Personalise Your Customer Experience with Dynamics 365 with Guro Faller and Tricia Sinclair

[00:00:00] Neil Benson: Welcome to Amazing Applications episode 114. I'm your host, Neil Benson, and in this episode I'm joined by Microsoft MVPs Guro Faller and Tricia Sinclair. Guro and Tricia are presenting at Scottish Summit in Glasgow in June. 

Their presentation is "Personalize Your Customer Experience with Dynamics 365". It's going to be a showcase of the art of the possible with Dynamics 365 Marketing, Customer Insights, and Omni-channel for Customer Service. 

Their session is at 5:00 PM on Friday, the 10th of June. And in fact, I've just discovered there's a little toggle on the Scottish Summit website that you can use to display the session times in Glasgow time or in your local time zone, wherever you're visiting the website from. So Tricia and Guro are actually presenting at 2:00 AM on Saturday morning for everyone here in Brisbane. 

 Guro Faller is a solution lead in the digital marketing center of excellence at Avanade, and she's based in Oslo, in Norway. Tricia Sinclair is a customer service lead also at Avanade, and she's based in London in the UK. 

Together, they are one half of the organizing committee of the new Customer Experience User Group that you heard about in the last episode, 113 with Vivian Voss. If you love blending Marketing, Customer Service, Customer Insights, and Sales together, then you're going to love Tricia and Guro's session, and I hope this episode as well, and you really need to be part of their user group too.

You'll find links to Guro and Tricia's contact information and that user group in the show notes AmazingApps.Show/114. Let's meet Guro and Tricia.

 Welcome to the Amazing Applications podcast I've got Guro Faller and Tricia Sinclair. Welcome to the show. 

[00:02:13] Tricia Sinclair: Yeah. 

[00:02:15] Neil Benson: So Tricia, I know you from the MVP program and Guro you've, you've joined recently as well. I think just back in June you were awarded, so congratulations. Um, Tricia, do you wanna give us a quick introduction to yourself? Let the audience know who you are, where you are and what you love to get up to. 

[00:02:28] Tricia Sinclair: My name is Tricia, and I basically am a Customer Service lead at Avanade so I love all the 365 business application modules. Like I personally love them all, but of course my preference is Customer Service and that's really what I talk about a lot. do like to blog. I do like to speak at events. And that's mainly around two topics, you might know me for one, which is Azure DevOps the other, of course, which is more Customer Service. 

[00:03:02] Guro Faller: Hi, my name is Guro Faller and I'm also at Avanade. I'm one of the solution leads for marketing automation, uh, focusing on Microsoft products to realize that, uh, I come from a background of Dynamics and Customer Engagement applications. I've been working with that since. Like 2012. So it's almost 10 years now, focusing home, all the amazing things we can do with the business applications.

So I really, really love digging really deep into functionality, understanding how it works and how we can make it amazing for customers.

[00:03:40] Neil Benson: That's cool. The reason I wanted to bring you both onto the show is really to discuss your topic coming up at Scottish Summit soon, it's called "Personalize your customer experience with Dynamics 365". And I was intrigued because you're bringing together the best of Marketing and Customer Service, and skip skipping the Sales application, but using those two applications and the experiences they can deliver to really personalize the engagement that we're delivering for our customers. 

I've got this little belief that Customer Service is actually part of the Marketing department because how we serve our existing customers will absolutely determine the upselling, cross-selling capability that we have, also the word of mouth referrals and reviews that we get.

So by pleasing our current customers, that's the best way to attract new customers. Do you think that's a thought, a fair summary and is that a direction that you cover in your presentation?

[00:04:33] Guro Faller: I think that's spot on. That's really the debate Tricia and me have been having. What comes first customer experience or customer service, or is there a difference? It really goes hand in hand, even if you had included Sales in the mix, it would still go hand in hand. A lot of customers have most of them have a customer service still one way or the other. And it is a channel where you really need to take care and pay attention to your customers and give them the best service. And it's a perfect marketing channel. You can upsell, cross sell. just depends on how you're receiving the information about what that customer's needs are.

[00:05:11] Neil Benson: Tricia, Do you want to tell me about your, your presentation? How did you come up with this topic together and, 

[00:05:16] Tricia Sinclair: See, what I find is a lot of the times we, when we're talking about Dynamics, we talk about a module. And a lot of the times now, customers don't need a module. They need us to resolve a problem for them. 

So one of the problems, typically customers would come with us, 'We're losing customers. Why are we losing customers?'

