The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center is now generally available.
First announced on June 4, the CCaaS solution is “copilot-first” and designed to wrap around an organization’s CRM system.
That doesn’t have to be a Dynamics product. Indeed, the offering is CRM-agnostic.
To the CRM, the CCaaS platform adds voice and digital channels, IVR technology from Nuance, unified routing, real-time reporting, and more.
Additionally, sentiment and intent analysis, transcription, and translation tools will help funnel more insight into the CRM, allowing businesses to build a "360-degree view of customers."
Celebrating the release in a Microsoft blog post, Jeff Comstock, Corporate Vice President of Dynamics 365, wrote:
Organizations will benefit from new native capabilities… built from the ground-up to power mission-critical service operations with extensive scale and reliability on the hyperscale cloud platform of Azure.
Azure will also offer GenAI “from the source”, which may accelerate Microsoft’s CCaaS innovation cycle and allow the tech giant to manage the costs associated with the platform.
Regarding customer costs, the Dynamics 365 Contact Center comes with a price tag of $110 per user per month.
Also, alongside the aforementioned features, the solution will provide pre-integrated copilots for digital channels. The virtual assistant will assist agents in summarizing customer conversations, crafting emails, suggesting responses, and spotting relevant knowledge articles.
On the latter, Microsoft promises that "there's much more detail to share" about its native knowledge management features, in addition to its workforce management capabilities.
Lastly, the solution integrates closely with Microsoft Teams for collaboration and Power for automation and analytics.
Seb Reeve, Global Strategy Lead for Contact Center at Microsoft, shared all this and more during an introductory webinar last month.
In doing so, he highlighted three core reasons why organizations should consider Microsoft for CCaaS. These are:
- Comprehension of Vision for Service – Microsoft offers comprehensive, composable solutions for the contact center from a single vendor. That includes CCaaS, CRM, GenAI, and more. With this portfolio, the vendor aims to meet customers where they are and present a path for consolidation and growth.
- Infused with Copilot from End-to-End – Microsoft has infused GenAI throughout the service workflow, from self-service to routing, agent-assisted service, post-call wrap-up, and analytics - all connected to the data contact centers rely on.
- Built for Scalability and Reliability – Microsoft’s solution was built from the ground up for modern cloud infrastructure. That provides scalability, reliability, and security for critical contact center workloads.
That first point is particularly critical for customer experience analysts. Indeed, while Microsoft might not yet have the CCaaS depth of AWS, Genesys, or NICE, its vision for service may set it up for success in the longer run, as explored below.
