Microsoft Corp. wants to be as customer-centric as possible, engaging customers in the most efficient ways to add more brand loyalty to its portfolio.
As a result, Microsoft on Wednesday announced the Spring ’15 release for Parature from Microsoft, adding capabilities that empower brands and organizations to deliver engaging customer self-service solutions across applications, channels and devices.
The release emphasizes productivity for customer service professionals by delivering insights “above the service queue” to help agents quickly understand, diagnose, and resolve issues that customers may face. With this release, Parature will be available for purchase through Microsoft Online Services—providing customers with unified purchase and support experiences along with existing Microsoft cloud services. The release of the service will be available in 50 markets worldwide and be offered in 10 languages.
Bill Patterson, senior director of customer self-service solutions at Microsoft, explained to Loyalty360 what customer-centricity means to his company.
“To us, this simply means that Microsoft is manically focused on our customers’ needs,” he said. “To deliver solutions that help them be proactive, better understand and engage with their customers across all channels, on any device, anywhere to deliver amazing experiences.”
Patterson explained that customer expectations of service from businesses and brands are higher than ever before.
“In a connected world, they are engaging with businesses through multiple channels including web, social media, phone, etc.,” he said. “When looking for support they want personalized service so their issues and questions resolved quickly. Businesses on the other hand are looking for solutions that equip their customer service professionals so they have deeper insight into the needs of their customers so they can deliver proactive service that exceed customer expectations and build loyalty.”
Patterson said that the latest release of Parature delivers capabilities that meet both the needs of businesses and their customers.
“With more than 30 high-priority features, spanning knowledge management, support ticketing, live chat, social and mobile, this release marks a milestone in our efforts to deliver more expansive multi-channel service engagement solutions that are more proactive, more personal, and will lead to greater productivity,” Patterson said. “This Parature update empowers customers to more effectively get help, as well as agents to give help, while more seamlessly connecting with customers across channels, devices and experiences.”
At the same time, Patterson said this release is also about “making Parature more readily available to existing Microsoft customers through global expansion, licensing programs (Enterprise Agreement or direct purchase through Microsoft Online Commerce) and Parature service offerings such as enhanced customer service and technical support offerings through Microsoft.”