Or it could be, Oh well this campaign wasn't as effective as we wanted it to be.' Well, why is that? They're not looking at the full journey, the full experience of that customer and that's where putting the modules together, and actually just at what the ideal outcome is, And then putting the applicable modules.

So for one of our customers, we had put together a presentation on omnichannel pulling in Customer Insights data. We did that presentation at South Coast Summit. And that was amazing. That was epic. And then I was speaking to Guro because Guro was there she could see value in it by adding marketing.

Of course. We should add marketing, right? So the idea is that we're going to take that going to basically make it even more amazing by now adding the functionality that grows specializes in which is marketing. that's not like my strong suit. So Guro's going to add where she's powerful at and we're going to be able to tell an even better story, by adding Marketing.

[00:06:51] Neil Benson: What type of people should come along to your presentation? Is it going to be a technical demonstration with lots of behind the scenes how to build applications or is it higher level stuff people to come along to? 

[00:07:02] Tricia Sinclair: So we're doing more of a demo. So it's kind of like art of the possible, so definitely business. It's also things that I don't think a lot of people have seen because how many people have actually seen Customer Service and Marketing working together? Not many. It's not something that you normally do. It's normally Sales and Service or Sales and Marketing. Marketing and customer services never put together. Then the other thing, as well as yes, Customer Insights is there, but it's also a bit new it's also normally lumped with Marketing. How do you actually take Customer Insights and apply it to Marketing?

Well, our demo, what we're doing is we're showcasing how we can actually apply Customer Insights to deflect contact on deflect callers, using PVA to pull information and deflect conversation away from the agent. Have omnichannel functionality into D365. Not only that, but we're also showing some, the new stuff that's coming out.

For example, the voice channel, cause we will be using the voice channel. So there'll be a little like nuggets of goodness, just dotted along the way and this journey, right? So people who are technical will get value because they're seeing this, this in front of them and it is live. Then people who want to understand the business process of what this could do for them show up and the the actual cherry on top, Neil, the cherry on top is being able to utilize Customer Insights to have the machine that, you know, the customer churn and the product of recommendations come up inside of, um, Smart Assist, and omni-channel to help an agent then generate a new order based on the product recommendation. Right? And then that will then go back. Cause marketing of course will be. Yeah. So all of that. Definitely just come and see the session. 

[00:08:56] Neil Benson: Wow Yeah, there. So amazing 

[00:09:00] Guro Faller: And if it's not technical enough, we will be there so everyone can come over and talk and see what's under the hood later. We're always up for a good debate as well

Uh, 

[00:09:10] Neil Benson: Tricia Is Customer Service Insights still a separate thing or is that going away? Cause I know that some of the analyses that were available are now built into Customer Service, and I haven't heard it mentioned for a little while and wondering if it's dropped off. 

[00:09:23] Tricia Sinclair: Customer Service Insights still exists, but it no longer exists as a separate licensing module. If that makes sense, not available. If you have customer service enterprise, um, additional and metrics are available. If you have voice depending on the channel, that will depend on the metrics that you can see, but it is available just now part of the standard product and only embedded within CE. 

[00:09:52] Neil Benson: Yeah, great. Because I showcase some of its capabilities to a customer who ran a contact centre with about 1500 customer service representatives we wanted to do real time voice analysis and transcription to listen to it for keywords, there was some new regulations coming into Australia about selling insurance.

You're not allowed to cross sell insurance. We could spot agents who were still falling into their old training, their old behaviour and deflect them away from cross selling car insurance to a home insurance customer analyzing the voicemails. 

[00:10:24] Tricia Sinclair: That's now only available in Sales Insights, not Customer Service Insights. 

[00:10:29] Neil Benson: Uh, okay.

[00:10:30] Guro Faller: So you need some Sales in there. Don't forget. 

[00:10:33] Tricia Sinclair: For that you need Call Intelligence, which is a parts of Sales Insights. 

[00:10:38] Guro Faller: Yeah. Which is also a really, really fun topic, but that's not, uh, that's not going to be part of the heart field anymore. We have enough to cope with at the moment. Uh,

[00:10:51] Neil Benson: You've got a couple of weeks.

[00:10:53] Guro Faller: Yeah.

[00:10:54] Neil Benson: What's it like developing a presentation together and figuring out who's going to show what and what the timing is going to be like? Are you rehearsing that rigorously at the moment?

