Contacting Your Customer: The Good and The Bad

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Mitch Milam

I wanted to show you two examples of contact with a customer. In my opinion, one is good, and one is bad.  You may decide for yourself.

 

The Bad

My wife received this from her optometrist:

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Besides a little redaction of the doctor’s details, this is untouched.

I see two problems here:

1. My wife’s name was not specified, only ‘Patient.’

2. The doctor’s name is listed in a signature block, but not it was not signed by the doctor.

This leads me to question if my wife’s doctor even knows who she is and why he even bothered sending a letter with his name on it..

 

The Good (#1)

Here are a series of text messages from my dentist, reminding me of upcoming appointments:

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They know my cell number because I gave it to them and they use it, with my permission, to alert me to upcoming events, and to send me birthday wishes. Smile

 

The Good (#2):

Here is another example that I think is excellent and actually pretty funny:

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Here we have a clearly identified customer, Millie, and a set of next action steps that Millie needs to take.

Is also happens that this postcard is from our Veterinarian and Millie is one of our cats. 

What I like most about this, even if you find it a bit silly, is that the Vet knows exactly who the customer is: Millie the Kat.  It just happens that her humans are the people who have to make this happen, so we’re included as well.

 

And your point would be?

Assuming you know your customer’s name, use it.  There are a variety of ways that you can utilize personal information in correspondence:

  • Email templates
  • Mail Merge templates
  • Third-party marketing services like Core Motives, Click Dimensions, and MailChimp, etc.

Filed under: Dynamics CRM, Marketing | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Adding People to Marketing Lists

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Mitch Milam

I was verifying some data in one of my CRM Online instances when I noticed something about Marketing Lists that had never caught my eye.

The process of adding a person (Contact, Lead, Account) to a Marketing List can vary depending on how you do it.

Here are the two methods that are available:

Method 1:

Clicking the Add to Marketing List button on the Ribbon:

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Displays the following dialog:

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Method 2:

The second method is when you select Marketing Lists from the Marketing area in the left-hand navigation section:

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Clicking this link changes the context of the Ribbon to that of the Marketing List, which appears like this:

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Clicking the Add Existing Marketing List from this Ribbon will produce this dialog:

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As you can see, this is a different dialog than noted previously and it happens to be a multi-select dialog box.

This means you can add multiple Marketing Lists to a person with a single action.

This should greatly improve your productivity when working with a single record.

Unfortunately, when working with multiple records, you only get the "add to single Marketing List" choice.

Filed under: CRM 2011, Dynamics CRM, Marketing | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Defaulting Advanced Find to always show details

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Mitch Milam

I was teaching a webinar on Thursday and I told the students about a personal options setting that will save you a click every time you open the Advanced Find dialog.

By default, the Details of the query are hidden, as you can see here:

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To actually edit the query, you must click details button on the Ribbon:

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Which will result in the query being editable, as you can see below:

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To turn this option on permanently, select File, Options to display the personal options dialog.

Change the Advanced Find Mode from Simple to Detailed as shown below:

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Click OK when you’re done.

From now on, the Advanced Find will default to showing details so you can immediately begin to alter the query.

Filed under: Administration, CRM 2011 | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Issues Exporting View Data to Microsoft Excel

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Mitch Milam

Occasionally I see issues when I am trying to export data from a Dynamics CRM 2011 view to Microsoft Excel.

The error messages may vary, but they may describe not being able to start a process or something.

 

The Cause

Most of these issues seem to be related to the startup time of Excel, when Excel is not running.  The problem does not seem to surface when Excel is already running.

There is some type of timeout involved, like maybe around 10-20 seconds, that Internet Explorer will allow before canceling the operation.

If Excel and the worksheet haven’t completed loading during that time frame, IE will cancel the opening of the worksheet, though Excel will complete it’s startup process.

Attempting the operation again, will usually result in the successful loading of the worksheet.

The startup time for the Excel will depend on menu factors, including the number of add-ins that Excel must load during the startup process. The more add-ins you have, the longer Excel’s load time.

