Microsoft has deepened its social push by joining forces with Moxie Software to integrate the enterprise social network into its Dynamics CRM platform.
Microsoft will add Moxie’s Spaces technology, a platform that combines customer communications with employee collaboration. That suite was given a big facelift in March 2012.
The new updates essentially opened up a knowledge base to all workers, meaning more customer enquiries or complaints could be resolved by a single agent, rather than a combination of different workers from across the organisation.
This deals means Moxie’s Knowledge Spaces, Email Spaces, Chat Spaces, Web Self-Service Spaces, CoBrowse Spaces and Social Media Spaces are available within Microsoft Dynamics. Microsoft says the addition of these features to Dynamics means it can now be the single point of call for all customer information, and somewhere employees can collborate and share knowledge.
"We understand the need for businesses of all sizes to deliver scalable and personalised experiences," said Craig Dewar, Director, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Product Marketing. "Moxie’s multi-channel and knowledge base solutions coupled with Microsoft Dynamics CRM capabilities empower our customers to provide a great customer experience."
Microsoft’s other big recent big social play was buying Yammer. It paid $1.2bn for the enterprise social network start-up. Yammer’s technology however is more focused on internal collaboration and perhaps lacks the customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities Moxie Software can offer.
Microsoft did however recently announce deeper integration of Yammer with Dynamics, giving workers the ability to post information from Dynamics into Yammer. It also said Skype would play a more prominent role following its $8.5bn takeover of the VoIP calling service. Users will now be able to make Skype calls from within the CRM application.
