All in on AI is a series featuring interviews from Microsoft executives across the company about what transforming work with AI means to their teams. Through these conversations, we’ll highlight the challenges each industry faces and the lessons we learned that our customers can use in their own AI journeys. In this episode, Colette Stallbaumer, General Manager, Microsoft 365 and Future of Work sits down with Mala Anand, Corporate Vice President, Customer Experience and Success at Microsoft to explore the integration of AI in customer service.

According to the 2024 Work Trend Index, a study exploring into the global trends affecting employee work and wellness, employees are struggling to keep up with the pace and volume of work. Many employees report feeling burned out and as a result, staff turnover is on the rise.

These trends have profound implications, underscoring a crucial shift: employees are now prioritizing their health and well-being over work. This is a pressing concern for all business leaders, particularly in customer service. 

At Microsoft, we recognize the vital role our customer service agents play in delivering world-class care. As the front line between our business and our customers, the quality of our customer care directly impacts customer satisfaction. 

Recently, Colette Stallbaumer, General Manager, Microsoft 365 and Future of Work joined Mala Anand, Corporate Vice President, Customer Experience and Success at Microsoft to discuss how our customer service teams are using AI solutions like Microsoft Copilot to ensure our customer service employees are empowered to focus on the most meaningful parts of their jobs. Here’s what she had to say: 

Adapting to the customer service surge with the power of AI 

Since 2019, Microsoft’s customer service teams, like many in the industry, have been managing a rising surge in calls from customers with complex needs. 

As a service industry veteran and leader of our customer service organization, Mala and her team realized that just adding more call-handling capacity wouldn’t suffice. Their goal was to help teams at scale—to empower them to manage more inquiries, address more complex customer needs, and to more rapidly onboard new employees to help with the surge. They also saw an opportunity to reduce case volumes by introducing self-service options for customers. 

The team began exploring the use of generative AI to enable a more consistent and seamless experience. Already one of the world’s largest support organizations using Dynamics 365 Customer Service, harnessing new AI capabilities could help the organization to automate and augment common support scenarios. As customer zero for our products, turning to Microsoft Copilot and Dynamics 365 Customer Service would enable us to quickly adopt the transformative power of generative AI, and share those learnings with business leaders to implement and improve their own customer support experience at scale.

Transforming the employee experience with generative AI 

As Mala explains in the interview, adopting Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Copilot Studio created an opportunity to transform work across four key areas of Microsoft’s customer service landscape. 

First, the Customer Service and Success team needed to speed up how quickly new hires could start helping existing customer service agents. Second, they wanted all support teams to access accurate information quickly and spend less time working across tools and data sources to collect customer and incident details. Third, they aimed to cut down on mundane tasks like data entry and paperwork so that customer service agents could focus more on complex issues that require empathy and judgment. Lastly, they aimed to improve self-help options for customers to handle their own questions, reducing the need for support requests. 

AI has the potential to drive operational excellence, nurture customer loyalty, and grow value through the entire customer journey—making it one of the most valuable tools for enterprises to create a consistent, differentiated experience, build meaningful relationships, and deliver better customer care.

Mala Anand, Corporate Vice President, Customer Experience and Success at Microsoft

1. Supporting new hires with better onboarding

The Microsoft Customer Service team introduced Copilot’s case summarization feature to break down complex information into simple summaries, helping new hires understand customer issues more quickly. By surfacing relevant information from diverse sources such as internal documentation, knowledge bases, and websites, Copilot accelerates the learning curve, enabling agents to resolve customer queries faster and deliver superior service. 

What’s more, Copilot supports new hires with ongoing learning and skill development by providing real-time assistance and insights. By using AI capabilities integrated into platforms like Dynamics 365 Customer Service, agents can more easily access tools and diagnostics and recommend optimal solutions. This empowers agents to deliver highly personalized customer experiences across all customer support needs, at a global scale.

2. Helping employees find the right information faster

With Copilot, agents can now find important information quickly, even if it was spread across different systems. Dynamics 365 Knowledge Assist helps agents zero in on the relevant information and articles faster than traditional search. It not only can suggest relevant information but provides context about the specific relevance of content and cites the source.

Having a more comprehensive and streamlined method to seek information not only helps agents solve issues more quickly—it gives them a more complete understanding of information relevant to the issue they’re trying to solve. Agents can now use this context, with Copilot, to craft a more thorough and accurate response to customers.

3. Automating burdensome tasks

Before Copilot, creating detailed case summaries could take up to 30 to 40 minutes. Now, with Copilot, it’s done in 15 minutes or less. This not only speeds up how quickly customer service agents can handle customer requests but also lets them manage more cases without sacrificing quality. 

