Customer service agents in a digital contact center interact with a high volume of customers. Often, they handle multiple conversations simultaneously. For example, they might be interacting with three or more customers over chat at the same time.  

During customer interactions, they want to capture critical information in quick notes. After wrapping up the conversation, while creating a case, they need to rewrite the information they took already in the note on the customer timeline. Or, after taking notes on the customer’s timeline during the conversation, they need to copy them to the case. Agents must perform this manual process, just to transfer the notes they took onto an existing or a new case.  

Now, agents can relate a note on a customer’s timeline to an existing case or create a new case from the note, thus helping them avoid reentering notes during case creation. This expedites conversation wrap-up time and enables agents to create cases quickly.  

By linking the note to a case, agents spend less time creating cases and more time helping customers. As a result, agents can have more customer conversations with improved productivity and drive better customer satisfaction.   

To ensure agents can create cases quickly, Dynamics 365 Customer Service enables agents to create a new case or associate an existing case with notes they write on the customer timeline during a conversation. This feature is available for the account, contact, and case entities, which means agents can create or associate a note with a new or existing account, contact, or case.  

Configure forms to create table records from timeline notes

Administrators can enable this feature from Power Apps by navigating to the form where the timeline is added. They can select one or all the tables (account, contact, or case). Then they can configure the form type and the form to be displayed when an agent creates a new record.

They can also map the notes title and notes description fields to the appropriate table field. For example, they can the map notes title to Case Title. Then they can map the notes description to the case Description. That way, these fields are auto populated when an agent creates a case from the note.

Associate notes from the customer timeline

During the conversation with the customer, the agent might capture a quick note on the customer timeline. Also, while using digital channels, the agent’s notes appear on the customer timeline on the conversation form. The agent can select the note and either search for an existing case (if case table is enabled by the administrator) to associate with it or create a new case.  

When they create a new case from the note, the form opens with Case Title and Description fields auto populated with the administrator’s mapping configuration. Upon case creation or case selection, the agent can unlink the note from the current table record. For example, while associating a new or existing case to the note taken on contact timeline, the note will get transferred to case and will be dissociated with the contact. Hence, note will appear on the case timeline and disappear from the contact timeline.  

Based on administrator configuration, agents can associate a note with an existing or a new case, account or contact.

Learn more

Watch a quick video demonstration.

To find out more about linking timeline notes with tables, read the documentation:  

• Turn on linking of timeline notes with other tables | Microsoft Learn 

• Learn about linking timeline notes with tables | Microsoft Learn 

The post Create cases, contacts, and accounts faster from notes on the timeline  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Effective communication is vital in building strong customer relationships and closing deals. Mining actionable insights from customer calls can be a daunting task. Conversation intelligence in Dynamics 365 Sales is a game-changer for sales professionals who want to unlock the full potential of their phone calls. Conversation intelligence captures and analyzes every call. Insights are available in real time during the call—in the Sales app when using the integrated Teams dialer or in a Teams meeting—and in the CRM record afterward. Managers can view aggregated data in a dedicated dashboard.  

Even more exciting, the integration of third-party telephony systems brings this powerful tool to a wider audience. Businesses of all sizes can now harness the true potential of their phone conversations, equipping their sales teams with invaluable data that drives informed decision-making, elevates customer interactions, and boosts overall sales performance. 

Integrate conversation intelligence with your own telephony system

We’re excited to unveil new extensibility options for conversation intelligence in the latest update of Dynamics 365 Sales. Partners and developers can now connect their customers’ third-party telephony systems to conversation intelligence using the Dynamics 365 Channel Integration Framework (CIF). Phone conversations are recorded and securely stored in either Microsoft-provided storage or the customer’s Azure blob storage and analyzed to glean valuable insights in real time and after the call. 

