Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional Vs. Enterprise: Which One To Choose

The Dynamics 365 Customer Service provides a complete cloud-based CRM solution that will take care of all your business needs with a set of intelligent business applications that can adapt to your particular needs and deliver high-performance results. It is powered by cutting-edge AI technologies that allow you to efficiently carry out complex business processes with the help of predictive analytical results and optimization of your various workflows.

Dynamics 365 consists of more than a dozen apps, each bundled with several add-ons for carrying out specific business processes like Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Service Management, Field Service, and more. It provides a unified platform that allows for easy data migration between your various productivity tools and ensures optimized data management.

While it sounds good to have all the functionality that the Dynamics 365 platform has to offer, you can often pick and choose the licensing that suffices your particular needs. In that vein, you could choose from one of the two major license variants available for the Dynamics 365 Customer service solution, the Professional and the Enterprise.

Here is a brief guide that can help you decide which license will be the most suitable for your needs.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional Vs. Enterprise: Definitions

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service is a CRM solution offered by Dynamics 365 that focuses on enhancing customer interfacing operations to enable maximum engagement and brand visibility. This solution allows you to make customer service more efficient and to engage and gather better insights into understanding your customers and detect emerging trends early on.

Some of its notable features include:

• Comprehensive 360-degree customer views
• Enhanced productivity tools
• AI-powered insights
• Integration with IoT

What Is Dynamics 365 Professional, What Is Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional, For Who Is It?

The Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional provides a subset of the bigger Dynamics 365 Customer Service platform at an affordable price point most suitable for businesses focusing on only the Customer Service features of the Dynamics 365 CRM solution. It enables you to get the most commonly used functionalities at an affordable rate instead of buying into the full-fledged Enterprise suite version.

The Professional License includes the following core functionalities:

• Access to case and knowledge management
• Social customer care
• Lead creation and sales team assistance
• Mobile access

What Is Dynamics 365 Enterprise, What Is Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise, For Who Is It?

The Enterprise license includes all the functionalities of the entire Dynamics 365 Customer Service suite and is suitable for large organizations that need access to advanced customer service features like:

• Gamification
• Embedded intelligence
• Context-driven suggestions
• Unified service desk
• Full customization
• And access to custom applications using Power apps

The Enterprise license enables more powerful analytical operations. It integrates AI-driven suggestions into the customer service, allowing you to automate several workflows and further enhance the quality of customer service operations to a great extent.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional Vs. Enterprise: What Are The Main Differences?

Service - Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional - Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise

‍Number of users - Does not allow for Unlimited users - Allows for unlimited users

Entities - Access to Cases and knowledge-based records - Access to all core customer service entities

Forms/Views - Number of Forms/views allowed per entity is limited to 2 - Allows more number of variations on forms/views on roles and entities

Custom entities - Maximum number of custom entities allows is 15 - Maximum number of custom entities allowed is 300

Queues - Maximum number of queues allowed is 15 - No limits on the number of queues

Portal access - No - Internal access is given to licensed users

Dashboard customizations - Dashboard customizations allowed 5 - No limits on dashboard customizations

Embedded intelligence - No - Yes

Service gamification - No - yes

Dynamics 365 Customer Voice service - No - Yes

Dynamics 365 Teams - No - Yes

Service scheduling - No - Yes

Unified Service desk - No - Yes

Business Process Flows - Maximum number of process flows allowed is 5 - Allowed 10 process flows per entity

Additional storage - Additional storage can be bought at an additional cost - Provided an added storage of 259 MB database and 2GB per additional user. Can be further extended at additional cost

Power apps - Can be accessed as an add on - yes

As for commonalities, both the licenses provide custom workflows, mobile access, and Power automate access.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional Vs. Enterprise: Price Licenses

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional Price

The Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional license is priced at $64 per user per month for first use, and the subsequent subscriptions cost $25.6 per user per month.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise Price

The Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional license is priced at $121.60 per user per month for first use, and the subsequent subscriptions cost $25.6- per user per month.

As you can see, the first Dynamics 365 app costs almost double the professional license cost. But this added cost is rightly justified given the advanced features and functionalities provided by the enterprise license.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional Vs. Enterprise: Limitations Of Each One

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional Limitations

The professional version of the Dynamics 365 Customer service app has several limitations.

It has limited functionality in terms of the number of entities allowed and add-on capabilities. Mainly, you will not have access to premium features like:

• Customer Voice
• Gamification
• Forms Pro
• Unified service desk
• Advanced find
• AI and embedded intelligence
• Web portal access

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise Limitations

The enterprise license gives full access to all the core functionalities of Customer Service apps, enhanced customization options, and has advanced AI features. But it can be quite expensive and may require a learning curve. As of now, Microsoft does not provide a middle ground between these two licenses, which may lead to several users subscribing to more than what they need by choosing the enterprise license.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional Vs. Enterprise: Which One To Choose?

The Dynamics 365 solution brings us a bundle of apps, each with its use case and specific needs criteria. To choose the best solution, you will have to evaluate your actual needs, budget constraints, and the overall benefit expected and then decide on a plan. If you are looking for a CRM solution with basic functionalities, the professional license will very well suffice your needs. You can also use the professional license as a trial before opting for the enterprise when you are first starting with the Dynamics 365 platform to get a better picture of the platform and then move on to the expensive and advanced enterprise suite. The Dynamics 365 platform ensures smooth upgrades, and hence upgrading to the enterprise at a later point in time should not be an issue.

When you need creating custom entities, full-on dashboard customizations, and AI-backed context-based suggestions to make your customer service interactions better, you can choose the enterprise license.

Remember to consider the pricing of each app, the duration of your licensing, the number of users, their roles, and assigned seat types to get the full estimate of the total cost of the license. The common user seat types available are the full user, operations activity, and team member. Full users get full access to all the functionalities and hence costs the highest. Team members have the lowest access rights and are priced the lowest, and the operations activity seat type falls in between.

If you need help choosing, please do not hesitate to contact us. We can help you decipher which license best fits your business needs and provide you the suopport you require to integrate it successfully to your activities.