CZ accelerates customer engagement innovation with Microsoft Dynamic 365

CZ Zorgverzekeringen, one of the Netherlands’ leading health insurers, envisioned modernizing its customer engagement capabilities in line with evolving customer behaviors and best-practice communication technology standards, while advancing beyond the constraints of its existing IT environment. 

To address this challenge, CZ adopted Microsoft Dynamics 365 as the foundation of a unified Customer Engagement Platform. The organization brought together contact center operations, customer relationship management (CRM), and marketing engagement using Dynamics 365 Contact Center, Dynamics 365 Customer Service including Copilot power capabilities, and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, including Customer Insights - Journeys and Customer Insights - Data. The new cloud-based platform is continuously streamlining customer service representative workflows, reduced average handling times through AI-assisted capabilities, and enabled more personalized, data-driven customer interactions—while creating a scalable, compliant foundation for continued innovation and growth.

Constrained by disconnected technologies 

As one of the Netherlands’ leading health insurers, CZ Zorgverzekeringen (CZ) plays a vital role in the lives of millions of people. The organization provides health insurance to individuals, families, and large employer collectives.

High customer experience and efficient customer engagement is central to CZ’s objective to deliver high-end and cost-efficient services to its customers. As customer needs evolved and digital engagement became the norm, the organization recognized that its customized IT environment was increasingly limiting its ability to deliver the level of service and engagement it aspired to provide. Core customer and policy data lived on an IBM mainframe, while contact center operations were supported by an on-premises Avaya telephony solution. Marketing communications were handled through Oracle Eloqua. Surrounding these systems were numerous bespoke applications built internally to fill functional gaps as new requirements emerged.

For customer service representatives, this complexity prohibited end-to-end continuous improvements and created daily friction. To answer a single customer question, employees often had to switch between multiple screens and applications, manually stitching together information from different systems. To comply with CZ's ambition to serve its clients in the most efficient and effective way, CZ observed that innovation was becoming slow and costly, as even relatively small changes required custom development and extensive testing. At the same time, several core systems including Avaya were reaching end of support, and the legacy environment also made it difficult for CZ to keep pace with technological advancements. 

“Things like automatic conversation summaries or AI-assisted support were incredibly hard to build ourselves,” says Peter Slager, CIO at CZ Zorgverzekeringen. “We simply couldn’t follow the pace of innovation in the market.”

Modernizing the contact center with Dynamics 365 

Guided by the company’s 2030 strategy, CZ made the calculated decision to move away from bespoke systems and towards a standardized, platform-based IT customer engagement platform, a single, integrated environment capable of supporting customer service, contact center operations, and personalized communications across the entire customer lifecycle.

CZ structured its transformation around three horizons. The first focused on replacing the most urgent legacy components, particularly the contact center. Subsequent phases would expand functionality across departments, modernize marketing engagement, and introduce advanced AI-driven capabilities.

Given the risks associated with its ageing contact technology environment, CZ prioritized contact center modernization as the first step in its journey. The organization selected Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center, combined with Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Microsoft Teams Phone, to unify voice and chat interactions within a single cloud-based platform. 

“Dynamics 365 was the first major platform we implemented as part of our new IT strategy,” says Slager. “It really became the proof point that a platform-based approach could work for us.”

In July 2025, CZ went live with the first phase of its new contact center, enabling approximately 1100 customer service representatives to handle both voice and chat interactions through Dynamics 365. Desk phones were retired and replaced with headset-based, PC-integrated communications — a visible and symbolic shift towards a modern, digital workplace. Microsoft partner Avanade supported the implementation. The initial platform foundation was delivered in roughly six months—a pace that impressed CZ’s leadership and reinforced confidence in the new approach.

Unifying customer engagement with a fully integrated platform 

Together, Dynamics 365 Contact Center, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data, and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys form the foundation of CZ’s centralized Customer Engagement Platform. For customer service representatives, instead of navigating multiple systems, they transition to work within a unified Dynamics 365 workspace that brings together customer profiles, interaction history, and case information in one place. Voice and chat are no longer separate channels but part of a single, continuous customer journey. Through integration with Contact Center Microsoft Teams Phone, customer service representatives will be able to handle both inbound and outbound calls entirely within Dynamics 365.  

