Microsoft Dynamics 365 Omnichannel for Customer Service

Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Omnichannel for Customer Service

Microsoft has made significant improvements to Omnichannel in Dynamics 365 Customer Service with its 2023 Wave One Release. These updates provide customers with a more secure, reliable, and efficient customer service experience. As part of this release, Microsoft has integrated Nuance Gatekeeper into D365 Customer Service to reduce fraudulent activities and build trust. By leveraging Nuance’s interactive voice response (IVR) system, customers can now access continuous self-service options, resulting in faster and more convenient service overall. Read on to discover how these updates can empower your organization to deliver exceptional customer service and enhance your overall customer experience.

Easily Identify & Diagnose Problematic Conversations in Dynamics 365 Customer Service

This enhancement, available in public preview since June 2023 as part of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Wave One Release, enabled visibility into conversation-based operational telemetry using omnichannel for customer service. You can benefit from Application Performance Monitoring features by accessing the underlying information through App Insights, an extension of Azure Monitor, which includes new feedback systems for real-time insights. This allows proactive system monitoring through self-service and empowers IT professionals to identify and diagnose problematic conversations easily with personalized service. This capability enables them to take appropriate actions for self-remediation or seek swift technical support when needed, sometimes involving communication channels like Microsoft Teams for collaboration.

With this feature, you can access system telemetry specifically for selective conversation lifecycle events from App Insights, including live chat, live call transcription, and digital messaging channels. This is particularly useful for developers and IT professionals, as they can use this information within their applications to monitor the health of their systems across various channels. Moreover, the telemetry data can be exported and combined with additional datasets to create custom dashboards tailored to your specific business needs. This flexibility allows for a comprehensive understanding of system performance and facilitates informed decision-making. An additional license is required to access Omnichannel for Customer Service.

Release Information:

Enabled for: Users by Admins, Makers, or Analysts

Public Preview: June 2023

General Availability: TBD

Customize & Extend Conversation Entities in Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Microsoft realized that the standard conversation entity lacked customization options, making it incapable of meeting the diverse business requirements of organizations across various industries. Organizations needed the ability to incorporate additional information and present it to their agents. However, without the flexibility to customize, agents were forced to perform extra steps or switch between windows to access the required customer information, negatively impacting their productivity. To remedy this issue and cater to functions beyond Customer Service, such as Sales, Microsoft introduced a new feature that allows you to create custom fields, views, and charts, as well as link the conversation entity with other entities, such as leads, opportunities, or any other custom entity.

Release Information:

Enabled for: Users by Admins, Makers, or Analysts

General Availability: April 1, 2023

Dynamics 365 Omnichannel Customer Service: Improved Authentication in Apple Messages for Business

The inclusion of Auth V2 rich message support is crucial for maintaining compliance with the Apple messaging service provider and ensuring the continued availability of the Apple Messages for Business channel. Without Auth V2 support, numerous consumer brands are unable to utilize authentication request-rich messages, as their OAuth providers specifically require the functionality provided by Auth V2.

This feature update became generally available via Microsoft Dynamics 365 2023 Wave One Release and can be enabled in the Customer Service admin center. The update itself entails the ability to send authentication requests to consumers through the Apple Messages for Business messaging channel, utilizing an OAuth 2.0 provider. You have the option to respond to these requests by providing your user and password credentials, which can then be verified with the OAuth 2.0 provider. This process is streamlined through the add-in for Dynamics 365 Customer Service, enabling a seamless pane for managing customer issues.

Release Information:

Enabled for: Users by Admins, Makers, or Analysts

General Availability: April 2023

Enable New Features

Interested in enabling Wave 1 Release features in your environments? Learn how to configure these options on Microsoft Learn. Contact Avantiico's Live Services team today!

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Default Availability of Dynamics 365 Customer Service App for Omnichannel Roles

As of the 2023 Microsoft Dynamics Wave One release, all D365 Customer Service users with out-of-the-box omnichannel security roles will have access to Microsoft’s updates to the Customer Service workspace app by default. The shift is being implemented to support users with the planned deprecation of the Microsoft Omnichannel agent-facing app for D365 Customer Service.

As a result of this update, the Customer Service workspace app will be automatically visible to the following roles: Omnichannel agent, Omnichannel administrator, and Omnichannel supervisor. However, administrators retain the ability to revoke access to the Customer Service workspace app for any of these roles if necessary

Release Information:

Enabled for: Users Automatically

Early Access: Feb 6, 2023

General Availability: April 28, 2023

Dynamics 365 Customer Service: Renamed Omnichannel Conversation Forms

Renaming the forms in Omnichannel improves clarity and usability, resulting in a streamlined workflow and enhancing the knowledge base for customer support. The “Customer Summary” form is now “Active Conversation,” emphasizing ongoing interactions, while the “Conversation” form becomes “Closed Conversation,” indicating concluded discussions. These changes enhance user understanding, facilitating efficient management of customer interactions and improving overall satisfaction.

