Parature, from Microsoft
Cloud-Based Customer Service Software for the Private and Public Sectors

With the heightened customer expectations of today, investments in customer service and retention must be made to keep up with the demands. Backing this notion is a recent study by Bain & Company that reveals 80 percent of companies believe they are delivering a superior experience to their customers, but only 8 percent of customers said that companies were really delivering. Addressing all these concerns is Parature, from Microsoft.

Parature presents tools that expand Dynamics CRM’s customer service functionality. The company offers a centralized cloud-based customer service solution that allows customer service and support organizations to efficiently monitor, manage, respond to and resolve an elevated degree of support issues across numerous channels including social media. The company’s offerings include an Online Support Portal, Self-Service Knowledge base, Help Desk Ticketing and a host of complementary modules such as Live Chat, EasyAnswer, Customer Feedback tools, and Social Monitoring and Engagement tools.

The Parature Self-Service Knowledge base and Portal improves the Microsoft CRM solution by offering a 24/7 online service and support presence. The customizable portal joins a host of dynamic modules together with a searchable, SEO friendly Knowledgebase that provides rapid and consistent self-serve answers and information. The Knowledge base can be integrated into an organization’s website, or other online properties including a brand’s Facebook page. Parature’s Live Chat offers organizations immediate proactive and reactive online support. It provides organizations with alteration seamless transition from a self-service to aided channel at critical times during the support interaction.

We move ahead of the average help desk software solutions and take a customized approach to every client’s requirements

The company serves numerous industry verticals that include software/ technology, education, gaming, media and government. For a real time understanding of Parature’s solutions, consider the example of Ask.com, the online question and answer website. The company that repeatedly field scores of questions wanted its users to be able to effortlessly access answers to these questions directly, in a timely and personalized way. Previously, answers were not easily available by means of the site’s existing knowledge base. This is where Parature stepped in. With the aid of Parature’s EasyAnswer auto-suggest feature, customization and organization features, automatic search engine indexing, Ask.com rolled out its new knowledge base solution as part of its new mobile-responsive support portal, also powered by Parature.

The innovative solution made it simpler to update articles and information, and made answers easier to find. Content additions and updates became fast and simple. Users never needed to leave the Ask.com domain when searching for answers or submitting tickets, which increased ease-of-use and trust, and effectiveness and efficiency for Ask.com’s support staff.

Ask.com also utilizes Parature’s solution to provide support via chat and social, as well. Parature provides social customer service via Facebook and Twitter with more major channels coming soon. With the help of this tool, organizations can provide a customer support portal and live chat on their Facebook page, and monitor, manage and respond in real time to mentions, conversations and customer inquiries happening on Facebook and Twitter.

Parature provides numerous customer experience optimization activities for customers and is helping other Microsoft brands to deliver more optimized experiences as well. “We demonstrate a higher degree of responsibility with regards to our products and this is having a positive impact and is helping them to increase their productivity,” says Bill Patterson, Sr. Director, Customer Self-Service, Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Going forward, Parature aims to continue to lead in customer service and customer experience innovation, as well as integrate more seamlessly with Microsoft Dynamics CRM to allow organizations around the world to deliver amazing customer experiences. “We are utilizing the strength of our technology to make the most difficult business processes simple. We will help to deliver not just the technology, but also provide a greater understanding of customers and their multi-channel journey and feedback,” says Patterson, “to take customer experiences to the next level.”