Automating summaries and common email and communication tasks allows agents to spend much less time on repetitive tasks, giving them more time to focus on the more meaningful and often more rewarding aspects of their job.  

4. Transforming support with self-service

Prioritizing self-service by integrating Copilot Studio into our customer-facing experiences is starting to make a big difference in how Microsoft handles customer service. Now, customers can use the power of generative AI in Copilot Studio to access self-help resources.

This change has reduced the amount of work customer service teams have to do and lets agents concentrate on more complex issues where customers require assistance. As a result, they’re getting things done more efficiently, working together better, and feeling more satisfied with their jobs. 

Harnessing the business impact of Copilot  

As Mala explains in her interview, generative AI and Copilot have played a pivotal role in transforming our customer service organization at Microsoft, enabling teams to achieve more with fewer resources. Here’s what we’ve seen so far:

1. Improved collaboration: Collaboration required among customer support agents decreased by 13%, making case resolution smoother and operations more efficient.

2. Enhancing efficiency: With Copilot, average chat case handling time reduced by up to 16%, giving agents better access to knowledge and improving overall efficiency.

3. Increasing productivity: Agents using Copilot became more productive, handling up to 12% more cases, which allowed them to serve more customers effectively. 

And that’s just the start. Mala sees a future for Copilot that will revolutionize the customer services industry, making it more efficient, responsive, and customer-centric.  

These include things like automatically connecting customers with appropriate experts, helping customers solve complex problems on their own, predicting issues before they happen, and personalizing interactions based on customer information and preferences. 

Join Microsoft on our AI journey  

By automating routine tasks and helping teams find information faster, Copilot helps our employees focus on what really matters to them, allowing them to dive deeper into the parts of their jobs they love.  

The speed at which AI is transforming business today is unprecedented, reimagining the way we work. We envision a future where AI alongside human expertise reduces and eliminates the seams in the support experience. 

Mala Anand, Corporate Vice President, Customer Experience and Success at Microsoft

Today, the power of AI is revolutionizing how companies innovate and create large-scale impact in all areas. Leveraging generative AI throughout the customer journey enables businesses to foster enduring customer loyalty by improving the overall experience, adding value at each interaction. 

This interview is part of our All in on AI series that explores how Microsoft is adopting AI across different areas of our business. Next, Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft Chief People Officer, sits down with Jared Spataro to share how AI is helping human resource teams do more with less and to share the transformative best practices she used to drive some of the highest, fastest AI adoption rates Microsoft has ever seen. 

The post All in on AI: Exploring Microsoft’s AI journey through customer service appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In today’s digital landscape, the success of customer service on social media hinges on the quality of care provided to customers. It’s essential for communications from agents to be timely, accurate, sensitive, brief, and friendly to enhance customer satisfaction and foster brand loyalty. To support this, we are excited to introduce the first-party WhatsApp channel seamlessly integrated with Azure Communication Services, now available in public preview for Dynamics Contact Center. 

Why WhatsApp?

WhatsApp is a leading choice for contact centers worldwide, celebrated for its ease of use and extensive global reach. With billions of users, WhatsApp provides businesses with an unparalleled opportunity to connect with customers in a medium they trust and prefer. Now, with our first-party solution, integrating WhatsApp into your contact center has never been easier. 

Seamless integration with Microsoft’s ecosystem 

One of the key advantages of this new integration is its direct tie-in with Microsoft’s ecosystem. By leveraging Azure Communication Services, our solution eliminates the need for third-party connectors. This results in a simplified IT footprint, enhanced reliability, and more secure communication for your business. No more juggling multiple vendors or worrying about potential integration issues. Our solution is designed to work seamlessly within your existing Microsoft infrastructure. 

Key capabilities 

With the first-party WhatsApp channel, your contact center can benefit from a range of powerful features: 

• Easy Configuration: Administrators can easily configure the WhatsApp channel powered by Azure Communication Services, making setup straightforward. 

• Customer Engagement: Customers can reach out to your business through WhatsApp, engaging in an asynchronous manner that respects their time and preferences. Whether it’s a quick question or a detailed inquiry, your customers can connect with you when it’s convenient for them. 

• Unified Interface for Agents: Agents will have access to a unified, contextual, and productive interface. Subsequently, they can engage with customers and resolve issues more efficiently. This streamlined workflow reduces the time to resolution and enhances overall customer satisfaction. 

• Rich Reporting for Supervisors: Supervisors and managers can access detailed reports to monitor and optimize contact center performance. This data-driven approach ensures that your team is operating at peak efficiency, with insights that drive continuous improvement. 