Release Information:

Enabled for: Users Automatically

General Availability: April 30, 2023

Expansion to Dynamics 365 Customer Service Regional Voice Fonts

With the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Wave One Release, you will now have the ability to greet customers using automated messages that utilize their preferred voice font. This enhancement and power of Dynamics 365 customer service ensures that your customers enjoy a more enjoyable and relatable experience compared to an unfamiliar voice font. Microsoft has broadened the language support in the voice channel to include a broader range of regional voice fonts, such as English-United Kingdom, English-Australia, English-New Zealand, Spanish-Mexico, Spanish-United States, and French-Canada. These voice fonts can be seamlessly integrated with Power Virtual Agents bots as well, enhancing personalized service through custom messaging. For instance, a Power Virtual Agents bot set to English-US and connected to a voice workstream set to English-UK will communicate using the English-UK voice.

Release Information:

Enabled for: Users by Admins, Makers, or Analysts

General Availability: June 2023

Enable New Features

Interested in enabling Wave 1 Release features in your environments? Contact Avantiico's Live Services team today!

Contact Support

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Integration of Nuance Interactive Voice Response (IVR) & Transcripts

With this Microsoft Dynamics 365 Version 1 Update, you can improve customer satisfaction and enhance productivity in your contact center by integrating Nuance IVR technologies with the different channels in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. It includes the existing capabilities of Nuance IVR and allows for the escalation of calls to omnichannel agents, providing call intent and transcript information. Through the utilization of session-initiated protocol (SIP) operations, the call between the IVR system and the omnichannel platform can be seamlessly orchestrated.

This update, including utilizing Whatsapp for customer queries and Microsoft Learn for training, has a variety of use cases that can significantly benefit your organization, including but not limited to the following:

The above use cases ensure agent resources are utilized effectively, and agents have all the necessary information to continue conversations and promptly resolve customer cases. Moreover, call intent and customer data will be utilized for optimal call routing, ensuring you instantly connect and engage with the most suitable agent, enabling organizations to instantly connect with contextual customer identification.

By implementing this update, you can improve your call centers through better sentiment analysis and integration with various channels. Productivity by increasing your call deflections and self-service call ratios. This feature update also reduces overhead by optimizing agent usage and reducing the time spent on calls escalated to agents via the availability of call context.

Release Information:

Enabled for: Users by Admins, Makers, or Analysts

General Availability: August 2023

Integration of Nuance Gatekeeper with Dynamics 365 Customer Service

This Microsoft Dynamics 365 Version 1 Release enhancement has yet to be made available but is scheduled for public preview in July 2023. This update aims to mitigate losses due to fraud, as the threat of business losses due to fraud is rising across various industries. Fraudsters exploit the high volume of e-commerce and self-service transactions by pretending to be genuine customers and using social engineering techniques to engage with contact centers. Contact centers actively seek solutions to mitigate these losses, but finding suitable vendors with easy integration options into existing systems is challenging. However, by integrating Nuance Gatekeeper technologies with the voice channel in Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise, your organization can enhance customer satisfaction and boost contact center productivity by offering biometric authentication and fraud prevention measures.

This integration provides several use cases that address the specific needs of businesses:

Voice biometric authentication enables secure transactions without the need to share personal data, ensuring that only authorized individuals can confirm transactions
Fraud prevention capabilities notify agents about known fraudsters and attempts to deceive or spoof, empowering agents to flag suspicious conversations for further investigation by a fraud analyst
Supervisors can monitor conversations flagged as suspicious or fraudulent, allowing for timely intervention and appropriate action
Integrated reporting functionality facilitates fraud analysis, providing comprehensive insights and data for effective decision-making

Additionally, the integration of Nuance Gatekeeper technologies offers numerous benefits to your organization, as outlined below:

Improved agent productivity and reduced costs by optimizing the time spent on each call, as agents can efficiently authenticate customers and identify potential fraud
Minimized losses caused by fraud, as fraudsters often manipulate contact center agents to complete fraudulent transactions. The solution helps identify these patterns and prevents fraudulent activities.
Fraud prevention becomes integral to contact center operations, protecting businesses from financial losses and reputational damage.
Integrated reporting functionality facilitates fraud analysis, providing comprehensive insights and data for effective decision-making.

As fraud prevention is a relatively new process in various industries, integrating this enhancement into your core contact center operations is crucial for ensuring secure and trustworthy customer interactions.

Release Information:

Enabled for: Users by Admins, Makers, or Analysts

Public Preview: July 2023

General Availability: TBD

Closing & Additional Resources

In conclusion, Dynamics 365 Customer Service Omnichannel enhancements via Microsoft D365’s 2023 Wave 1 Release bring a range of features that enable your organization to deliver exceptional customer service offers and improve the overall customer experience. These updates include improved visibility into conversations, customization options, enhanced authentication, default availability of the Customer Service app, renamed conversation forms, expanded regional voice fonts, and integration of Nuance IVR and Gatekeeper technologies. By leveraging these enhancements, including security updates, your business can streamline operations, enhance security, and provide personalized and efficient customer interactions using omnichannel for customer service.