Social Engagement: MSE & ClickD

Social Engagement: MSE & ClickD

Microsoft acquired Netbreeze many moons ago and over the years, transformed it into "Microsoft Social Engagement" - MSE. MSE is an AMAZING tool and supplements the Dynamics 365 landscape brilliantly. It will allow you to listen to various social feeds and channels, gauge sentiment, understand location, consolidate posts into feeds, auto create posts in Dynamics 365 and then engage the relevant social profile in a simple and integrated manner. Microsoft have taken this product A LONG way and I truly commend them on the work that they have done with it.

That being said, there are a couple of places where MSE is not really as strong as we would like. This has a bit to do with the functionality and a bit to do with how it’s being positioned to customers. If you go onto the Microsoft website and Click on the Customer Service Solution you will in fact notice that MSE is part of the Customer Service module! The ability to ENGAGE the customer is absolutely crucial. MSE is not inherently a Marketing tool. The listening and analytics element of MSE may be used for marketing, but MSE is an ENGAGEMENT tool... I've seen many scenarios where MSE has been positioned as a social marketing solution because sentiment and brand advocacy can be gauged, which is half true, but the power of MSE is the engagement element. I've seen multiple blog posts and requests for "Post Scheduling" in MSE... As awesome as this would be (Not sure if it’s being road mapped), MSE is still an engagement tool. Cross over to marketing would just be magical though :D

Now that I have gotten that out the way, it brings me to my next point.... Enter my pals from good old ClickD. Recently, I was putting a ClickD demo together for a current customer and I stumbled onto a "Connect to Facebook" option in the ClickD settings menu, under the connector section. Well, Well, Well... I easily connected it to one of my 5 trillion Facebook pages, it authenticated and BOOM!!! I easily created a post directly from within Dynamics. I could choose whether to schedule it or post immediately, and off it went to my CRM Facebook page.

Now I see that ClickD have added a whole bunch of other connectors: Facebook Profiles, Twitter, LinkedIn & Google+, all of which are authenticated securely and can be posted to directly from within Dynamics 365. This allows us to truly manage social posts from within Dynamics 365, without the need for a tool such as Hootsuite, Hubspot, Buffer, etc...  I'm also assuming that the connectors will not stop here. I reckon that in the future we can probably look forward to a few more additions or sources.

The ability to manage posts couples onto Click Dimension’s full Social Engagement offering which will enable users to: Quote "Manage all your social media activity -- including scheduling, publishing, analytics and reporting, content curation, listening, campaign tracking and advocacy programs –in one convenient platform." This functionality is provided through a partnership with "Oktopost", A leading Social Media Management platform. Another fundamental and key principal to remember here is that ClickD is built within the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement platform, so it can be further extended to provide some even more amazing functionality.

Both Microsoft Social Engagement and Click Dimensions Social Engagement have got some AMAZING features and in-depth functionality that I feel can be leveraged in MANY different situations, dependant on the customer’s requirements. I've thoroughly tested MSE but still need to really take the ClickD / Oktopost stuff through the wringer. I've been reviewing the current functionality and am impressed thus far, however, this will definitely require another post to really dig into it. Here's a small sample of the Oktopost user interface that I am busy testing out.

The trick here is to position each one correctly to your customers and make sure they understand the pros of each product and in what situations they will both work in either as a combination or separately. This will set both your customer and yourself up for success.

For what's new within Microsoft Social Engagement, check out the following blog post for more information: Microsoft Social Engagement

If you need any more information, need a demo on either, or want to have a chat please give me a shout and I’ll be happy to help out :)