This article was originally published for Microsoft Dynamics World on June 14th, 2024. You can view the original article by clicking HERE.
The working day of a contact center agent can often feel like an un-ending series of challenges, especially when disparate data sources and information systems slow down their core responsibilities of helping customers and prospects.
Praveen Ravela, CTO of AMC Technology, a Richmond, Virginia-based Microsoft partner, began his career in 2003 working in a contact center, where he gained first-hand experience of the trials and tribulations that agents often face. “That understanding of what contact center agents go through on multiple shifts [is very helpful] for how to help businesses improve customer service and employee experience,” he told Satish Reddy, Founder and CEO of Microsoft partner Aha Apps on MSDW’s latest CRM Community Call event, sponsored by Aha Apps.
Reddy compared notes with Ravela about the ways that Microsoft’s evolving Copilot AI offerings can serve contact center agents. According to Ravela, the introduction of Copilot has helped to build out Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
“It’s a good value-add, particularly with Copilot[-based] agent assistant,” he said. “There’s sentiment-based routing to connect customers with the right agent. Digital channel transcription comes across in real time, which is a game changer. [Copilot also] brings in real-time insights and the ability to resolve issues faster.”
Contact centers often experience high rates of churn due to poor morale and difficulties getting contact center agents trained efficiently. Because of this significant overhead, Ravela said, Copilot agent-assist capabilities have the potential to improve agent satisfaction. He explained that the current state of contact centers today includes a lot of inefficiencies. He recalled a recent conversation with a client in which he learned more about the experience of their agents on each transaction.
One thing that really surprised us is that they have so many [enterprise] products and they don’t have a great way to do a search based on [the product] a customer called in with concerns on… They are not able to get to the right information at the right time and have to use Google to search for products on their website. It’s really hard to train an agent in that way. Agents just decided that’s the best way that’s working out for them.
And he explained why he sees the capabilities of Microsoft Copilot bringing quick wins to the contact center agent.
Copilot would be a great tool for real-time transcription, feeding that directly into Copilot, which would significantly provide the actions that agents can take. Enabling Copilot to point to a repository, and send real-time prompts, would allow pulling in accurate information in real-time and providing actionable data for agents to act. Cutting down on contact center time [is key].
Reddy noted that there are a wide variety of customer experience-related automation use cases. Copilot can help businesses to identify new opportunities, enhance contact center agent coaching, or pivot responses for different campaigns and seasons. Ravela urged the audience to look closely at the scenarios in which chatbots could be added to offload repetitive and basic tasks, simplify self-service, and improve customer satisfaction in other ways. He noted that a key to next-level chatbot performance will be AI tools that are both reliable and really useful.
[New chatbot scenarios require tapping into] huge datasets and information repositories, based on their specific tailored questions. Building chatbots is mostly rule-based so that you can identify the specific requests a business wants to support or what actions should be taken based on a typical request, based on a prompt or intent … AI that can go and fetch the data and put all that information into meaningful sentences is Dynamics. Copilot and gen AI engines [make this possible].
Self-service portals powered by generative AI behind the scenes are also a big part of this new approach to customer service. Recalling the example of contact center agents going to Google to search for answers, Ravela said that instead of wasting time in external tools, contact center agents can instead use Copilot agent assist as a way to access information from a well-integrated Dynamics 365 implementation.
We talk about how agents can be empowered in the form of Copilot or agent assist. Having real conversations with users [is the goal]. Before they get to that place where they’re able to have conversations with customers, the business has a lot more things they need to train agents on, in terms of onboarding and training. They need to understand offerings [and capabilities]. LMS, or learning management systems, are now powered by AI. Setting up an LMS AI to help train agents is a good way to help them through the onboarding and training process. Then Copilot can help agents while they’re on the job. Using tools that AI can help them to be better equipped to solve customer tickets.
Increasingly, AI-enabled training and contact center agent assistant capabilities, powered by Copilot and integrated with Dynamics 365, are providing ways to work in tandem between systems to close gaps, Reddy pointed out. Ravela agreed, noting that awareness of both the technology and the functional needs will make the difference in making the right technology investments.
“There are a lot of AI enabled…technologies that are available that are empowering contact center leaders to identify gaps and where things are falling through the cracks, resolving in a more efficient manner than before,” he said.
You can watch the full conversation here.