Enhancing customer engagement

The integration of WhatsApp with Azure Communication Services is more than just a new channel—it’s a step toward more meaningful and contextual customer interactions. By leveraging WhatsApp, businesses can provide a seamless and personalized experience that resonates with customers, ultimately driving satisfaction and loyalty.

Get started today

To sign up to use this feature, fill out this form. We invite you to explore the new first-party WhatsApp integration in Dynamics 365 Contact Center. Whether you’re addressing product inquiries or managing customer service scenarios, this integration empowers your agents to deliver exceptional customer care. 

Join us in this exciting journey of enhancing customer communication. With this new channel, experience the benefits of a simplified, reliable, and powerful customer service tool. 

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to expand the capabilities of Dynamics 365 Contact Center. Also, don’t hesitate to provide feedback during this public preview period. We’re here to support your success. 

Learn more

Watch a quick video introduction.

To learn more, read the documentation: Configure a WhatsApp channel through Azure Communication Services (preview) | Microsoft Learn

The post Try the first-party WhatsApp channel in Dynamics 365 Contact Center appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The modern rich text editor is now our advanced editor for an end-to-end enhanced authoring experience. As part of this advancement, we are phasing out the current rich text editor and integrating its capabilities into the modern rich text editor. 

Key dates

• Disclosure date: August 9, 2024
  The modern rich text editor for non-customized controls was delivered in April. By October, the modern rich text editor for customized controls will also be delivered.
• End of support: October 31, 2024
  After this date, no new enhancements will be done to the current rich text editor and the modern rich text editor will be generally available.
• End of life: April 30, 2025
  After this date, the current rich text editor will be taken out of service.

Next Steps

We strongly encourage customers to leverage the modern rich text editor, which will be enriched with all the editor experiences. The modern rich text editor is designed to align with the familiar and intuitive interfaces of Microsoft applications such as Outlook, Word, and OneNote. This update introduces a modern design, dark mode and new Copilot features to enhance your text editing capabilities. This ensures reliability and alignment with our commitment to cost-efficiency and user-centric innovation. Learn more about the modern rich text editor.  

Please contact your Success Manager, FastTrack representative, or Microsoft Support if you have any additional questions.  

The post Use the modern rich text editor in Dynamics 365 Customer Service appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

On July 16, 2024, we published the 2024 release wave 2 plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. These plans are a compilation of the new capabilities planned to be released between October 2024 to March 2025. This release introduces a wealth of new features designed to enhance customer understanding and improve overall user experience, showcasing our dedication to driving digital transformation for our customers and partners. 

The upcoming wave is centered around utilizing advanced AI and Microsoft Copilot technologies to enhance user productivity and streamline operations across diverse business applications. These enhancements include intelligent automation, AI-powered insights, and immersive user experiences that are designed to break down barriers between data, insights, and individuals. Watch a summary of the release highlights. 

Discover the latest features that empower organizations to operate more efficiently and adaptively. From AI-driven sales insights and customer service enhancements to predictive analytics in supply chain management and autonomous financial processes, the new capabilities enable businesses to proactively address challenges and capitalize on opportunities. 

Highlights from Dynamics 365 

Dynamics 365 release wave

Check out the 2024 release wave 2 Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Copilot for business features

Learn more

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales continues to enhance customer understanding and boost sales through data, intelligence, and user-friendly experiences. In this release, we are focused on including natural language copilot for summarizing information, creating a new full-screen Copilot Home with curated insights and role-specific actions, and using AI-powered insights to find leads. Watch this video to discover the new and enhanced features included in this release wave. 

Microsoft Copilot for Sales continues to deliver and enhance cutting-edge generative AI capabilities for sellers by enriching Copilot in Microsoft 365 capabilities with sales-specific workflows, data, and actions. We will focus on using AI-powered insights to create leads, deepen the integration into Copilot in Microsoft 365, and use natural language capabilities to allow sellers to ask data-related questions of their CRM. View this video to learn more about the features releasing in this wave. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service will continue to empower agents to work more efficiently through new copilot capabilities such as proactive prompting, ability to access data from external systems securely with plugins, email enhancements, and AI-infused routing. Watch this video to discover how the latest enhancements to Customer Service can benefit your business. 

