Microsoft recently announced the general availability of Microsoft Social Engagement for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This toolbox replaces Microsoft Social Listening, and in our last entry, we discussed some of the new features for the new toolbox, including an improved user interface, new filters, and new visualizations. Today we’ll look at some of the other new features to be found in Microsoft Social Engagement for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
The Social Center has received a number of enhancements. Here you have user-specific, configurable, and shareable streams consisting of vertical columns that display social posts as they come in. This data is usually the domain of social media and community managers, but it can also be an indispensable tool for a customer service manager who can monitor posts and proactively engage. The new release supports the following:
- Internal actions: Assigning a post to a user and also applying a status label, which you can define in the Settings area.
- External actions: Responding natively from within each stream with the following actions: Reply, Retweet, Favorite, and Direct Message on Twitter, and Like, Comment, Share, and Private Message on Facebook.
- Social Profiles: People now have the ability to add authenticated Twitter and Facebook accounts, which enables them to interact with their audience on social posts coming from Twitter and Facebook.
- Search Topic Set-up: Sales, marketing, and service professionals can now set up search topics in an easier and more flexible manner. They can now define rules by the following criteria: keyword, Facebook page, and Twitter handle. Projected quota usage is displayed, as well as a preview of Twitter posts, to give them an idea of the type of results they can expect.
This summer we’ll see the arrival of Social CRM, a complete end-to-end customer experience that gives sales people the ability to convert social posts into leads, opportunities, cases, or any custom CRM entity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
