Whats New in April 19' update - Omni Channel Engagement Hub

This blog is part-1 of a series of blog on what I find is new and interesting in the April-19 update of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement.
Microsoft has provided a list of updated and new features in the April 2019 update release notes. I had written earlier about the Sales AI capabilities in Dynamics 365. This blog focus is on Customer Service and specifically the very new upcoming feature called Omni Channel Engagement Hub.

As the medium of social network is increasing, customers are demanding to communicate, connect and get response from organizations on any channel and from any device / location / time. This has challenged organizations big and small leading to a new breed of apps that help connecting with customers on non-traditional channels.

The challenge here is to integrate the new communication channels with existing Enterprise systems of engagement.

Microsoft has taken cognizance of this phenomenon and has introduced the Omni Channel Engagement Hub, which is a cloud based service to enable organizations to instantly connect and engage with their customers via channels like Live Chat and SMS. And there is an Dynamics 365 app, which helps Customer Service Agents to respond and engage with customers using those channels.

Agents can utilize the omni-channel Engagement Hub via Dynamics 365 online using the Unified Interface or by using Unified Service Desk (USD)

USD has the integration to the existing telephony system for Call Center operations. As the channels are new and not limited to just phone calls, it will now become a Contact Center operation.

There is built in dashboard for Supervisors to track and monitor the contact center productivity KPI's, Additionally Supervisors can consult and assist customer service agents in issue resolution.

With the April-19 release organization will be able to create their own chat bots which will be part of the Customer Service Virtual Agents using Microsoft Bot Framework.

The Omni Channel Hub integrates with D365 Customer Service Virtual Agent (Chat Bots). CS Virtual Agent will allow routing incoming chat requests to Virtual Agents (Chat Bots) in case of peak loads. If there is a necessity for escalation the discussion can be routed to a human agent with all prior details about the chat with customer.

Virtual Agent (Chat Bot)

So to give you a better idea for above - Consider a scenario
A bank is using Dynamics 365 Customer Service with the Omni Channel Engagement Hub and Virtual Agents (Chat Bots) it has created.
If a customer wants any information they can search the knowledge base as self service.
If they need further help they will be able to have a chat with the customer service virtual agent - the Chat Bot. Chat bot will use the data from Knowledge Articles created from similar cases to provide the information needed. If additional help is needed the discussion can be routed to a human agents queue giving the customer a seamless experience.

Routing of Chat 

I hope you are as excited as I am to get my hands on creating chat bots in Dynamics 365 without any code and transforming the customer experience. This is currently scheduled to be available in preview @ April 19'. We may just need to wait till it is out of preview and general available. Till than keep reading.

Mihir Shah
365WithoutCode

What’s new in Dynamics 365 Spring 2018 – Customer Service

Microsoft has released the latest version of Dynamics 365 applications for Spring 2018. This blog talks about what’s new in the Customer Service application. OOTB there are 2 apps for Customer Service process in Dynamics 365 – Customer Service app on the old web client interface and Customer Service Hub app on the new Unified interface. To read about What’s new in the Sales refer my earlier blog here.

The Customer Service Hub was introduced in ver 9.0. “Built on the Unified Interface framework, the Customer Service Hub is a focused and intuitive application for case and knowledge management on any screen size, device, or orientation.”

Important things to note –

•           Timeline and Knowledge management (articles) is available OOTB on the Customer        Service Hub app
•          Knowledge Management is enabled for Case entity only by default

Customer Service Hub application has the following new features –

1. Case – With Spring 2018 release Case Management and Knowledge management business processes, related entities are on the Customer Service Hub - new unified interface framework. This includes – Account / Contact / Case / Queues / Knowledge article / Activity …

It may be important to note that there are some known issues with the new Unified interface framework. You can get more details in this link - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/admin/readme-9#sales-hub-and-customer-service-hub-apps-

Below is an example of the Case form in the Customer Service Hub app on unified Interface. The business process is on the top in a floating mode. The Case form also has the new Timeline feature.

Case form with floating BPF

Below is the Case form with the business process docked on the right side.

Case form with docked BPF

2. Timeline  -  Timeline is a new feature that was added with v9.0. It allows users to see and create customer interactions including activities like appointment, phone call, email, task, notes and system posts. Note: Timeline is only available on new unified interface.

Timeline on a Case form

3. Knowledge Management (KB articles) - Customer Service Hub app has the Knowledge Management feature which enables the Customer Service user to quickly search for Knowledge articles from the related panel on the Case form. 

KB article in related panel of Case form

Users can search, author, review and publish knowledge articles using a rich text editor. Below is a KB article and its business process flow.

KB Article with BPF

4. Dashboards – There are new Dashboards in the Customer Service Hub. Some of them are discussed below.

a.       Tier-1 dashboard for customer service agents to deliver 1^st level of support and handle multiple customers at the same time.

Tier-1 dashboard for Customer Service agents

a.       Tier-2 dashboard is for Service Managers or Tier-2 agents to get an overview of the cases and monitor more complex or escalated cases in a single view.

Tier-2 dashboard for Customer Service Managers

c.       Knowledge Manager dashboard – gives an overview of the KB articles to KB managers

KB dashboard

I hope this gets you started to try out the new features in Dynamics 365 – Spring 2018 release for Customer Service. 

Please do let me know your questions and experience with the new capabilities. Thanks for reading.

Mihir Shah

365WithoutCode