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Dynamics 365 Omnichannel - Simply Explained
Season 3
Published 2 months, 2 weeks ago
Description
A customer starts a website chat because an order has not arrived. They explain the problem, provide the order number, and answer several questions. Later, they call the company—and the person on the phone asks them to explain everything again. For the customer, this makes little sense. They did not start a new problem. They simply changed the way they contacted the company. In this episode of Microsoft Knowledge Nuggets on M365 FM, Mirko Peters explains Microsoft Dynamics 365 Omnichannel in plain English and shows how organizations can connect customer conversations across chat, voice, SMS, social messaging, and other service channels. We explore the unified agent workspace, customer identification, queues, Unified Routing, skills-based routing, agent presence, capacity, transfers, consultations, knowledge articles, quick replies, Copilot, Smart Assist, sentiment analysis, customer history, cases, transcripts, and supervisor analytics. The central idea is simple: customers can enter through many different doors, while agents work from one connected customer service desk.
WHY SEPARATE CUSTOMER SERVICE CHANNELS CREATE PROBLEMS
Traditional customer service often treats every communication channel as a separate system. Website chats appear in one application. Emails arrive in a shared mailbox. Calls are handled through another platform. Social messages may even be managed by a completely different department. Each system may work perfectly well individually, but the customer's story becomes fragmented. An agent answering the phone may not know that the customer already spent twenty minutes chatting with another employee earlier that day. The result is repetition, longer handling times, unnecessary searching, and frustrated customers. Dynamics 365 Omnichannel attempts to connect those pieces into a more consistent service experience.
WHAT IS DYNAMICS 365 OMNICHANNEL?
Think of Dynamics 365 Omnichannel as an office building with several front doors but one reception desk. Customers can enter through different communication channels. One person might use website chat. Another calls. Another sends a text message. Another contacts the organization through a supported social messaging channel. Behind those different entry points, Dynamics 365 provides a common customer service environment. The channel still matters because a live telephone call behaves differently from an asynchronous text conversation. But agents do not necessarily need completely separate working environments for every channel.
THE UNIFIED AGENT WORKSPACE
The agent workspace is where customer conversations come together. Instead of switching continually between a chat application, telephone system, CRM, knowledge base, and customer records, agents can work with conversations alongside relevant Dynamics 365 information. Each active piece of work can appear as a session or conversation. An agent might handle one customer chat and later move to another session without losing the original context. The workspace can also provide access to customer details, previous cases, activities, knowledge, notes, and other service information. This changes the agent's starting point from: "Can you explain everything again?" to: "I can see your previous interaction. Let's continue from there."
IDENTIFYING THE CUSTOMER
Connected customer history depends on knowing who the customer is. Sometimes Dynamics 365 already knows. For example, a customer may begin a conversation while authenticated through a connected customer experience. In other situations, somebody starts as an unknown website visitor. The agent can then request information such as an email address or order number and search for an existing contact. Once the conversation is associated with the correct customer or case, the transcript, notes, activities, and related service work can contribute to that customer's history. Customer identification is therefore an imp
WHY SEPARATE CUSTOMER SERVICE CHANNELS CREATE PROBLEMS
Traditional customer service often treats every communication channel as a separate system. Website chats appear in one application. Emails arrive in a shared mailbox. Calls are handled through another platform. Social messages may even be managed by a completely different department. Each system may work perfectly well individually, but the customer's story becomes fragmented. An agent answering the phone may not know that the customer already spent twenty minutes chatting with another employee earlier that day. The result is repetition, longer handling times, unnecessary searching, and frustrated customers. Dynamics 365 Omnichannel attempts to connect those pieces into a more consistent service experience.
WHAT IS DYNAMICS 365 OMNICHANNEL?
Think of Dynamics 365 Omnichannel as an office building with several front doors but one reception desk. Customers can enter through different communication channels. One person might use website chat. Another calls. Another sends a text message. Another contacts the organization through a supported social messaging channel. Behind those different entry points, Dynamics 365 provides a common customer service environment. The channel still matters because a live telephone call behaves differently from an asynchronous text conversation. But agents do not necessarily need completely separate working environments for every channel.
THE UNIFIED AGENT WORKSPACE
The agent workspace is where customer conversations come together. Instead of switching continually between a chat application, telephone system, CRM, knowledge base, and customer records, agents can work with conversations alongside relevant Dynamics 365 information. Each active piece of work can appear as a session or conversation. An agent might handle one customer chat and later move to another session without losing the original context. The workspace can also provide access to customer details, previous cases, activities, knowledge, notes, and other service information. This changes the agent's starting point from: "Can you explain everything again?" to: "I can see your previous interaction. Let's continue from there."
IDENTIFYING THE CUSTOMER
Connected customer history depends on knowing who the customer is. Sometimes Dynamics 365 already knows. For example, a customer may begin a conversation while authenticated through a connected customer experience. In other situations, somebody starts as an unknown website visitor. The agent can then request information such as an email address or order number and search for an existing contact. Once the conversation is associated with the correct customer or case, the transcript, notes, activities, and related service work can contribute to that customer's history. Customer identification is therefore an imp