Public Trust faced an aging contact center solution and limited customer view, hindering effective communication and customer management.
Public Trust implemented Dynamics 365 Contact Center, Customer Service, and Copilot, integrating phone, chat, and email for streamlined customer interactions.
This implementation enhanced customer engagement, resulted in faster issue resolution, improved call quality, and increased efficiency in will and power of attorney writing.
New Zealand’s Public Trust, the country’s largest and longest-serving trustee organization, has provided trust and estate administration services to Kiwi families for more than 150 years. Faced with an aging contact center solution and a limited view of its customers, the organization created a customer engagement hub based on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center, Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. The hub streamlines customer communications by integrating phone calls, live chat, and email in a single solution. Contact center agents now have a deeper understanding of each customer and can communicate faster and more effectively. Public Trust also mitigates risk by bringing together data from different systems and accessing it on demand.
“Now, our contact center team can see everything in a single view: Who is this customer? What did they talk about last time? What is their journey? Having that information at our fingertips in Dynamics 365 is incredibly powerful in a business where relationships can span decades.”
Scott Marlow, Head of Service Delivery, Public Trust of New Zealand
Public Trust manages more than 5,000 estates and 430 charitable trusts. “Every year, we help thousands of New Zealanders write their will or appoint a power of attorney so they can worry less about the future,” says Chris East, Chief Information Officer at Public Trust. As a self-funding, government-owned entity, Public Trust has an obligation to care for New Zealanders and operate in a commercially viable way. This has led the organization to constantly strive to find new and better ways of serving citizens. “We have 22 physical customer centers across the country, but 70% of our wills and enduring powers of attorney are completed online,” East says. “That’s why we’re investing heavily in technology to provide better services on demand as much as possible.”
Public Trust wanted to give contact center employees more effective ways of reaching customers and more efficient processes than its aging in-house contact center solution offered. “Our internal tool was not focused enough on customer management,” says Scott Marlow, Public Trust’s Head of Service Delivery. “It only provided basic capabilities. It was good at picking up and transferring phone calls and doing basic reporting, but we needed a single system that integrated all customer interactions, records, and relationships. We’d often type in notes during a customer call and switch between different screens from another system to try and search for details about past interactions with that customer. We need to understand our customers better so we can use data analytics insights to have the right conversation at the right time.” Public Trust also sought to offer more communication channels for customers, such as email, text, and chat apps.
Technology challenges were also a factor in the need for a new solution. “System reboots were a problem, and employee headsets sometimes stopped working and profiles wouldn’t always appear,” Marlow explains.
With the organization’s telephony platform nearing end of life and scheduled to be out of support by March 2024, says East, “we needed to get a new solution up and running quickly, and we wanted to find something that would grow and evolve with our business.”
Because Public Trust had been using Microsoft Power Apps and Power BI and was interested in continuing to expand its Microsoft footprint, it engaged Microsoft Partner Fusion5 for assistance. Working closely with Public Trust, Fusion5 implemented a new customer engagement hub based on Dynamics 365 Contact Center in just three months. “We worked incredibly well with Public Trust to navigate a very tight timeline in deploying Dynamics 365,” says Paul Spurway, General Manager—Customer Engagement and Collaboration at Fusion5. “They had to stand up a new contact center solution in three months, and we made that happen.”
The solution integrates Dynamics 365 Contact Center, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and the organization’s core financial system, NavOne. Public Trust now enjoys omnichannel engagement capabilities such as voice and digital communication channels, automated call transcription and conversation summaries, interactive voice response (IVR) and AI agents, and translations, along with AI-driven insights and analytics. Hundreds of emails, calls, and live chats flow into the engagement hub daily, and all customer interactions are automatically recorded and transcribed.
Dynamics 365 Contact Center gives Public Trust a third customer communications channel, in addition to in-person and online visits. Customers have the option of going through a Copilot-guided IVR flow that routes them to the right agent for further assistance. “Now, instead of only online or branch visits, we have digital trustees who use skills-based routing to offer a hybrid method of guiding our customers through the experience,” says Marlow. “We can meet with customers in person, over the phone, or virtually.”
The new customer engagement hub offers Public Trust contact center agents a full view of all previous interactions with a customer as soon as a call or live chat begins or an email is received. “When a customer contacts us, a screen immediately pops up showing that customer’s details and the last time they contacted us,” says Marlow. “Now, our contact center team can see everything in a single view: Who is this customer? What did they talk about last time? What is their journey? Having that information at our fingertips in Dynamics 365 is incredibly powerful in a business where relationships can span decades.”