 

The Solution

There are a couple of solutions to this issue:

1. Start Microsoft Excel before attempting to load the worksheet.

2. When prompted by Excel, select Save, then open the worksheet from Excel manually.

Filed under: CRM 2011, Dynamics CRM, Productivity | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Manually hiding the CRM 2011 Ribbon

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Mitch Milam

Some may call me Captain Obvious, but sometimes it is the obvious that passes us by.

As is today’s Dynamics CRM 2011 topic: Did you know you can hide the ribbon on the main Application or an Entity Form?  Well you can.

In the upper-right corner of the window, beside the Organization Name, is a small arrow:

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Clicking that arrow will show or hide the ribbon, leaving only the tab names showing.

This is not a permanent change, just for the current session or form.

Not a huge deal, but handy if you’re trying to recover some screen real estate.

Filed under: CRM 2011, Dynamics CRM | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Dynamics CRM 2011 Quick-Tip: Double-clicking e-mail addresses

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Mitch Milam

I didn’t actually realize it until this week, but if you double-click on an email address field within Dynamics CRM 2011, it will actually open the default email application ( such as Microsoft Outlook ), and create a new e-mail message.

So double-clicking this email address:

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Results in a standard Outlook e-mail message being opened:

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I verified that this was not how CRM 4.0 worked.

Anyway, it’s a really cool feature and can be a real time-saver.

Filed under: CRM 2011, Dynamics CRM, Productivity | Tagged: | 3 Comments »

Users with no assigned security roles

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Mitch Milam

If you open Dynamics CRM 2011 as an administrator you may one day find the following notification:

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As the message states, There are users within the system who do not have any security roles assigned.

A user without a security role is the same as no user at all, so CRM wants you to correct the issue.

Theoretically, you can do so by clicking the Assign Roles button located in the notification area.  This action will navigate to the User’s area within Settings and display a special view called: Users with no security roles.

 

But what if the user list is blank?

Interestingly enough, on my test system where I received this message, I found the view to be empty, which I thought rather odd.

Manually navigating to: Settings, Administration, Users, then selecting the Users with no security roles view, listed the users without security roles.

 

How can this happen?

Well, there are actually several possibilities:

  • The user was added manually ( not through the Add Users wizard ) and roles were not assigned.
  • The user was moved from one business unit to another and the security roles were removed because they did not exist in the destination business unit.

 

Conclusion

This is a very handy notification that will hopefully prevent users from having connectivity issues when accessing Dynamics CRM 2011.

Filed under: Administration, CRM 2011 | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

Training, Training, Training

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Mitch Milam

Earlier in the month I participated in an MVP Roundtable with the xRMVirtual Users Group where I discussed the importance of training in overall success of your CRM implementation. 

Let us review some of the key points:

 

Who to Train

Well, everyone, actually.  Starting with the people who will be using it most.

One strategy that works fairly well is to identify and train power users who will be available to answer simple questions. Power users can remove a huge burden from your help desk staff ( which is probably already over-whelmed ) and get the user’s questions answered in a timely manner.

If you are using a Dynamics CRM partner to help with the design and roll-out of the software, make sure you build-in knowledge sharing between their staff and yours so that the people who are running your systems have a good understanding of how things work, where to go to solve issues, and how the general trouble-shooting process works. This helps them do their job easier and makes them feel better about what they are doing which is never a bad thing.

 

What to Train

The basic training needs to cover just enough of the system to help the users do their jobs.  Most will come with questions similar to the following:

  • What is it?
  • How does it work?
  • What button do I push to "make it go?"
  • Who do I call when I have a problem?

You can start by showing them the Dynamics CRM interface, where things are located, the areas in which they will be spending the most time, etc.

Then you further formulate your training to cover the tasks that the user does most frequently.  If possible conduct your training sessions with groups of people who have the same or similar jobs so that the context of the training makes sense to each of the students.

By starting small and keeping it simple, you do not run the risk of over-powering your user community with information. The sheer depth of the Dynamics CRM product can be quite daunting to users so don’t try to teach every feature at once. 

Keep it simple, keep it direct, and have hard-copy or electronic "cheat sheets" that can be used to help refresh their memory when they are trying something for the first time.

 

When to Train

You need to start training as close to the roll-out or go-live date as possible, so that people have their training fresh in their minds.

Again, keep it simple.