This platform approach also supports CZ’s broader modernization efforts, including integration with core insurance systems such as the IDIT suite from Sapiens. By connecting customer engagement with insurance policy and product data, CZ is working towards true end-to-end visibility across both B2C and B2B scenarios. “Our colleagues used to work across many screens. With Dynamics 365, everything is integrated. They have the context they need in one place, which allows them to respond more effectively and with greater confidence towards our clients,” says Edward van Wingerden, Manager Client Contact Center.

Cutting call handling times through increased efficiency 

Alongside contact center capabilities, Dynamics 365 Customer Service plays a critical role in supporting CZ’s service processes. The organization is gradually decommissioning older bespoke applications and replacing them with Dynamics 365 capabilities. As a result, Customer Service is becoming the backbone for case management, knowledge sharing, and consistent service delivery. 

As these changes take effect, customer service representatives gain more access to richer customer context, standardized processes, and embedded AI that supports them during live interactions. One early benefit has been improved handling efficiency. Features such as automatic conversation summaries through the Case Management Agent in Dynamics 365 Customer Service and AI-assisted support reduce the manual effort required after customer interactions.

“We’re already seeing shorter average handling times with Dynamics 365,” says Slager. “Automatic summaries and AI support take work off the customer service representative’s plate and allow them to focus on the customer.”

Rolling out targeted, data-driven campaigns 

Customer service is only one part of the engagement equation. With Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys, CZ has begun transitioning marketing communications onto the same platform that supports service and contact center operations. The organization recently launched its first customer email campaign using Customer Insights – Journeys, marking an important milestone in decommissioning its legacy marketing system. 

CZ plans to combine user data from different sources to create a single customer view. With that unified view, the organization will create segmentations within the customer journey and gradually introduce more personalized experiences ensuring the right messages reach the right customers.  To power this vision, CZ uses Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data to consolidate information from across the organization—including web activity, app usage, and contact center interactions—into a single, unified customer profile.

“We want to see things like what pages customers are visiting, or what they’re doing in our app, or how they interact with us on the phone and use those insights to meet our goals,” says Simon Boer, Product Owner of Team Customer Data and Engagement, CZ Zorgverzekeringen. “Those goals include reducing calls to our customer service center, improving access to health information, shortening waiting lists, and growing and maintaining our customer base.”

CZ is also exploring closer integration between Customer Insights – Journeys with Dynamics 365 Contact Center. This would allow representatives to flag customer information needs during interactions and automatically follow up with relevant communications.

“Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys gives us a standardized solution that is a huge improvement over the disconnected, standalone tools we used before,” says Boer. “Now, we have a connected and integrated platform that brings together multiple customer experiences and channels to help us personalize our campaigns and reach our customers in more effective ways.”

Although CZ is still early in this transition, the strategic value is already clear. “Having marketing and service on the same Dynamics 365 platform is incredibly powerful,” Westdorp explains. “When a customer contacts us, we can immediately see their interaction history—what communications they’ve received, how they’ve responded, and whether this contact relates to an earlier journey.”

Building a foundation for growth and innovation 

 By making use of the Microsoft Innovation roadmap and by consolidating fragmented systems, CZ is continuously improving its customer contact and is significantly reducing complexity in its IT landscape and created a more scalable and flexible foundation for growth.

Innovation cycles are shorter, as new capabilities will be adopted directly from the platform rather than built from scratch. Importantly, Dynamics 365 enables CZ to move faster without compromising stability or compliance—an essential balance in the highly regulated health insurance sector. “Dynamics 365 has proven our new platform-based IT strategy,” says Slager. “It structurally brings us a huge amount of innovation that helps us serve our customers in the right way.”

Looking ahead, CZ plans to expand its use of Microsoft Power Platform to automate workflows, streamline data updates, and reduce manual effort across service and operations. AI plays an equally central role in the roadmap, with CZ actively evaluating agentic AI capabilities, such as Customer Intent Agent in Dynamics 365 and newly developed agents that Microsoft is bringing to the market via its Microsoft Innovation Roadmap. Automated follow-up workflows could trigger during live interactions to reduce manual effort for service representatives. The company’s roadmap also includes proactive, data-driven engagement through Customer Insights to limit inbound contact center demand and eventually improve self-service outcomes.