Tuesday, July 27, 2021

HP uses artificial intelligence to transform its customer support experience

Learn how HP used the Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI solution to build a virtual agent and improve their customer experience by delivering better contact center support. This AI solution can help customers solve common problems via virtual assistant, provide support staff with instant access to a wealth of troubleshooting information, and gain deeper insights for the company into common customer issues.

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AI Cybersecurity Training

Discover how Azure Government provides government agencies and their partners world-class security, protection, and compliance through cloud services. In this video, Keenan Skelly talks about the benefits of a scalable, AI-powered, gamified, persistent cybersecurity training environment on the strength of Microsoft Azure.

Does Your Company Culture Lead to Happy Customers?

The correlation between employee experience and customer experience is clear: if the employee experience is mediocre or poor, employees will generally not care much about the company or the customers, states Phil Geldart in his Entrepreneur article, "Does Your Company Culture Lead to Happy Customers?" On the other hand, IBM found that if "employee experience is positive, and people feel valued and happy, they will care much more about the customer experience and be proud to work for the company," writes Geldart. Contributing factors for employee experience include physical environment, technological tools, and the organization's culture. Geldart shares that leaders have a responsibility to mirror how they expect their employees to treat customers. For example, if the "culture is one where employees embrace behaviors such as trust, collaboration, communication, respect, transparency and inclusion, they will, in turn, treat your customers in the same manner as they treat their colleagues," writes Geldart. Read the entire article for more examples of areas that greatly impact employee experience.

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Monday, July 26, 2021

Connect sales, service, and operations using Power Platform

This video highlights how Power Platform can help accelerate B2B manufacturing sales by connecting sales, service, and operations. Learn how Microsoft's Power Platform and Common Data Model can increase the lifetime value of customer relationships.

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Security Analytics and Operations: Industry Trends in the Era of Cloud Computing

Turn your organization to cloud-based security and address data capacity and infrastructure requirements to solve cloud challenges. Subscribe here!

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Connected Sales and Service with Microsoft Dynamics 365

In this video, discover how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service empowers manufacturers to improve customer engagement and profit margin, create accurate and tailored solutions for each customer, and automate the configuration, pricing, and quoting process for their sales teams to create accurate, personalized solutions.

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Council Post: The Era Of Evocative Marketing Has Arrived -- Are You Ready?

In an era of sensory overload—or, perhaps just 'overload'—we need to be extra-sensitive to the content and delivery of our marketing messages. We don't want to be the "one more thing" that's bombarding consumers; rather, we want to be fresh, unique and different. Lora Kratchounova, founder of Scratch Marketing + Media, says that the best differentiator in this this "crowded, loud digital landscape" is "content aimed at making audience members feel." Yes, "feel"—you know, emotions. Kratchounova writes that evocative content—compelling stories, captivating images, and uplifting video—is what stands out in today's digital world, where research shows that consumers are exposed to thousands of ads in a day. Read Kratchounova's fascinating look at ergonomics (also known as human-factors engineering) and its influence on today's marketing in a digital world. Read "The Era of Evocative Marketing Has Arrived—Are you Ready?"

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How Starbucks is using AI to improve the customer experience

At Microsoft's Build conference, Starbucks showed how artificial intelligence is helping them better predict what customers may be in the mood for by considering such factors such as weather, location, and user preferences.

Digitally transform your field service: 5 case studies from manufacturing

In five case studies, this eBook explains how cloud technologies can drive revenue growth, optimize processes, increase productivity, and improve customer experiences. Learn how tools like IoT, AR, and Dynamics 365 Field Service can provide transformative data insights.

View: Digitally transform your field service: 5 case studies from manufacturing

Monday, July 19, 2021

Leveraging Tech to Improve Customer Experience: 11 Smart Techniques

The importance of customer experience has taken off in recent years. As competition becomes the norm in many digital and application spaces, the interaction that the consumer has with a company becomes more important. CX is vital in helping a company retain its customers and grow its customer base through organic referrals. Luckily, technology offers several ways for businesses to improve their customer experience. In this article, 11 members of the Forbes Technology Council explain some techniques businesses can use to improve their customers' experience.

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Smart-building sweet spot: connecting building data with service technicians

In this customer story, learn how MacDonald-Miller Facility Solutions uses Microsoft Dynamics 365 Connected Field Service and Azure IoT services to respond proactively to potential problems and fix them before they cause disruptions. Dynamics 365 gives their workforce the tools to work more efficiently and improve customer satisfaction.

