Accessing applications with the Customer Care Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Superior customer service can be an essential source of strength when attempting to keep customer satisfaction high. With access to social media it has become easier to vent criticism online about for example the customer service of a company. Two things that could improve the customer satisfaction are knowledgeable employees and resolving the problem on the first call. One way of improving these KPIs could be by integrating business applications into the agent desktop and as such this article will focus on assessing this possibility.

For most of our customers at Avanade we see that data related to a customer is scattered throughout numerous systems. Mostly, Dynamics CRM is used for customer data. There are additional applications for financial usage, for ticket handling, for business-specific applications and for other related applications. So how can a company be sure that a customer is provided with the service they are looking for when the agent doesn't know in which system to look for a solution?

Microsoft's Customer Care Accelerator (CCA) is a framework for customer service contact center applications on top of Dynamics CRM. While Dynamics CRM already offers a service solution, CCA takes it to the next level. It may be a solution when customer data alone will not solve most of the common contact center issues. CCA's next level consists of a number of potentially valuable options.

First of all, the framework allows you to integrate Java, Web, Windows Forms and Terminal Service applications into the agent desktop. This allows the agent to see the customer's financial data right next to the orders, contact history and for instance messages or complaints the customer posted on social media. When opening those applications it is possible to send custom input parameters along with the request ...