2023 Release Wave 1: D365 Customer Service | Part 2

On January 25, 2023 the release notes for 2023 Release Wave 1 were made public, so I took the opportunity to thoroughly review the documentation to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of the upcoming features. Please note that these notes are a constant work in progress, meaning that some of these features might be removed at some point in time, and others might get added so I would definitely recommend keeping your eyes on them and checking back every now and then. You can access the release notes here. Last week I published part 1 of what’s new in Dynamics 365 for Customer Service which you can read here, and this week I am reviewing what’s left! Enjoy!

Supervisor Experiences

The Customize visualization of omnichannel real-time analytics dashboards feature has been in public preview since late October of last year and by the looks of it, it will go to general availability in April of 2023. This feature will allow makers to customize the out of the box PowerBI embedded reports that are part of the system. With this enhancement admins will be able to:

• modify the graphical rendering of data, meaning you can have a graphic with the trend of a metric over time rather than a tabular view of the metric.
• Add your own charts using metrics in the data model that aren’t exposed directly in the out-of-the-box Power BI reports.
• Change the layout of the report

Another feature that has been in preview since October of last year is the ability to monitor support operations in near real time. NOTE: You can enable this report from the Customer Service Admin center by navigating to Insights (below operations) and clicking on ‘manage’ next to ‘Real-time analytics (preview)’. This is another embedded PowerBI report that currently is scheduled for general availability in April of 2023.

The great thing about this report is that the data is near real-time, meaning users won’t have to wait until the scheduled refresh of the data in the report to see real-time data. The report contains the following areas and features:

• Summary report: Helps understand the volume of customer interactions and service levels, along with the available capacity in near real time.
• Agent report: Shows agent details regarding capacity and status for the last 24 hours with the ability to drill down to see details, like capacity and adherence, per agent.
• Voice report: Provides voice-specific metrics for the last 24 hours.
• Conversation list: Provides the list of currently ongoing conversations (in the last 24 hours).
• Visual customization: Helps customize the visual display of the out-of-the-box Power BI reports.
• Auto refresh/Pause refresh: Lets users pause and resume data refresh of reports.

The Personalize out-of-the-box real-time analytics reports is also part of the other two features (also in preview since Oct 2022 and also slated for general availability in April of 2023) which allows users with the correct access levels to personalize the report(s). Controls are visible on the top of the report. Users will have the ability to:

• Save filters as bookmarks and set any bookmark as the default
• Delete bookmarks
• Select from a previously saved filter list (bookmarks) to view metrics based on the filters.

Omnichannel Updates & Enhancements

In Omnichannel for Customer Service there are a few updates. The first update talks about making the Customer Service workspace app visible by default for certain Omnichannel security roles. Previously additional roles had to be added to users to give them access, but now assigning these roles will give them access by default. The roles are:

• Omnichannel agent
• Omnichannel administrator
• Omnichannel supervisor

The ability to Enable customers to keep queue spot, get callbacks has been in preview since November of 2022. The title of the feature already explains the functionality: This feature lets customers request a call back from an agent instead of waiting on hold. So yes, this relates to the voice channel in Customer Service. Admins can set configure this feature for specific queues using the Direct Callback overflow action. When a customer requests a call back and that work item is assigned and accepted by an agent, the call back to the customer will automatically be initiated.

The remaining two features are related to Nuance, which Microsoft acquired not too long ago. Nuance Communications is a technology company known for its voice and language solutions. It specializes in artificial intelligence, speech recognition, and natural language processing technology. The Integrate Nuance IVR with Customer Service feature allows customers to self-service task with conversational IVR (interactive voice response). Taking advantage of natural language models, customer intent and context (for calling) are easily identified. Another benefit of being able to get intent is the ability to route the call to the correct queues and agents. It will take a while before Microsoft starts to roll this out, currently it’s slated for June 2023. It is important to understand that for now, this feature will only roll out in the United States.

The last feature on the list is Integrate Nuance Gatekeeper with Customer Service. You’re probably thinking “What is Nuance Gatekeeper?!” Nuance Gatekeeper is a security system that uses a person’s voice to confirm their identity. It works by creating a unique voiceprint for each user and matching it to the voiceprint on file to verify their identity. The process is simple and convenient, allowing users to authenticate themselves with just their voice. This technology can be used to protect access to sensitive information. Pretty cool right?! The features mentioned in the release notes related to this are:

• Voice biometric authentication for contacts allowing secure transactions to be confirmed without sharing of personal data.
• Fraud prevention capabilities alert agents about known fraudsters and spoofing attempts, and allow agents to flag conversations for further investigation by a fraud analyst.
• Supervisors can monitor conversations flagged as suspicious or fraudulent.
• Integrated reporting for fraud analysis.

Public preview for this functionality is set for May 2023! I can’t wait to get my hands on this! I hope you enjoyed reading this article! Be sure to check in again next week for a new article or click here to subscribe so you never miss another post!