Microsoft announces first party Contact Centre Solution within “Dynamics 365 Customer Service”

Today at Ignite, Microsoft has announced “voice channel for Dynamics 365 Customer Service”. This basically means that “Dynamics 365 Customer Service” is expanding to become a first party Contact Centre solution.

In the official Microsoft Blog, they said that with the addition of the “voice channel”, in Dynamics 365 Customer Service will enable:

  • A consistent, 360-degree view of the customer across all channels, allowing agents to quickly understand the full customer journey so customers never have to repeat themselves.
  • An intelligent, conversational Power Virtual Agent that can be used as an interactive voice response (IVR) for the voice channel and versatile enough to be used as a chatbot for SMS, live chat, and social messaging channels.
  • AI-based routing of incoming calls to the best-skilled agent, consistent with all other channels.
  • Increased collaboration with other agents and subject matter experts globally using embedded Microsoft Teams to resolve issues faster.

As with the rest of the Dynamics suite, Microsoft say that “AI is infused throughout our first-party voice channel to enrich the customer and agent experience by automating routine tasks and offering insights and recommendations to increase the agent’s focus on the customer”. This includes

Real-time transcription eliminates the need for agents to take notes. Now the agent can refer to what the customer has said without having to ask the customer to repeat information.
Live sentiment analysis provides a pulse on customer emotions throughout the call so agents can deliver a more empathetic experience.
Proactive, AI-driven recommendations for similar cases and knowledge articles help agents resolve customer issues faster.
Real-time translation of transcripts gives agents assisting customers in different regions and across multiple languages added confidence of seeing the conversation in their native language.

  • Real-time transcription eliminates the need for agents to take notes. Now the agent can refer to what the customer has said without having to ask the customer to repeat information.
  • Live sentiment analysis provides a pulse on customer emotions throughout the call so agents can deliver a more empathetic experience.
  • Proactive, AI-driven recommendations for similar cases and knowledge articles help agents resolve customer issues faster.
  • Real-time translation of transcripts gives agents assisting customers in different regions and across multiple languages added confidence of seeing the conversation in their native language.

What about third-party contact centres?

Microsoft have stated, that whilst they now “offer” a first-party SaaS contact centre within Dynamics Customer Service, they have also stated that they will continue to actively support other contact center providers and integrations with Dynamics 365.

Microsoft said, “We continue to support integrations with key partners such as Five9, Genesys, NICE, Solgari, Tenfold, Vonage and others who are building connectors to enable their voice solutions within Dynamics 365 Customer Service“.

Pricing?

I haven’t seen any information on pricing of the voice services for Dynamics Customer Service yet but presume this will build on the Azure Communication Services and be priced accordingly?

Availability.

The new Dynamics 365 Customer Service with voice channel is available for trial right now, by following the link below.
https://aka.ms/TryCustomerService

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