On January 7, 2014, Microsoft laid down a strong marker that it intends to compete vigorously in the customer experience space with its acquisition of Parature, a cloud-based provider of customer service solutions. The acquisition is timely, and follows the October 2013 launch of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013.
It also provides further evidence that Microsoft is picking up the pace very purposefully under the watchful eye of Bob Stutz, corporate VP Microsoft Dynamics CRM, who is credited with reinventing Dynamics CRM to make it far more user-centric, useful, and device-agnostic in recognition of the BYOD trend.
Parature builds on previous investments in marketing automation (MarketingPilot in 2012) and social analytics (Netbreeze 2013) to round out the CRM portfolio and create an environment where marketing, sales, and services teams can work together rather than in old-style CRM departmental silos.
Parature provides all-channel customer care to thousands of organizations
Parature provides a cloud-based, multi-channel service capability that can be configured quickly for each organization to improve the overall customer engagement capabilities. Its flagship offering, Parature Customer Service Software, integrates a customer portal with a customizable and intuitive knowledgebase, helpdesk, and ticketing application, supported by workflows to help customers resolve issues or find answers quickly.
The company says there are 70 million end users supporting 3,000 mid-market and large enterprise organizations including IBM, Evernote, Hitachi Data Systems, and Kellogg in a wide variety of industries. Case study evidence from Parature shows that as well as providing much better customer care to its customers it is also enabling organizations to boost the productivity of their service personnel and enabling them to focus on higher value-add interactions with customers.