Discover the new features in the 2023 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Microsoft recently announced the 2023 release wave 2 plans for Dynamics 365 Customer Service, filled with enhancements and updates that are set to be released from August 2023 to March 2024. From AI-driven capabilities to seamless integrations with Microsoft Teams, the 2023 release wave 2 introduces an array of features that promise to transform how businesses engage with their customers and empower their agents to provide world-class support. In this blog post, we will highlight the best new features and updates included in this release. 

To review our summary of the last release, read our 2023 release wave 1 blog. 

The 2023 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Customer Service introduces a groundbreaking feature known as Copilot, a suite of advanced AI capabilities designed to expedite issue resolution, enhance customer satisfaction, and empower service agents. Copilot is poised to revolutionize the way support teams operate, leveraging generative AI to streamline tasks and maximize efficiency. 

• Summarize support cases: Copilot automatically generates AI-driven summaries of support cases that empower agents with a comprehensive understanding of case details, notes, emails, and participant contributions. Agents receive concise and accurate summaries of customer issues and important events throughout the case lifecycle, including the participants who helped in addressing the customer issue. 
• Summarize conversations: Copilot extracts vital information from chat and voice conversations, providing agents with summaries for efficient issue resolution. This eliminates the need for agents to sift through lengthy transcripts, enabling them to deliver exceptional customer service in less time. 
• View analytics: Historical analytics offer insights into Copilot’s impact on tasks like completing conversations, case triaging, and email drafting, aiding supervisors in optimizing operations. The copilot report contains several metrics such as daily active users, percentage of copilot responses used, agent ratings, average handle time for conversations, average days to close for cases, and average email response times. 
• Discover knowledge content: Copilot taps into internal knowledge and external data sources to swiftly diagnose customer problems and suggest appropriate solutions. Copilot can diagnose customer problems, use the organization’s internal knowledge and vast amounts of data from trusted websites, and supply the agent with an appropriate solution to give to the customer.  
• Draft email and messaging replies: Agents can compose contextual email and messaging responses with a single click, saving time and improving the quality of customer interactions. With a click, Copilot crafts relevant and contextual replies tailored to each customer’s needs. That means customer service agents can provide unparalleled support and leave customers feeling heard and valued. 

Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Customer Service, in its 2023 release wave 2, introduces a range of innovative features to uplift agent experiences, enabling them to seamlessly handle multiple interactions, switch between sessions without losing context, and leverage productivity tools for optimized workflows. 

• Accessibility improvements to communication panel: The communication panel, a pivotal component of agent-customer interactions, has undergone accessibility enhancements. Agents can now conveniently minimize and access the communication panel from the left side, ensuring smoother navigation during conversations. 
• Improved search control for managing subjects: The introduction of an enhanced subject control mechanism simplifies the management of service cases, knowledge base articles, and products. With improved subject control, agents can easily view and search the subject tree hierarchy, facilitating efficient categorization and retrieval of relevant information. 
• Pin and Unpin Records in Timeline: Empowering agents with flexibility, this feature enables them to pin important records to the top of the timeline, ensuring quick access for future reference. This time-saving capability eliminates the need for agents to scroll through the entire timeline. 
• Find records in the timeline with “What You’ve Missed”: The What You’ve Missed feature in the timeline enhances agent efficiency by highlighting records they haven’t yet viewed. This aids agents in prioritizing their tasks and focusing on the most relevant activities. 
• Unified inbox for live chats and voice calls: A centralized inbox now allows agents to efficiently manage live chats, voice calls, cases, emails, voicemails, and asynchronous chats in a single view. The enhancements to the inbox include routing of live work items to the agent’s inbox, a picture of live work items in the focused section, the agent’s ability to see live chat and voice call views, and card layouts that display key information. 
• Intuitive icons for voice channel control: The revamped conversation control interface features intuitive icons with descriptions, providing agents with a clear understanding of icon functionalities without the need for hovering over them. 
• Resize communication panel for channels: Recognizing the importance of a conversation-centric approach for agents engaged in chat and digital messaging, this feature allows agents to personalize the size of the conversation control based on channel preferences. 

