Dynamics CRM - The Magic of Knowledge Base Articles

Okay, so you may use CRM as a tool to increase sales; or you may find it useful to record detailed data and emails relating to your customers.

Perhaps you use it to record service cases. But we find the Knowledge Base feature extremely useful too.

We are in the technical service business. We answer the same questions or run the same “fix-it” routines again and again. These answers or routines often involve many steps which are done in a set sequence. I’m forgetful, so I make notes of these “answers” as KB articles in our Dynamics CRM and search them later on, by key word. Or when a customer has the same problem, I email them the pertinent article. Some of these are from Microsoft’s own knowledge base. Some are from experts (MVPs or Microsoft Valuable Professionals) on the Web. After a few years we have developed a collection of articles which help us help our customers. There is no immediate magic. You need to build the collection over time. Only then will you have the magic.

Go to the Service areas in CRM and click the Articles option.

Here is a sample of some of the titles we have amassed:

Doing a search for articles containing the word “closing” anywhere within the subject, title, or body of the article:

Here is an example of the article we chose - and the detail. We send this one to customers at the end of the Calendar Year or Fiscal Year. They do their own Year-End Closings in GP.