Microsoft Copilot for Service is now generally available, bringing new capabilities to enhance user experiences. These features will be integrated across Outlook, Teams, Microsoft 365 Chat, and Copilot embedded in third-party CRMs. View this video about the features launching in this wave for Copilot for Service. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center will add new features for voice, messaging, Copilot, AI-infused routing, and contact center operations including out of box support for additional CRMs. Watch this video to learn about the new features releasing in Dynamics 365 Contact Center this wave. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service enables a shift from reactive to proactive and predictive service, empowering digital transformation and innovative business models. Using Copilot, frontline workers will be able to retrieve critical information and initiate mixed-reality remote assist calls within Teams through Copilot. Managers will be able to create, update, and manage work orders effortlessly across web, Outlook, and Teams interfaces. View this video to learn more about the features releasing in this wave. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance continues its journey of leading in autonomous finance, using AI to transform common end-to-end financial processes. This release focuses on in-app copilot capabilities, immersive persona-based user experiences, expanding country coverage, electronic invoicing enhancements, business performance analytics and planning enhancements, and autonomous reconciliation capabilities. Discover how the latest enhancements to Finance can benefit your business in this video. 

Microsoft Copilot for Finance is expanding data reconciliation capabilities in Excel with assisted data sanitization and preparation routines. Extending variance analysis capabilities with support from additional data sources and enabling collaboration on findings with stakeholders will also be a focus in the upcoming wave. Additionally, the Teams integration will facilitate collections calls with suggested scripts and automated recording of action items in the financial system. Check out this video to see the exciting new features releasing in Microsoft Copilot for Finance.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management is advancing along the path of an autonomous supply chain by integrating intelligence, automation, and analytics into every facet of business procedures, thereby improving user productivity and enhancing organizational adaptability. In this update, the spotlight is on improving order-promising capabilities for manufacturers. Demand planning is upgraded to incorporate forecasting with external signals, and the inclusion of Copilot weaves insights and analyses directly into workflows, identifying trends and irregularities, while also allowing for specific data inquiries at the cell level. Additionally, Traceability Copilot keeps track of actual products in production and compiles a comprehensive historical record of related activities. Watch this video to discover the exciting features launching in this release wave. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations is focused on enhancing usability, performance, and scalability in key areas such as project planning, invoicing, time entry, and core transaction processing. The spotlight is on AI-assisted core functionality improvements in estimation, proposal generation, journals, approvals, and contract management, with added mobile capabilities and scale improvements to handle larger projects and invoices at an increased scale. Watch this video to learn about the new features releasing in Project Operations this wave. 

Finance and Operations cross-app capabilities will continue to invest in capabilities applying to Finance, Supply Chain Management, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources, and Project Operations. We are infusing copilot experiences across applications, including natural language chat, embedded AI, and intelligent process automation, and enabling extensibility for copilot scenarios. We will also bring more value and insights to finance and operations apps data and enhancements to ensure continued enterprise-grade security and compliance at scale. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources continues to build intelligence, develop automation and analytics around the hire-to-separate process, increase user productivity, and empower business agility. We are enhancing recruiting with AI-driven assessments and offer management, improving experiences for employees and HR business partners in benefits and performance management, and advancing analytics, insights, and planning through business performance planning and analytics capabilities. View this video to learn more about the features releasing in this wave. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce is using the power of AI to empower retailers to streamline their operations and drive increased customer loyalty and conversions. With Copilot, retail managers, sales associates, and merchandisers will gain new AI-powered insights into customer buying patterns and preferences, recommendations for positioning and selling products, and business intelligence on store performance. Improvements to the self-checkout POS make customer checkouts more efficient, and user experience updates to Store Commerce app streamline daily tasks for faster, more efficient sales and service. Watch this video to see the new features releasing in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is focused on maintaining service reliability performance and security standards. We’ll continue enhancing productivity by optimizing core processes with Copilot, expanding to cover more than 170 countries, and offering enhanced reporting with more than 80 Microsoft Power BI reports. Additionally, integration with Field Service will be expanded, along with new financial management features. We will also enhance development tools and governance, along with improved data privacy and compliance management. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist will bring significant improvements to the quality of Mixed Reality (MR) annotations in Teams mobile for both iOS and Android users. The update will enhance the accuracy of MR ink on irregular and complex surfaces, making it easier for remote experts and technicians to collaborate seamlessly. Mixed Reality annotations in Teams mobile will be generally available in the next wave, along with ongoing investments in stability, performance optimization, and usability improvements across HoloLens 2 and iOS and Android applications. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights—Data empowers every organization to unify and enhance customer data, leveraging it for insightful analysis and intelligent actions. This release enables you to streamline data integration by using Microsoft Dataverse and Microsoft Fabric, attach your data in OneLake to Customer Insights, accelerate time to insights with data in Data Lake format, increase control when attaching to data in Dataverse, and seamlessly generate insights from marketing. Discover how these latest enhancements can benefit your business in this video. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights—Journeys brings the power of AI to redefine the workflow for marketers, enabling them to be more productive than ever before. Businesses can optimize every interaction with their customers with end-to-end journeys across departments and channels. With this release, you will have more flexibility and control when it comes to journeys, managing your web forms and tailoring Copilot to your business. Watch this video to learn about the new features releasing in this wave. 

