5 Ways Microsoft Dynamics 365 Can Help Enhance Citizen Engagement

From councils and housing associations to police forces, public sector organisations across the UK face several common challenges when it comes to customer communication and engagement.

Limitation on resources, accessibility concerns, language barriers – all of these (and more) can make it difficult to effectively engage with your local communities. 

How Can Dynamics 365 Enhance Citizen Engagement?

Whether you’re considering a move to Microsoft Dynamics 365 or simply want to learn how to make the most of your existing implementation, here are four ways the platform’s solutions work together to help create seamless engagements and remove these barriers.

1. Provide a bank of knowledge as and when your citizens need it

Providing the right level of information in the right place has an important part to play in helping your public sector organisation communicate effectively with the public.

Dynamics 365 provides a centralised knowledge base to store information about processes, frequently asked questions and any other information that may be of use.

Articles can be made available to the public through a self-service portal, giving them the freedom to search for and find the answers to their questions without needing to get in touch with you directly. With functionality to display the content in different languages, this can prove handy for non-native English speakers.

These articles can also be made available to support staff to ensure that the information is consistent for those who do prefer to reach out directly via phone, email, chat or social media.

2. Use social media management tools to communicate clearly and effectively

Dynamics 365 has social media integration, making it quick and easy for you to track and respond to members of the public who prefer to reach you via Facebook Messenger, Twitter and other mainstream social platforms.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram posts can also be created and scheduled directly in Dynamics 365, so you can use this function to manage all your public-facing social media comms.

3. Offer people a wider variety of ways to get in touch

As well as social media messengers, Dynamics 365 gives you the chance to seamlessly introduce online chat functionality thanks to Omnichannel for Customer Service. With it, customers can reach you via a chat widget that gets added to your website and monitored by a member – or members – of your customer support team, who can chat with your customers directly.

Omnichannel also provides a central hub for management of phone calls, SMS, WhatsApp and other channels of communication, which means quick and clear responses for customers and an easier life for your team.

Chatbots can also be developed and added to optimise agent availability and ensure customers are routed to the right agent the very first time they get in touch. Customer interactions will be stored chronologically against the customer records in a secure Dataverse database to provide a holistic view of all customer engagements and keep all sensitive customer information safe.

4. Empower your citizens with self-service capability

With Dynamics 365, you can provide a secure portal for members of the public to log in and access a range of self-serve options.

While input from your support team will likely be needed at certain stages in a journey, self-service gives citizens the power to kickstart a request or complete a task at a time that suits them – from reporting a missed a bin collection or anti-social behaviour, through to setting up a direct debit or making a one-off payment.

Process automation will ensure your team is notified as and when needed and involved in the completion of a particular action or request, wherever appropriate.

Customer portals can also be used for communicating key information, almost like an online noticeboard, helping keep citizens in the know on any relevant updates.

The security and setup of Dynamics 365 portals allows you to provide the right level of information to the customer throughout their request or journey while keeping their data safe and secure in line with public sector guidelines.

5. Use reporting and analytics to guide the way you communicate

To make engagements with the public meaningful, reporting and analytics data can be leveraged to drive interaction and the information available to the public.

Using Customer Service analytics, we can see what customers are engaging with and through which channels, while sentiment analysis can help your team understand customers’ sentiment over the course of their interaction or the general public’s feelings towards a particular topic.

By analysing real-time customer interactions and comments about your organisation on social channels, you can gain a valuable insight into what your citizens are thinking and feeling – helping you plan your communications more effectively.