Dynamics 365 Customer Service – Incoming Wave #1

Microsoft are really starting to compete in the CCaaS market with the latest tech that already is part of their fundamental offering overall.

I remember back in the day when contact centers would just hunt around a bunch of desk phones and if you were lucky enough for it to ring off before it moved to your colleagues, it was a simple pick up and pass.

The new ecosystem of technology including deflection and automation is bringing a better level of life down to the agent’s productivity, and at these times that is the keyword – productivity.

I’ll confess, my blog has been sitting here for some time just gathering the odd view and linkback as it settles amongst the dust, but now I will try to keep on top of what I think will be the next big thing, updates that will come along and make everyone’s roles better and more efficient, and not leaving out some of the real geek/nerd way of working that always sticks with me.

The next big wave is due to start landing in the Dynamics 365 Customer Service platform in April, so here are what I think will be a great addition to the platform, and where also my architecture hat comes in with what I could affect/help with.

Outbound Dialling (Est. July 2024):

Making an outbound call from the platform is key for especially Sales or callback requirements, click to dial came into the system a while back but now you will be able to place calls directly from the outbound dialler and search contacts directly within the boxed-off area, this saving multiple windows (we all know you do it).

Transfers / Consults (Est. July 2024):

Bringing in a colleague if they have a number or not is a big win, when Teams really hit away from Skype having conferencing with everyone was a big factor, this goes for helping agents, internal calls, or trying to order lunch before an internal meeting starts to dive off a cliff!

You can now Consult and Transfer calls to any Teams user in your organization, regardless of whether they have a phone number assigned to them.

Email Composision (Est. May 2024)

Email into the platform is a huge win for many companies, with many inbound queries now in the form of a digital footprint, this opens up handling a lot more to agents themselves.

I’ve always found email just slightly behind most of the omnichannel offerings, as it requires ‘flushing’ out of metadata first, plus the additional quirks that come with it, it’s always been fun to architect, cleaning out and doing the ground work first is always key!

New features that are coming here are:

When agents compose emails, the following key capabilities are now available:

• Drag and drop recipients between To, CC, and BCC fields.
• Show the recipient’s email address along with names.
• Easily resolve email addresses to Dynamics 365 records.
• See the out-of-office status that’s set by recipients.

These are just my top wins that are coming out of this wave, like most, there are always more additions (video attached).

Featured Image Credit: Microsoft