Highlights from Microsoft Power Platform 

Microsoft Power Platform

Check out the 2024 release wave 2 Microsoft Power Platform features

Learn more

Watch this video to explore the exciting new features releasing across Microsoft Power Platform. 

Microsoft Power Apps will continue to transform app experiences with infused intelligence, enabling users to be more productive by using Copilot to work with data, get insights, and improve their apps. Makers will continue to benefit from AI-assisted development, enabling rich and complex applications to be built with monitoring, control, and unmatched governance for admins, ensuring organizations can adopt low-code and AI transformation at scale. 

Microsoft Power Pages will expedite site building for a low-code maker or pro developer to build intelligent sites that reimagine the way you interact with your employees, customers, and partners. 

Microsoft Power Automate will continue to make it easier to build flows by using natural language and multi-modal generative AI capabilities across cloud flows and desktop flows, troubleshooting runs, and managing your automation estate with an end-to-end view. This, along with improvements in process mining to jumpstart creation of automation through Microsoft 365 integration and ongoing improvements to scaling, means it’ll be easier than ever for new users to get started and scale. 

Microsoft Copilot Studio is advancing copilot capabilities and IVR support with Customer Service and will expand geographically to the United Arab Emirates and Germany. Additionally, the team is improving software lifecycle management capabilities with topic-level import/export and role-based access control (RBAC), as well as enhancing governance and administration functionalities. 

AI Builder is investing in Prompt Builder for creating and deploying GPT prompts with enterprise data to enhance flows, apps, data tables, and copilots. We are also enhancing Intelligent Document Processing with a new validation station in Power Automate, application lifestyle management (ALM) support, and pre-built AI models for translation, classification, and personally identifiable information (PII) detection. Lastly, we’ll improve AI governance through capacity management, data policies, and including AI Builder capacity in the Power Apps developer plan. 

Microsoft Dataverse is enhancing the maker experience by boosting app building productivity with Copilot, ensuring seamless connectivity to external data and knowledge sources, and integrating AI-powered Enterprise Copilot in Microsoft 365. These investments aim to streamline development and use AI for more efficient and intelligent solutions. 

Governance and administration continues to advance via tools and insights that empower Microsoft Power Platform admin to easily get their job done. This wave focuses on governing Copilot adoption and easily securing low-code assets, helping enterprises boost adoption of Microsoft Power Platform solutions in their organization while keeping their digital environment safe. 

Early access period 

Starting July 29, 2024, customers and partners can validate the latest features in a non-production environment. These updates include user experience enhancements that will be automatically enabled in production environments by October 2024. Take advantage of the early access period to test these updates and effectively plan for your customer rollout. Explore the 2024 release wave 2 early access features for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform or visit the early access FAQ page for more information. 

For a complete list of new capabilities, please refer to the Dynamics 365 2024 release wave 2 plan and the Microsoft Power Platform 2024 release wave 2 plan. We also encourage you to share your feedback in the community forums for Dynamics 365 or Microsoft Power Platform. 

The post 2024 release wave 2 plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform now available  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

On June 4, 2024, we introduced the latest milestone in our journey towards modernizing customer engagement: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center, a Microsoft Copilot-first contact center solution that delivers generative AI to every customer engagement channel. This standalone Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution enables customers to maximize their current investments by connecting to preferred customer relationship management systems (CRMs) or custom apps.  

Dynamics 365 Contact Center

A complete solution for contact centers

Learn more

Today, we are excited to announce that Dynamics 365 Contact Center is generally available, offering a complete but fully-composable solution for contact centers. Organizations will benefit from new native capabilities such as generative AI, technology from Nuance, and much more all built from the ground-up to power mission-critical service operations with extensive scale and reliability on the hyperscale cloud platform of Azure.    

Key benefits of Dynamics 365 Contact Center

Dynamics 365 Contact Center key capabilities include: 

Effortless self-service 

• Customers have the freedom to engage in their channel of choice across voice, SMS, chat, email, and social media apps.
• Sophisticated pre-integrated copilots for digital channels drive context-aware, personalized conversations for rich self-service experiences. 
• Provide a frictionless conversational interactive voice response (IVR) experience in real time through natural, human-like interactions. 

