New Dynamics 365 Contact Center practice offers growth opportunity

Awarded the 2024 Microsoft Partner of the Year for Business Applications in ANZ, Fusion5 has been using Microsoft Dynamics 365 to drive digital transformation success for its customers for more than a decade. With its Dynamics 365 customer engagement practice accounting for 40 percent of its New Zealand business, the Fusion5 team decided to invest in building expertise in Dynamics 365 Contact Center to extend these capabilities for customers. “We are in a market where contact center solutions and the telephony platforms they run on have been in place for 10 or 20 years, resulting in some unwieldy call flows and processes,” said Ciaran Candy, Dynamics 365 CRM and Power Platform Lead Consultant at Fusion5. “There is a terrific opportunity for customers to replace their labyrinth-like systems with an AI-empowered solution that dynamically gives customer service agents the information they need when they need it to improve customer experiences.”

Fusion5 offers a unique approach to delivering contact center services, using a customer-centric implementation methodology. With a wide library of best practices and standardized IP solutions, Fusion5 can deliver customer-specific business outcomes while also accelerating deployment. This approach has been aided by the generative AI capabilities in Dynamics 365 Contact Center, enabling Fusion5 to deliver more value in less time. “With Copilot capabilities – especially functions like call summarization – incorporated natively within Dynamics 365 Contact Center, we are able to help clients take a huge leap forward in their ability to service customers,” continued Candy. “The AI-powered features are just part and parcel of the platform. It has been a big selling point.”

Contact Center and Copilot create immediate impact at Public Trust

Established 150 years ago, Public Trust is New Zealand’s largest provider of trust and estate management services. As a self-funding autonomous crown entity, Public Trust is required by law to operate in a commercially viable manner. “We have a remit to look after all New Zealanders, so we are always pursuing new technologies and ways of working to ensure we provide the right level of service on demand,” said Chris East, Chief Information Officer at Public Trust.

As an organization that prides itself on building strong customer relationships that last decades, Public Trust was looking to replace an aging, soon-to-be end-of-life call center system. With the ability to provide a unified, cloud-based platform that offered a single view of all customer interactions along with AI-driven call transcription and search, Dynamics 365 Contact Center with Dynamics 365 Customer Service were chosen as the best fit. Working with the experts at Fusion5, Public Trust was able to implement the solution in just three months. “The Public Trust and Fusion5 teams worked in partnership to navigate a really tight timeline. It was an incredible collaboration that delivered impact very quickly,” said Paul Spurway, General Manager of Customer Engagement and Data & Analytics at Fusion5.

Since going live in March 2024, Public Trust has seen a significant reduction in average call-handling times, and customer sentiment is trending up now that call center staff have the right information at their fingertips to drive customer conversations. Supervisors have seen benefits as well, with Dynamics 365 Contact Center reducing the time to find a specific call recording from 20 minutes to just seconds – and automatically providing insights on customer sentiment and analytics that can help with coaching or identifying process improvements. Operational efficiency has improved too, with weeks-long interactive voice response (IVR) system changes now able to be completed in less than a day. “With Dynamics 365 Contact Center, we spend less time trying to find information and more time focused on the interactions that need a human touch. It has been game changing for improving the quality of the customer experience and outcomes,” said East.

Microsoft partnership helping accelerate Contact Center momentum

Given its success with customers like Public Trust, Fusion5 plans on continuing to invest in Dynamics 365 Contact Center as a key growth practice. The partner is leaning heavily into the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program offerings to help capitalize on the opportunity. As a Microsoft FastTrack partner, Fusion5 has access to Microsoft product teams to discuss upcoming features and get guidance on deployment challenges. For go-to-market support, Microsoft Business Applications Partner Activities, including vision and value workshops and tailored demos, are helping the team build out Contact Center pipeline and accelerate deal conversion. “This funding enables us to better support our customers and help them leverage the offerings that Microsoft has to see what success can look like,” said Spurway.

Fusion5 also recognizes the evolution of Microsoft Copilot as a critical component of Contact Center success, particularly around using AI-powered agents and core flows to help reduce the number of calls that require a live agent. “The amount of investment that Microsoft is putting into this technology, the way they’re extending the features of Copilot and Copilot Studio, is allowing us to deliver a more complete solution. It’s a great opportunity for us and we’re looking forward to helping it come to life for our customers,” concluded Spurway.

"With Dynamics 365, we spend less time trying to find information and more time focused on the interactions that need a human touch. It has been game changing for improving the quality of the customer experience interactions and outcomes."

—Chris East, Chief Information Officer, Public Trust

Fusion5 helps Public Trust transform customer interactions with Dynamics 365 Contact Center