With a more detailed understanding of each customer’s specific needs, contact center agents can have more effective interactions. “Our contact center team has far more information than they normally would because we can surface so much more data in one place,” Marlow says. “Dynamics 365 Contact Center puts the customer front and center, which has been game-changing for us in terms of the quality of our interactions.”
For example, the solution’s call recording functionality has helped the organization’s digital trustees improve call quality by analyzing customer call transcripts. “This has allowed me to rewrite our conversation guidance syllabus for our internal customer engagement model,” says Marlow. “As a result, we’ve invested heavily in improving our conversation standards, which has helped us embed new ways of working that are leading to positive impacts in customer conversions and sales outcomes. It’s also helped us improve our Net Promoter Score, which measures customer loyalty and satisfaction.”
“Dynamics 365 Contact Center puts the customer front and center, which has been game-changing for us in terms of the quality of our interactions.”
Scott Marlow, Head of Service Delivery, Public Trust of New Zealand
The Public Trust contact center is more efficient with Dynamics 365, with agents providing better help to customers and resolving questions and concerns faster. “If a customer calls in one day and then decides to use live chat or email a different day, all the information is available to us in a single customer record,” says Marlow. “This allows for faster assessment and triaging, and we’ve seen around a significant reduction in average customer handling time as a result.”
Previously, leaders spent up to 25 minutes searching time and date stamps to locate and review a specific call recording for coaching and training. Now, they can access call or chat transcripts with overlaid insights and analytics with only a few clicks in Dynamics 365 Contact Center. “This gives us the opportunity to identify process improvements and have more informed coaching conversations with our team,” says Marlow.
The new customer engagement hub is also improving productivity. “We’ve seen some significant improvements in will and enduring power of attorney writing efficiency and customer outcomes with Dynamics 365,” says Marlow. “Recently, we conducted some internal analysis that showed that the team of six people delivered around 16% of our total will sales in one period. That indicates that the customer engagement hub is driving efficiency and creating more value for our stakeholders.”
“If a customer calls in one day and then decides to use live chat or email a different day, all the information is available to us in a single customer record. This allows for faster assessment and triaging, and we’ve seen around a significant reduction in average customer handling time as a result.”
Scott Marlow, Head of Service Delivery, Public Trust of New Zealand
Adopting new technology can be a challenge for any organization, and Public Trust is no exception. “Contact centers like ours tend to attract either slightly older workers or very young people starting their careers,” Marlow explains. “These two demographics have different needs from a leadership and training perspective. For the slightly older group, the pace of change can be a challenge, and attention span can be a challenge for younger workers. Dynamics 365 has removed the barriers to adoption and learning and helped our team embrace the new technology.”
Chris East agrees. “Dynamics 365 has provided a boost to our customer engagement, which we’ve supported through a thoughtful and sustained people enablement program. It isn’t just about the technology, but it’s also about supporting people through the change. That has helped us increase overall productivity.”
“Dynamics 365 has provided a boost to our customer engagement, which we’ve supported through a thoughtful and sustained people enablement program.”
Chris East, Chief Information Officer, Public Trust
As a financial institution, Public Trust must comply with strict regulatory requirements around reporting and data privacy. Because Dynamics 365 unifies different systems, the organization can more easily access data on demand. “We have a fiduciary responsibility, and our regulations are robust here in New Zealand,” East says. “That’s why risk mitigation and management is important. At any time, we could be asked to demonstrate anything we’ve done. With Dynamics 365, we can be more transparent because our systems are integrated and we can pull information quickly as needed. We can reduce risk because all our systems talk to each other.”
Public Trust is working to extend its customer support and understanding through Dynamics 365 Customer Service and expand the use of Copilot, connecting it to the organization’s knowledge base and public website so that agents can quickly look up topics or answer common questions on customer calls. “Developing a CRM that uses Copilot is the next step for streamlining our customer communications and transforming the customer experience,” says East. “We will continue to take advantage of technology to help our people have the right conversation at the right time.”
“With Dynamics 365, we can be more transparent because our systems are integrated and we can pull information quickly as needed. We can reduce risk because all our systems talk to each other.”
Chris East, Chief Information Officer, Public Trust
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