Accelerated human-assisted service 

• Intelligent unified routing steers incoming requests that require a human touch to the agent best suited to help, enhancing service quality and minimizing wasted effort. 
• Agents gain a 360-degree view of customers and AI tools for real-time sentiment analysis, translation, transcription, and more to help streamline service. 
• Let Copilot automate repetitive agent tasks such as conversation summary, drafting emails, suggested responses, and knowledge search. 

Operational efficiency 

• Generative AI based real-time reporting allows service leaders to optimize contact center operations across all support channels including their workforce. 
• Maximize Copilot by connecting it to an organization’s existing data and business applications using more than 1,200 pre-built connectors that eliminate the need for expensive IT integration. 
• Empower employee helpdesk and human resources functions using Microsoft Teams as a secure, integrated engagement channel. 

Dynamics 365 Contact Center customer stories

We’re thrilled to see the initial impact that our early adopter customers and partners are having with Dynamics 365 Contact Center:  

“With Lenovo’s Premier Support Plus and Dynamics 365 Contact Center, we’ve established a transformational partnership that strives for customer satisfaction, alongside operational excellence”

Lishuang Xu, Executive Director, Customer Engagement Center, Lenovo.  

“Sales and marketing thrive on smooth customer interactions. With Dynamics 365 Contact Center, early adoption means we’re ahead, modernizing our approach with AI for increasing effectiveness and improving customer satisfaction”

Ian Au-Yeung, Chief Revenue Officer, Synoptek 

“With Dynamics 365 Contact Center powered by Copilot, we see tremendous potential for significant enhancement in contact center staff productivity, ensuring quicker and precise responses that elevate our customer service and affirm our leadership in the insurance industry.”

Ritu Thakur, Head of Group Operations, AIA Group   

Take the next step 

Available now for $110 per user/month, Dynamics 365 Contact Center includes digital and voice channels as well as individual channel options for purchase.¹   

Additionally, we are introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service Premium—a new offer combining Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise with Dynamics 365 Contact Center for customers seeking to consolidate on an integrated, generative AI-powered contact center and CRM service solution that delivers personalized customer journeys. Dynamics 365 Customer Service Premium is available now for $195 per user/month.² Customers with existing Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise licenses adopting Dynamics 365 Contact Center will have the ability to move to Dynamics 365 Customer Service Premium. 

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Contact Center. 

^1,2 Pricing is accurate as of June 2024. For additional pricing information, see here.

The post Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center is now generally available  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In February, we announced the general availability of Copilot for Service, which helps organizations realize the benefits of generative AI by extending their existing investments in CRM and contact center solutions. Copilot for Service helps quicken agents’ time to resolution by assisting them with common tasks using the full context of the customer journey. 

With prebuilt integrations for common CRMs, you can embed Copilot for Service inside the agent desktop to help agents be more productive and create seamless customer experiences across channels.  

On July 1, we are introducing several new capabilities in Copilot for Service to further support agents working in their CRM of choice. 

Email assistance

Copilot can help agents draft emails to answer customer queries. Using the context of customer records and actions, such as cases and emails, Copilot can provide an email draft written in the voice of the organization. Agents can review and alter the draft as needed before sending, and they can adjust the tone. With Copilot, agents can spend less time authoring and more time helping customers solve complex issues. 

Context-aware multiturn chats 

When an agent is involved in a customer conversation, they sometimes encounter difficult questions they can’t answer on their own. Instead of making a customer wait while they ask a colleague or conduct research, agents can ask Copilot a question. Copilot identifies the agent’s intent and understands the context of CRM data, including customer records and cases, so it can provide answers tailored to service scenarios and better support the resolution of customer issues.

Case summarization 

With case summarization capabilities, Copilot understands which case an agent may be working on and summarizes the details for them, so agents can ramp up on their assigned cases faster. Armed with the most important aspects of a case, agents can then reduce time to resolution for customers. And because Copilot understands the context of CRM data, agents can be confident that they are giving customers the most informed answers.

Real-time streaming 

When agents use Copilot to write an email response or ask a question, including multiturn questions, they can read the generated responses on the user interface incrementally, without having to wait for the entire response to be generated. Agents can also choose to stop Copilot from generating a response and start fresh. This helps reduce wait times and gives agents a chance to refine their requests if needed. 

Learn more

These features will begin rolling out on July 1. You can access them by selecting the Start with Microsoft Copilot option when using the Copilot for Service landing page.

Read the documentation to learn more.  

Find out how you can make Copilot for Service part of your Contact Center as a Service solution.   

The post Use expanded Copilot for Service capabilities in your CRM appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Azure Application Insights is now our comprehensive solution for end-to-end conversation diagnostics. As part of this advancement, we are phasing out unified routing diagnostics and integrating its capabilities into Application Insights. 

