream branches to Create and classify customer accounts from order to cash and service to cash. There are also upstream branches to Manage loyalty programs from order to cash and service to cash. In addition, there are upstream branches to Organize contacts in organization charts for a customer from hire to retire and Master data management.

Benefits

There are many benefits that accrue from implementing technology to support the manage customer relationships business process area. This section outlines key benefits that an organization might monitor and measure to track the impact of their manage customer relationships business process.

  • Increased customer lifetime value

    Personalized experiences and proactive outreach help enhance retention and expand accounts.

  • Higher profitability

    Up-sell and cross-sell additional products and services by understanding customer needs.

  • Improved customer experiences

    Personalized sales and service are powered by unified Dynamics 365 customer data and insights.

  • Better account collaboration

    Shared customer insights across teams in Dynamics 365.

  • Proactive issue resolution

    Identify potential problems early via analytics to prevent churn.

Overall, Dynamics 365 enables organizations to maximize the potential of every customer relationship.

Key concepts

Customer lifetime value – The total revenue that is generated from a customer over time. Cross-sell/up-sell – Selling additional or higher-value products to existing customers. Customer journey – All touchpoints and interactions that a customer has with a company.

Next steps

If you want to implement Dynamics 365 solutions to help with your prospect to quote business processes, can use the following resources and steps to learn more.

  1. Define sales strategies

  2. Run marketing campaigns

  3. Identify and qualify leads

  4. Pursue opportunities

  5. Estimate and quote sales

  6. Manage customer relationships (the article that you're currently reading)

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