Use of caller IDs for names and numbers is a standard way to be recognized as a legitimate caller for customers. Caller ID numbers serve as a key mechanism for establishing legitimacy and trust between organizations and customers. The 2023 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Customer Service introduces comprehensive support for outbound caller ID numbers, enhancing caller recognition and privacy in customer interactions. 

The inclusion of caller ID number support for outbound calls in Dynamics 365 Customer Service is pivotal in ensuring smooth and secure communication. Organizations are advised to configure outbound caller IDs to avoid potential issues with call authenticity and compliance with regulations in various regions. The outbound caller ID, company name, and numbers should be displayed to customers during customer callbacks if an agent makes an outbound call and if an agent transfers a call to an external number. 

The 2023 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Customer Service introduces enhancements to unified routing, an impressive work item classification, and omnichannel routing capabilities that leverage the power of AI to create flexible and streamlined workflows. 

• Overflow management for enhanced efficiency: Overflow management allows administrators to define clear wait time limits for work items before they are marked for overflow. In cases of prolonged wait times, a contingency plan can be executed, such as transferring work items to other queues with available agents or routing the call to voicemail. This proactive approach ensures that customers are not left waiting excessively, and their requests are promptly attended to. 
• Least active routing for balanced agent workloads: The Least Active routing method assigns phone calls to agents who have been idle or least active for the longest duration. This method ensures that agents are well-rested between calls, resulting in improved performance and better customer interactions. This capability, now named Least Active routing, will be available as the default assignment method for new voice queues, ensuring that agents are optimally utilized. 
• Agent availability API for unauthenticated chats: To minimize wait times and enhance customer experiences, the agent availability API, previously available only for authenticated chats, is extended to unauthenticated chats as well. By determining the availability of agents in the queue, organizations can display the chat widget to unauthenticated chat users when agents are available, streamlining the support process and optimizing service delivery. 

In the 2023 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Microsoft introduces improvements to the integration with Microsoft Teams, fostering enhanced collaboration and communication among agents. The Teams Integration in Dynamics 365 Customer Service not only empowers agents to provide better support but also facilitates internal cooperation, enabling teams to work together seamlessly. By embedding collaboration tools directly into the customer service workflow, the integration enhances efficiency and customer satisfaction. 

• Join me on Teams: This feature enables agents to seamlessly transition their customer interactions to Microsoft Teams with a single click. By doing so, agents can leverage the power of screen sharing and video calls, enhancing the support experience for both customers and agents. This capability is particularly valuable for external users who might not have Teams licenses or experience with the platform. Agents can elevate their conversations to Teams calls, share their screens, and provide immediate, personalized support—all within a unified interface. 
• Collaborate using Teams embed chat: Recognizing the importance of collaboration in resolving complex issues, Dynamics 365 Customer Service now enables Teams to embed chat as a default setting. This enhancement eliminates the need for administrators to manually enable the feature, promoting seamless collaboration among remote agents. With customer service agents often working remotely, the integration of Teams embed chat allows for easy communication, ensuring that issues are addressed promptly and efficiently by bringing together expertise from different departments. 

Customers require real-time monitoring of system health to investigate issues proactively and ensure operational continuity. With the integration of Omnichannel for Customer Service and Application Insights, organizations gain the ability to proactively monitor operational telemetry, diagnose issues, and drive effective mitigation strategies.  

With this enhancement, businesses are equipped with the tools needed to not only monitor operational telemetry but also to actively address potential challenges before they impact customer experiences. This proactive approach to monitoring and diagnostics ensures that operational continuity is maintained and customer satisfaction remains high. By leveraging this capability, businesses can achieve the following: 

• Access granular information for behind-the-scene operations 
• Leverage configurability to create custom diagnostic events and log telemetry 

Rand Group is your Dynamics 365 Customer Service support partner that can highlight new features that your organization should utilize, train your users on the new features, and perform system checks to ensure all modules are performing as expected after each release wave. Ready to start using these new features from the 2023 release wave 2? Contact Rand Group today to schedule a consultation.