Key dates

• Disclosure date: May 9, 2024
  We sent communications to affected customers that we are deprecating unified routing diagnostics in Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
  
• End of support: July 1, 2024
  After this date, no new diagnostics records will be generated for conversations/records routed.
  
• End of life: August 1, 2024
  After this date, unified routing diagnostics will be taken out of service.

Next steps

We strongly encourage customers to leverage Azure Application Insights, which will be enriched with all the conversation and routing diagnostics related events. Application Insights offers a flexible and cost-effective alternative with the added advantage of customization to meet business needs. We aim to iteratively improve diagnostic capabilities of conversation lifecycle events. This ensures reliability and alignment with our commitment to cost-efficiency and user-centric innovation. Learn more about conversation diagnostics in Azure Application Insights. 

Please contact your Success Manager, FastTrack representative, or Microsoft Support if you have any additional questions. 

The post Transition from unified routing diagnostics to Azure Application Insights appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Today we are thrilled to announce the latest milestone in our journey towards modernizing customer service: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center, a Copilot-first contact center solution that delivers generative AI to every customer engagement channel. With general availability on July 1, this standalone Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution enables customers to maximize their current investments by connecting to preferred customer relationship management systems (CRMs) or custom apps.

Modernizing service experiences with generative AI

Customer service expectations are higher than ever. It’s not only frustrating for customers to deal with long wait times, being transferred to the wrong agent or having to repeat themselves multiple times — it’s detrimental to business. When people have poor customer service experiences, over half of them end up spending less or decide to take their business elsewhere (Qualtrics).

Generative AI is transforming customer service and revolutionizing the way contact centers operate — from delivering rich experiences across digital and voice channels that enable customers to resolve their own needs, to equipping agents with relevant context within the flow of work, and ultimately unifying operations to drive efficiency and reduce costs.

We have experienced the transformational impact of generative AI firsthand with Microsoft’s Customer Service and Support (CSS) team, one of the largest customer service organizations in the world. Before the support team migrated to Microsoft’s own tools, CSS was previously using 16 different systems and over 500 individual tools — slowing down service, hindering collaboration and producing inefficient workflows. With Copilot as part of the solution, the CSS team achieved a 12 percent decrease in average handle time for chat engagements and 13 percent decrease in agents requiring peer assistance to resolve an incident. And more broadly, CSS has seen a 31 percent increase in first call resolution and a 20 percent reduction in missed routes.

Dynamics 365 Contact Center

Applying learnings and insights from our own Copilot usage, coupled with multi-year investments in voice and digital channels, Dynamics 365 Contact Center infuses generative AI throughout the contact center workflow — spanning the channels of communication, self-service, intelligent routing, agent-assisted service and operations to help contact centers solve problems faster, empower agents and reduce costs.

Additionally, Dynamics 365 Contact Center is built natively on the Microsoft cloud to deliver extensive scalability and reliability across voice, digital channels and routing while at the same time allowing organizations to retain their existing investments in CRM or custom apps.

Key Dynamics 365 Contact Center capabilities include:

• Next-generation self-service: With sophisticated pre-integrated Copilots for digital and voice channels that drive context-aware, personalized conversations, contact centers can deploy rich self-service experiences. Combining the best of interactive voice response (IVR) technology from Nuance and Microsoft Copilot Studio’s no-code/low-code designer, contact centers can provide customers with engaging, individualized experiences powered by generative AI.
• Accelerated human-assisted service: Across every channel, intelligent unified routing steers incoming requests that require a human touch to the agent best suited to help, enhancing service quality and efficiency. When a customer reaches an agent, Dynamics 365 Contact Center gives the agent a 360-degree view of the customer with generative AI — for example, real-time conversation tools like sentiment analysis, translation, conversation summary, transcription and more are included to help improve service, along with others that automate repetitive tasks for agents such as case summary, draft an email, suggested response and the ability for Copilot to answer agent questions grounded on your trusted knowledge sources.
• Operational efficiency: Contact center efficiency depends just as much on what happens behind the scenes as it does on customer and agent experiences. We’ve built a solution that helps service teams detect issues early, improve critical KPIs and adapt quickly. With generative AI-based, real-time reporting, Dynamics 365 Contact Center allows service leaders to optimize contact center operations across all support channels, including their workforce.