[00:11:04] Guro Faller: We have to start soon to get the smooth enough to work in a session. That's a, it's only 50, 50 minutes. I think we could spend four hours if we want it to just to show details. But we need it to be snappy and it's going to be art of the possible. So we can't go through all of the details. And then of course, people will need to ask questions if there's something they would like to see that we have not covered. But Tricia and I, we work together quite regularly. Uh, but it's, we are two women. So we need to also find time for, for this, uh, and dedicate some time to actually start rehearsing. Um, We have our own areas more or less. So it's a a good 50, 50 split on how the functionality and what we can talk about. I think it's just, uh, who wants to do most in Customer Insights, which has done there? The middle, middle I almost wanted to say.

[00:12:07] Neil Benson: Have either of you been to Scottish Summit before? I was there two years ago, it was the last overseas trip I was able to make. I remember coming back and straight into lockdown here in Australia. I'm really disappointed that I can't be there in person this year, but I'll definitely be there in spirit.

Last year it was all virtual. This year, we're we're back in person Glasgow. It's, uh, it's going to be an amazing session. What else are you looking forward to? I know Tricia, you got another, event that you're helping to organize that involves some dressing up. Tell us about the pub quiz at Scottish Summit.

[00:12:39] Tricia Sinclair: So the pub quiz is going to be absolutely epic. Yes. We will be dressing up again this, this time. The sequins will make an appearance. There might be also some tartans. We have our team captains. They're ready to go. And they're basically trying to fill their teams because, of course, if you want to join the team, you've got to buy the ticket as soon as possible. Guro is one of the team captains and her team is a filling up fast. So, you know, that will be. 

[00:13:14] Neil Benson: Right. So we shall include registration links for the Scottish Summit Pub Quiz in the show notes. Make sure you get your ticket for that. And we're

[00:13:23] Guro Faller: And it's for a good cause.

[00:13:25] Tricia Sinclair: It's for Rock Trust, yes. Which is all about homeless, um, homeless people in Scotland. So we're trying to eradicate homelessness and educate to homelessness. So, it is all going towards that charity. 

[00:13:38] Neil Benson: Fantastic. Well, that's a cause close to my heart, so I will be supporting that from here. I, I might buy a ticket and see if I can join the pub quiz virtually. That would be awesome.

[00:13:47] Tricia Sinclair: That would be epic. Yeah. 

[00:13:48] Guro Faller: Oh, you can still donate. 

[00:13:51] Tricia Sinclair: You can still donate, even if you can't make the quiz, just feel free to go buy a ticket. Just say that you will not be attending the quiz. That money will still go towards Rock Trust. 

[00:14:02] Neil Benson: I remember Andrew Bibby trying to run the pub quiz last time with a very sore throat and a very loud room with a very poor microphone. Hopefully we sort out the audio visual this time and that'll be a great experience. It's always a lot of fun. 

[00:14:15] Tricia Sinclair: We have an organizing team and we have me and Keegs, so he now has more help. 

[00:14:21] Neil Benson: Okay, Tricia, what else is going on with you? I heard a little bit about Power Platform School. Do you want to tell us about that? 

[00:14:27] Tricia Sinclair: Yeah, the Power Platform school is going to be starting again in February, February the fourth, actually. It's just growing each year. Last year we really started in March, but this year we're starting in February because of the amounts of additional workshops that we want to provide. It's more mentees.

If you don't know what the Power Platform school is, it is a charity that aims to get more diversity in tech. Right now focus on black people, you know, because right now in the UK, there will be 4% of black people that make up that people are in tech. So the aim is to change that through mentorship, training and through partnership with Microsoft partners. Microsoft have also really been very good to us. They've provided exam vouchers for all the mentees so that they can take the Power Platform Fundamentals exam. And if they've already taken that exam, cause I won't lie, some of the mentees are a bit, go getters. So they've already taken the the way there. they then get to take another exam.

and So far we've also had some great success with our mentees, but we are always looking for mentors, especially in the U.S. Where we do have a shortage of mentors, and also looking for partners who are willing to take a chance on, you know, some new starters who might not have most experienced in the Power Platform or any business experience in the Power Platform.

Just get in touch. 

[00:15:58] Neil Benson: You're taking, is it school kids, graduates, people retraining, right across all stages of their career or...?

[00:16:04] Tricia Sinclair: Any of the above. It doesn't really matter what you know, where you are in life. We have graduates. So the last from we have graduates, had, um, people in who wanted to change careers. For example, some social workers. We have two social workers who wanted to change careers. We have people that had come in, know, they they'd been in the UK for a while, but when they, when they came to the UK, they found it difficult to find jobs. So they went into another role. Now they're finding the opportunity to maybe they could do something that they wanted to do, which is tech. And we've also got people who at home mums want to come back into the tech world. 