 

When to Retrain

Technically, your training really never ends. You should schedule frequent sessions to show the users a new topic or area of the system that they may not fully understand or that has been newly added to the system.

 

Selling your users on Dynamics CRM

I want to bring this point up because it happens all of the time and is the key reason why a Dynamics CRM deployment will fail:

Users need to be "sold" on using the new system and "use it or get fired is not how you gain user adoption!

Instead of threatening them with employment, why don’t you try to incorporate the following points into their education process ( listed in no particular order ):

  • How does this make my job easier?
  • What will it do for me?
  • How will it help me sell more?

Getting these questions addressed in the training, in formal discussions, and by the water-cooler will go a long way in helping your implementation succeed.

 

Other Tips

Here are some additional tips that I’ve gathered through the years:

 

Management by Wandering Around

The best-kept secret to a successful implementation of anything. Just wander around the office, if you have that capability, and ask people how they are doing. For remote users or distributed workers, a quick phone call, note email, will work in a similar manner.

Don’t make it official, just casually wander around and ask people how they are doing; answer questions when possible, and generally show them that you care.

 

Lunch and Learn

Part of your follow-up training plan should always be to have group learning sessions to either:

  • Present new information
  • Collect new information

So you are either helping them learn more, or they are giving you feedback. Providing lunch takes the formalness away from the interaction and (hopefully) allows people to open up a bit more.

 

Free Food

Somewhere during the middle of your implementation, have lunch or breakfast catered as a reward for having to deal with what is inevitably a hassle that is a new piece of software.

Filed under: Dynamics CRM, Training | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Update Rollup 6 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Released

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Mitch Milam

You can download it here.

For more information about this release, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 2600640:

Update Rollup 6 is available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

To maintain parity between the application components of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, this update rollup includes packages for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server, Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Language Packs, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM E-mail Router.

Filed under: Administration, CRM 2011 | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Changing the Lead Qualification Status Values

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Mitch Milam

The Lead Entity within Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is used to track your relationship with prospective customers. At some point in the relationship, they change from being simply a Lead into either a customer or someone who is no longer a prospect.

The Lead Qualification Process

Here is how leads are generally worked by a salesperson:

New Lead

When a Lead is first entered into the system, you may not know much about them so the status is simply New:

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First Contact

After you make the initial contact, via email or phone, for instance, you change the Status Reason to Contacted:

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Qualified

If the relationship progresses to the next step, or if the relationship doesn’t progress at all, you can Qualify the Lead as either Won or Lost by clicking the Qualify button on the toolbar:

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This will display the Convert Lead dialog:

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At this point you have two choices:

  1. Qualify the Lead
  2. Disqualify the Lead

Both offer you a status to help further identify the reasoning behind the qualification/disqualification.

Now the dialog you see above cannot be changed because it is part of the CRM itself, but we can change the values of the Status’ to better match your business and its processes.

Let’s walk through the steps required to change the Status Reason fields:

 

Changing the Lead Status Reason Field

1. Click Settings, Customizations, Customize the System.

2. Click the Entities group:

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and the list of Entities within Dynamics CRM will be displayed.

3. Scroll down until you find the Lead Entity. Double-click the Lead Entity:

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4. Click Fields, to show the field list:

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The list of fields found within Lead will be displayed.

5.Scroll down the list until you find the statuscode (Status Reason) field. Double-click the field to view it’s properties.

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The Lead statuscode field has three status’:

  • Open
  • Qualified
  • Disqualified

Each status has a variety of sub-status’:

 

Status Sub-Status
Open New
  Contacted
Qualified Qualified
Disqualified Lost
  Cannot Contact
  No Longer Interested
  Canceled

 

You can change any of these status’ to match your business processes.

DO NOT delete any of the built-in status values. If you need to add your own, consider simply changing the name of an existing status.

Deleting a built-in status can lead to very bad things happening to your system and you can’t replace the deleted value without a lot of work.

SO DO NOT DO IT.

 

6. After you have made your modifications, click the Save and Close button on the toolbar.

7. When you have returned to the Lead field list, click the Publish All Customizations button to activate your changes.

8. Test your work by opening a lead and clicking the Qualify button on the ribbon and verify your new values are in place.

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

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