Here’s what customers are saying:

• “At 1-800-Flowers.com, we pride ourselves on exceptional service and continually raising the bar. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center, we’re creating a best-in-class solution that furthers our mission and helps inspire people to give more, connect more, and build more and better relationships.” — Arnie Leap, CIO, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc.
• “MSC has always been known for the personal service that we give to our customers; Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center helps us elevate that customer-centric approach.”— Fabio Catassi, CIO, Mediterranean Shipping Company
• “For our support teams, efficient problem-solving and smooth customer interactions are key to delivering exceptional service. With Dynamics 365 Contact Center and by leveraging its AI capabilities, we see a future where our support teams will deliver that level of service every day.”— Stephen Currie, Vice President Support Operations, Synoptek

If you’re attending Customer Contact Week in Las Vegas, join me for my main stage panel on Thursday, June 6. Be sure to also stop by the Microsoft booth (#151) during the event to see Dynamics 365 Contact Center in action.

Stay tuned for the general availability of Dynamics 365 Contact Center on July 1.

The post Announcing Dynamics 365 Contact Center – a Copilot-first cloud contact center to transform service experiences appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We’re excited to announce skill-based agent search, designed to enhance agent collaboration and improve agent efficiency within Dynamics 365 Customer Service. With this latest release, agents can now search for other agents based on specific skills, facilitating seamless consultations and transfers during customer interactions. 

Empowering agents with skill-based search 

In today’s fast-paced customer service environment, it’s crucial for agents to have access to the right expertise at the right time. With our new skill-based search functionality, agents can now easily identify and connect with other agents who possess the necessary skills to address customer inquiries effectively.

Efficient consultations and transfers 

During a conversation with a customer, agents can initiate a consultation with another agent by specifying desired skills such as language proficiency or product knowledge. The system will then display a list of agents who match the specified criteria. The list includes their names, presence status, and relevant skills. 

Seamless user experience 

We’ve also redesigned the entire user interface for consult and transfer, providing agents with more modern and intuitive controls. We also made it easier to find the right agent without needing to scroll.

Optimal service delivery 

By enabling agents to search for and collaborate with other agents based on skills, organizations can provide optimal customer service. This optimization helps significantly reduce misroutes. Agents can quickly consult with experts in specific areas, ensuring that customer inquiries are addressed by the best-suited agent, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

Enable skill-based search for your agents 

The latest release will have this default on for all customers. Administrators do not need to perform additional configuration steps to turn this on. 

We’re committed to continuously improving our platform to meet the evolving needs of our customers. Stay tuned for more updates and enhancements to come! 

Learn more 

Watch a quick video introduction.

The post Try skill-based agent search in Dynamics 365 Customer Service appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Knowledge is the lifeblood of customer service organizations. Timely access to the most accurate and relevant knowledge articles critically influences agents’ productivity and ability to deliver exceptional customer support and boost CSAT scores.  

Agents rely on the availability of an up-to-date knowledge base. Additionally, they bring a wealth of tacit insights and personal competency to troubleshoot and resolve customer cases. However, once resolved, these valuable knowledge insights remain trapped unless documented by someone—whether knowledge authors or agents. This process requires additional effort, time, and specialized writing skills. It may also be outside the agents’ core priorities, especially in high-velocity support operations. 

Harvesting such tacit knowledge insights from resolved cases into mainstream knowledge articles can significantly help other agents discover and reuse them, accelerating overall knowledge sharing.   

Introducing knowledge draft assist in Dynamics 365 Customer Service

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of knowledge draft assist, now in preview. This Copilot feature helps agents generate knowledge draft proposals from resolved case data. 

How does it work?

As the agent resolves a case, they can now click the Propose new knowledge using this case checkbox. This triggers Copilot to auto-generate an initial knowledge draft from a set of important case data. Copilot uses case descriptions, email exchanges, summaries, and agent notes to quickly draft a knowledge article. The agent can further revise the article using multi-turn prompts in natural language. 

This auto-generated knowledge draft encompasses symptoms, root causes, troubleshooting steps, and insights. The draft adheres to industry-standard Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) format. The agent can validate the draft and send it for further content quality and compliance checks to downstream reviewers for approval and publishing.  

Next-generation AI that is ready for enterprises 

Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service offers a range of privacy features, including data encryption and secure storage. It also allows users to control access to their data and provides detailed auditing and monitoring capabilities. Microsoft Dynamics 365 is built on Azure OpenAI, so enterprises can rest assured that it offers the same level of data privacy and protection. 

AI solutions built responsibly 

We are committed to creating responsible AI by design. Our work is guided by a core set of principles: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. We are putting those principles into practice across the company to develop and deploy AI that will have a positive impact on society. 

Learn more about drafting knowledge articles with Copilot

Watch a quick video introduction.

For more information, read the documentation:

• Enable Copilot to suggest knowledge from cases in Customer Service admin center

• Use Copilot to generate knowledge drafts from cases as an agent  

The post Empower agents to draft case-based knowledge articles with Copilot appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.