Transform retail customer experiences with the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform

At National Retail Federation (NRF) 2023: Retail’s Big Show, thousands of people joined together in New York City to collectively envision what’s next for the future of retail. The lessons and best practices shared have important implications for other industries as well. Retailers, operating in a highly competitive environment, are often the first to blaze the trail of innovation in customer experience.

Elevating the consumer shopping experience requires companies to deliver more relevant, streamlined experiences throughout the retail value chain. That delivery starts with unifying disparate data from sources across the end-to-end shopper journey. Driving customer acquisition, retention, and business growth requires a connection between your customers, your people, and your data.

Marketers today are rethinking their data strategies, looking for ways to take ownership of their customer data and to use that resource to create valued customer relationships in a time of tightening privacy legislation. Microsoft continues to make significant investments in helping organizations across industries fulfill customer demands for privacy and personalization while optimizing marketing return on investment (ROI). To that end, we are excited to showcase the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform—an opportunity for organizations to jump-start their customer experience transformations—at NRF 2023.

Deliver more relevant customer engagements with the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform

The Microsoft Customer Experience Platform is an end-to-end customer experience platform that brings together industry-leading applications spanning Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Dynamics 365 Marketing, Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Commerce, Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft PromoteIQ, Microsoft Clarity, Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, and Microsoft Purview.

With full ownership of their data, organizations can engage buyers the way they expect. With a deep understanding of customers and rich, out-of-the-box insights, organizations can now maximize the value of their customer data. By determining and predicting intent, they can deliver the right content on the right channel and in the right moment. And, with AI-orchestrated journeys, organizations can engage customers in powerful new ways, delivering connected experiences across every customer touchpoint—all the way from awareness, to purchase, to service.

For Chief Data Officers (CDO) and their data wranglers, the solution delivers on their need to balance technology investments and business productivity demands with the scalability to support ever-changing business complexities. The Microsoft Customer Experience Platform integrates seamlessly with your existing Azure Data Lake to remove the complexities of duplicating the ingestion and storage of data, while making it faster to combine data with other sources and deliver unmatched time to insight.

Teams responsible for enterprise-wide data and information strategies, including privacy, governance, and data quality, can feel secure knowing that the solution fulfils their needs while, at the same time, it is helping them create business value. As consumers increasingly adopt digital technology, the data they generate creates both an opportunity for enterprises to improve their consumer engagement and a responsibility to keep consumer data safe. At the same time, consumers are increasingly exercising their rights to privacy, given the growing awareness of data misuse and breaches. The solution safeguards customer privacy and honors customer consent with built-in and configurable tools that automatically store and manage consent.

Turn insights into understanding to deliver tailored customer experiences

For Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) and their marketing teams, the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform serves as a secure, single source of truth. For marketing leaders who want to elevate customer experiences, the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform is the solution that enables your organization to build deep customer connections while maintaining full control of your data. The consolidated, real-time data powers operational excellence while AI and machine learning capabilities pave a path to competitive advantage. Having the ability to predict customers’ needs and wants means marketers can turn insights into true understanding of their prospects and customers. By leaning on their data with the magic of AI, they can now easily test and measure to ensure their investments are resulting in the most efficient and optimal outcomes. As a result, personalization becomes their crucial strategy. Businesses can now deliver tailored recommendations, content, offers, and experiences, across all channels and devices, along the entire customer journey.

Chief Executive Officers (CEO) also benefit from the solution, knowing that it is helping their teams align on growth and opportunities. The Microsoft Customer Experience Platform can aide in progress by helping to instill a digital mindset for internal processes and, as a result, create a positive, productive culture. Teams looking for new revenue streams can accelerate progress when they have a left-to-right view across the business.

Organizations like Campari Group and Leatherman rely on this end-to-end platform to successfully deliver great brand experiences and build quality customer relationships in an era of heightened customer expectations. Customers attending NRF will have the opportunity to see, first-hand, the power of Microsoft Dynamics 365 in fueling next-generation customer experience.

Extend capabilities to meet retailers’ unique needs

With the power of Microsoft Business Applications, organizations can transform customer experience, driving topline sales and improving operational efficiencies that lead to sustained profitability and meaningful growth. With the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform, retailers can optimize marketing ROI by unlocking customer data with AI-driven insights to deliver connected, personalized experiences at scale.

Customer experience is the most effective avenue for sustainable competitive advantage and often the most important barometer of success. The most successful retailers are taking control of their customer data in this time of uncertainty and changing shopper expectations, engaging in new ways across every touchpoint, creating raving fans.

Microsoft’s growing ecosystem of partners helps customers extend the robust capabilities of the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform. Our partners are dedicated to serving retailers’ unique needs by helping provide integrated retail industry-specific solutions that extend the core capabilities of the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform. They are trusted allies, helping customers to identify new opportunities for benefiting from innovations, and to accelerate the time-to-value for investments. A robust partner ecosystem extends the value of the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform with additional solutions to address the most urgent challenges the retail industry is facing today.

Join Microsoft at NRF 2023

Missed us at the show? Find out how you can unlock the value of your customer data to fuel your customer experience transformation with the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform. To see our Microsoft announcements at NRF, be sure to read How Microsoft Teams empowers your retail workers to do more with less and the Microsoft Cloud for Retail blog. See our Microsoft Learn collection of resources and contact your account manager today to find out how you can harness insights to inform and deliver more relevant, connected customer experiences.