A. O. Smith’s China operations were the focus of
Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella at the recent Microsoft Tech
Summit 2017.
Satya’s
presentation focused on a number of advanced technologies such as HoloLens, the
internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and Microsoft’s major
product solutions. For one of the
solutions, Microsoft Dynamics 365 customer relationship software, he discussed
a case history featuring A. O. Smith.
“By using the
modular, modern application framework of Dynamics 365,” he pointed out, “A. O.
Smith is optimizing all of their call center operations inside as well as in
other fields, in particular, customer connection and customer service. And the
intelligent system of Dynamics 365 is ultimately going to be at the core of the
change of business model and how that shifts.”
A. O.
Smith-China selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM in order to upgrade its original customer
service system and develop value-added service marketing to improve customers’
experiences. The company investigated a
number of solutions and vendors before selecting Microsoft.
With the help
of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, A. O. Smith has achieved the following improvements:
- Integrate the call center with
after-sales system, so the whole business process can be completed via a
unified platform. This improves customer
satisfaction and allows the customer service team to input accurate marketing data
according to the comprehensive customer information in the system. This
promises to improve repurchase rates and customer loyalty.
- Realize dynamic feedback and inquiry of
all the phases from the placing of orders to the feedback of final service
providers. This enables the service
staff and customers to track the process at any time and share callback information
to avoid repeating callback. This
intelligent order task allocation helps to improve the accuracy, improving
customer satisfaction.
- Achieve enhanced inventory management
by constant monitoring and setting up safety inventory. Exploded views of
products can be checked in the system at any time, improving the accuracy of
accessories selection.
- Implement unified standards to simplify
the accounting procedures and shorten the settlement cycle. The system
automatically generates an expense statement and sends it to the service
provider, which increases the transparency of the settlement process.

