Dynamics 365 brings customer-centricity to the next level at MSC

Most of the goods we use, from clothing and cars to building supplies and food, are carried by cargo ships. Annually, 50,000 merchant ships transport 11 billion metric tons of goods worldwide. Transporting products and materials across the world requires a complicated supply chain process involving warehousing, shipping, and delivery with a variety of key stakeholders from shippers, freight forwarders, consignees and ports, to regulatory and industry bodies – all working across multiple modes of transport to ensure the world economy flows smoothly.

As the largest cargo shipping line in the world, MSC has an intimate view of worldwide supply chain challenges including port congestion, extreme weather events, and difficult geo-political situations. Such fluid conditions may cause disruptions or create uncertainties for companies relying on shipping services to transport their goods smoothly and successfully. 

In that context, MSC's customer support teams strive to find the solutions to any issues that may arise, by applying their problem-solving capabilities and supporting customers in even the most challenging circumstances.

Customer-centricity, ahoy!

Family-owned MSC is known for its personal touch and customer-centric approach. The company develops long-term relationships with customers and is trusted across the industry. Expert agents oversee every stage in the complex shipping process and address issues directly as they arise.

MSC’s success is also based on having a local presence near their customers: the company’s 675 offices around the world enable easy access to experts no matter where the customer is based. Agents are available to customers directly by phone, email or through a web portal and can respond promptly in the channel preferred by their customers. Providing this level of service requires great tools, and skilled agents who know their customers’ needs inside and out.

As the company grew, each location developed and relied on its own processes and best practices to handle customer inquiries and resolutions according to their region and area of specialization. Over time, leadership saw the potential of using technology to harness this global knowledge by standardizing customer care processes based on shared data, workflows, reporting insights, and documentation. This would allow teams to enhance their support quality by making customer enquiries easier to handle.

Charting a fresh course with Microsoft Dynamics 365

In 2022, MSC chose Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service to maintain and strengthen personal and long-term partnerships with customers of all sizes and industries around the world. Dynamics 365 is flexible, scalable, and easy to integrate with other applications—of which MSC has many. With less manual work due to shared data and automation, along with less reliance on Outlook for tracking communications, agents are able to be even more efficient and customer focused. Almost every feature the company required was available out of the box, including configuration to meet specific local needs of its agencies on a country-by-country basis.

Lining up the right crew

To assist with the rollout, MSC worked with Avanade, an implementation partner well versed in Dynamics 365 deployments. One of the project’s unique challenges was connecting the company’s third-party telephony solution with Microsoft Teams Voice to allow seamless call forwarding to agents. With support from Microsoft, MSC and Avanade developed a plan to accomplish it.

All aboard for seamless customer experiences

The implementation team agreed on an agile, minimum viable product (MVP) approach. This would allow them to meet the go-live date goal without impacting essential testing or training.

Key to the project’s success was setting up unified routing in Dynamics 365 Customer Service to automate case assignments. Almost all enquiries that came in through email would be routed to the relevant account manager or location.

The implementation journey began in January 2022. At the beginning, three locations went live with Customer Service in November. Soon after, new offices began onboarding every month and by the end of 2024, there will be 29 locations operating on six continents. Once all remaining locations have access to Dynamics 365, all MSC customer service centers will provide the same consistent, efficient, personalized service to their customers– with fewer manual steps and more relevant data at their fingertips.

Enjoying a raft of benefits

MSC now uses Dynamics 365 to manage an increasing number of customer conversations per day, with the number of cases per month expected to grow as adoption increases. Although the program roll out is still in process, MSC’s leadership already views the deployment of Dynamics 365 Customer Service as a success. The implementation team has hit every project deadline so far, and not one customer experienced a moment’s interruption to their service during the process. Adoption has been enthusiastic across the organization and the feedback from agents is positive.

Product Lead Renato Grecchi attributes the project’s success to support from the top, good design, efforts of the change management team to train agents, and the availability of support to manage any data issues before the migration. “It’s been a great collaboration, and success would not have been possible without the Microsoft team and our partner,” he said.

Here is a glimpse into some initial features and benefits:

• Reduced reliance on Outlook email for customer cases saves time and ensures customer interactions are captured in a shared environment.
   
• Integration with the master database via Azure Service Bus and Logic Apps allows the company to continue its move toward a 360-degree view of customer histories as they relate to other business operations.
   
• Integration with MSC operations database allows customer service agents to retrieve booking and contract information directly in Dynamics 365 and reduces the time to handle customer requests.
   
• Enhanced case routing based on email parsing and contract information enables flexibility in how MSC offices are organized and ensures that cases are always routed to the team with the best specific knowledge.
   
• Built-for-purpose integrations with Microsoft products such as Exchange, Microsoft Teams, Power BI, and Azure make collaboration, reporting, and data management easier.

Key outcomes include:

• Time to handle is improving thanks to more efficient automated case assignments to the correct agent in the appropriate team.
  
  
• Customer interaction metrics provide enhanced visibility using categorization tracking in the dashboard. This will help prioritize simple vs. complex cases to better manage caseloads.
  
  
• Agents and leaders alike are benefiting from better overall reporting, and seamless processes that make use of the company’s earlier investments in Microsoft technology, including Modern Work and Azure.
  
  
• Improved collaboration between internal teams using tools built into Dynamics 365 Customer Service is connecting geographically separated teams, enhancing teamwork.
  
  

Smooth sailing ahead with the latest tools

Moving forward, MSC will continue to roll out Dynamics 365 across its global network of agencies and take advantage of the latest features during updates. Alongside this, the company continues striving to investigate and explore other new technologies to maintain the highest standard of customer service without compromising the personal touch approach it’s known for.

MSC is also excited to explore the ways it can use new productivity tools like Dynamics 365 Copilot to uncover deeper trends, help automate non-customer-facing tasks, like case categorization, and shorten customer response times.

From piles of paperwork back in the day, to a global database and real-time support, MSC continues to embrace technology that enables it to serve customers in the personal, productive, and professional manner it is world-famous for.