[00:16:49] Neil Benson: I was chatting with a lady on a Facebook it was a personal finance group about careers. She had posted about getting Salesforce training and I said, oh, that's, you know, it's not as popular in Australia. You're far better to go with Microsoft training. She put herself through some Power Platform Fundamentals or, or was it Dynamics 365 Fundamentals? And she's just taking her first job in the industry with Avanade of all companies. Would you believe? So, yeah, it's amazing to see people come into our industry. We, we are, you know, a hundred thousand developers short in Australia. Yeah, anything we can do anywhere in the world uh, boost the number of people coming into our industry is fantastic. So well done on that initiative. 

I'd love to support it as well. So anybody who's into the Power Platform School who wants to learn how to build applications in an agile approach using the Scrum framework, I'd love to give them a complimentary enrollment in my Scrum from Microsoft Business Apps course. So Tricia you can open that up to anybody who's in the school or has come through the school in the past too. 

[00:17:51] Tricia Sinclair: Thank you very much. We'll definitely share the around. So look out for the applications that will be coming through. 

[00:18:00] Neil Benson: And Guro, you're up to some, some new stuff as well. Do you want to share that with us?

[00:18:03] Guro Faller: Yeah, absolutely. So tomorrow will be our first meetup of our new user group for Customer Experience. It's kind of started with Microsoft finally putting kind of the official label on their Customer Experience Platform, which is, it's not really something new and it's not rebranding, but it's really a way of speaking about the customer experience products. And we wanted a user group where we can focus on Marketing, Customer Insights and how that extends into Customer Service, Sales, even Commerce, um, even over into Azure Analytics with Synapse and more and more capabilities that are tagged towards customer experience. Cause we don't, just have a marketing solution. We need that. We got just stop customer service. You need the customer data, et cetera. So it's really, uh, a user group to help us all talk, uh, exchange knowledge, learn more, uh, from each other.

So, we're aiming for a global group. Tomorrow we'll learn a little bit more about what the new members of the group would like. It's an initiative by myself, Vivian Voss, Mishel Justesen, and Dilyana Radulova. We don't know what everyone else wants, you know what we would like from a user group. So tomorrow we are opening up the first session, and, we're hoping people areenthusiastic and want to join, share presentations, talk, ask questions, um, commit feedback. There are many people from Microsoft on the relevant 

product teams that are interested in speaking and sharing insights. So it's, hopefully it will be a good place where we can have an open round table with not just MVPs, not just customers, not just partners, but everyone in a big happy mix to get really the best feedback and the best insights of how to use this best to drive customer experience.

[00:20:13] Neil Benson: Well, it's an amazing committee you've got chairing that new user group. So it's

[00:20:17] Guro Faller: All women.

[00:20:19] Neil Benson: Yeah. I'd love to join if the meetings are at a convenient time I struggle here in Australia to, to join some of those, but, um, I'm really excited. I've been working with Microsoft on that new user group platform for awhile. So it's great to see other virtual, global user groups launching on there.

So, yeah, I, you, I presume you're running your new user group on the Microsoft community platform.

[00:20:41] Guro Faller: Yes. So we have a user group on the Dynamics communities. Um, we also have, um, uh, Teams tenant on the community tenant. Uh, so people can join which side they're most comfortable at or both of them. And be happy on sharing on, on both. So we'll host the sessions, uh, sessions from the community tenant, and shared events, of course, then on the user group site and really market this everywhere to drive people into it. But it can't be a user group only to fit my time zone. So we need to come out like a traveling band to go around different time zones. Which is something that we've been doing in our communities of practice meetings in Avanade is having them at different time zones or two to suit, different time zones to get more people engaged. It can't always fit someone in Europe. It can't always fit someone in North America. Sometimes it needs to fit someone in Australia.

[00:21:39] Neil Benson: Great stuff. Well, I would love to include some links to that in the show notes as well. So people can check that out and join I'll do my best to promote it through our community as well. I think it's an awesome initiative. Well done.

[00:21:49] Guro Faller: Thank you.

[00:21:50] Neil Benson: Ladies. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Amazing Applications podcast. Really appreciate your time.

[00:21:55] Guro Faller: Thank you for having us. 

[00:21:57] Tricia Sinclair: Thank you.