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Five ways to know you are ready for connected field service

This blog post by Microsoft details benefits of connected field service and outlines five ways to tell when a company is ready to equip their organization with connected field service.

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Tuesday, July 13, 2021

The Workforce of the Future eBook

New levels of connectivity and advanced technologies like AI enable businesses to process more data on a larger scale. AI plays one of the biggest roles—in terms of disruption and resulting opportunity—for our industry and our workforce. As we look to a future powered by a partnership between computers and humans, we must address these challenges head on: How will AI impact employment and jobs? How do we ensure that AI is designed, used, and governed responsibly? Explore answers to these questions and more in this valuable eBook.

View: The Workforce of the Future eBook

Monday, July 12, 2021

A Grateful Culture Is A Healthy Culture. Here's How To Create It.

Many studies over the past decade show a correlation between gratitude and happiness—the more people feel and practice gratitude, the more contentment and joy they experience. We know this is true in our personal lives—and it's true in our professional lives as well. In his article, "A Grateful Culture is a Healthy Culture. Here's How to Create it," John Hall writes about gratitude in the workplace; specifically, how to create an appreciative company culture amongst team members. The first step, writes Hall, is to start with yourself: "Make time to reflect each day on the positive things that have happened to you, what you've already accomplished, and what you like about yourself." While it's nice to communicate your appreciation to others, it's not essential that you do so repeatedly. Just by making time to consider what you're your grateful for, you've stimulated your hypothalamus which regulates a lot and affects empathy, social cognition and emotional experiences. It's difficult to encourage gratitude in your team if you're not experiencing it yourself. And yes—they'll know. Read Hall's entire article for three other ways to create or increase a culture of gratitude.

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ROI Azure Synapse

This infographic shows how @Microsoft Azure Synapse brings Big Data and Data Warehousing together in a single service to provide limitless analytics.

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Manufacturing a better future with Microsoft

In this video, discover five ways to digitally transform your business to manufacture a better future with Microsoft. Equipping your business with intelligent manufacturing improves your customers' business outcomes while increasing your own margins and competitiveness. Learn more with this video.

The Role of AI and People Analytics in Developing the Leaders of Tomorrow

While investment in digital business solutions continues to increase, employees remain the lifeblood of every enterprise. This article from Forbes covers key ways AI and analytics help organizations hire the right people and train them for success.

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Tuesday, July 6, 2021

Improve Your Brand's Online Reputation with SEO

In today's digital world, a positive online reputation relates to much of a business's success. Good reviews and high scores along with relevant content help consumers find your website. That's why Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should be a main part of your online reputation management. SEO involves tailoring your website's content to rank high in search engines' criteria—and put you at the top in buyer searches for products and services. It includes identifying and using key words, content optimization, link building, and blog and social media presence. In her article, "Improve Your Brand's Online Reputation with SEO," Jessica Wong explains that the "right blog can contribute to your SEO ranking, generate more clicks from the search engine results page and help turn those clicks into sales." A blog post should have a good mix of search keywords, relevant videos and pictures, and links to and from your page, she explains. Read Wong's entire article for an overview of the four stages to SEO implementation and the six areas to focus on for improving your brand's online reputation related to SEO.

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Monday, July 5, 2021

Building Autonomous Systems with Microsoft AI

This video is a powerful example of how autonomous systems can be aligned to intelligently perform routine tasks. Toyota Material Handling partnered with Microsoft using AirSim (an open source simulation platform originally developed to teach drones or robots to learn in high fidelity simulated environments) to train a forklift on tasks like picking up a pallet. This video illustrates the vision for a future warehouse with pre-trained, intelligent forklifts assisting people in everyday activities.

Building an AI Powered organization

The business world is rapidly changing. It is estimated that AI will add $13 trillion to the global economy over the next decade-and yet from thousands of executives surveyed, only 8% of firms are adopting core practices that fully support implementation. Businesses arrive at progress slowly, reflecting a failure to rewire within the organization. This article from Harvard Business Review demonstrates how companies can make a successful shift to utilizing AI and setting themselves up for success.

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2 Types of Artificial Intelligence

Bring the future into your business today with AI. Explore two types: Pre-Built and Custom Built. Pre-Built AI has cognitive services - deep learning cognitive capabilities ready to use (vision, speech, knowledge, translation, etc.), whereas Custom Built AI uses machine learning capabilities to analyze data to build and an artificial neural network to address specific problems not covered by Cognitive Services.

View: 2 Types of Artificial Intelligence

The Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) suit microsoft Cloud understand plan

 The Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) suite from Microsoft offers two primary plans: EMS E3 and EMS E5. Each plan includes a range of to...