Integrating third-party telephony providers with the conversation intelligence capability in Dynamics 365 Sales involves three key steps, performed by a partner or developer: 

1. Register the provider: Using the conversation intelligence API, an admin registers the phone provider’s details and obtains the list of users to be recorded. This process establishes a connection between the telephony system and Dynamics 365 Sales, enabling seamless data exchange. 
2. Fork the media: The system directs a fork of the audio stream of a call to the conversation intelligence recorder using the Session Recording Protocol (SIPREC). In this step, conversations are recorded, analyzed, and securely stored. 
3. Send real-time events: In the final step, the system sends real-time events from the provider’s client UI to Dynamics 365 conversation intelligence.  

Conversation intelligence highlights

• Allows sellers to focus on what matters most with real-time, AI–powered assistance.  
  Your sellers can record their calls (either manually or automatically) and get real-time call transcription with business-critical insights, automatically detected action items, intelligent note-taking, and an automatic call summary. 
• Empowers sales managers with post-call analysis.  
  After a call ends, managers can access a rich summary that includes sentiment analysis, automatic segmentation, call playback, and a transcript where they can leave messages for their team members. Conversation intelligence also automatically tags calls, so managers know which calls are important and worth checking. 
• Lets managers better understand customers with advanced insights and interactions styles. Get a wide perspective view of customer needs and interests in real time. Use aggregated data to analyze market trends, rising competitors, and overall sentiment, and dive into the details where needed. 

Next steps

• Learn how to integrate third-party dialers with Dynamics 365 conversation intelligence. 
• See an example of an integration project between Twilio Flex and Dynamics 365 Sales conversation intelligence. 
• Not yet a Dynamics 365 Sales customer? Take a tour and start your free trial today.

The post Conversation intelligence unleashes the potential of your sales organization appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Only months after announcing Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, employees at more than 63,000 organizations—including brands like 3M, Prada Group, Campari, and Kraft Heinz—have had the opportunity to experience some of the AI-assisted features firsthand—and the reviews are pouring in.

A common theme in the feedback we’ve received is a boost in efficiency and productivity, with employees able to reduce the time and effort spent completing common tasks. Organizations also report higher quality work, helped by AI-assisted insights and guidance, from suggested actions and content ideas to faster access to valuable business data.

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Valencia Club de Fútbol (CF), a 103-year-old football club in eastern Spain, has used Copilot to help create opportunities for more meaningful and personalized fan engagement. “From creating content or journeys, to segmentation to gaining insights—Copilot enables our teams to deliver fan experiences and business impact faster and easier,” shared Franco Segarra, Innovation Director at Valencia CF. “It’s going to be amazing to uplevel our work with Copilot.”

Northrop & Johnson, the world’s leading superyacht brokerage, shared the team’s early experiences with Copilot. “We’ve tried some machine learning-based AI point solutions before—they were expensive and not as efficient as what we are seeing now with generative AI,” explains Keith Perfect, Director of Tech & Intelligence. “It’s amazing to have Copilot built right into Dynamics 365 as it is in the flow of work, has the business context, adheres to our existing security model, and also doesn’t come with the extra cost.”

Like Valencia CF and Northrop & Johnson, we’re hearing from a range of organizations that expect Copilot to boost results across teams, from customer-facing departments like sales, marketing, and service to operations, finance, and supply chain roles.

Copilot helps sales professionals focus on closing deals

One of the first sales organizations to try Copilot in Viva Sales, launched in March, is Microsoft’s own business-to-business sales team. Nearly 4,000 sales professionals have used its capabilities, and the impact has been significant, with approximately 37,500 draft emails generated through the power of generative AI. Viva Sales was rolled out with a “customer zero” mindset, designed to create the best experience for employees to accelerate innovation and improvements for customers. According to Lori Lamkin, Corporate Vice President (CVP) of Dynamics 365 Customer Experience platform, feedback from the team has influenced new capabilities added to Microsoft Sales Copilot. “Sellers can get real-time suggestions and guidance as they craft emails, pulling insights from automated email summaries. It’s like having a virtual assistant right at their side, helping them to generate compelling content and ensuring that no opportunity is missed. Our sellers have embraced these features with enthusiasm, recognizing how it significantly boosts their productivity and enables them to focus on building strong customer relationships.”

Using Copilot to gain better insights faster from the data in Dynamics 365 is a strategic priority area for Sandvik Coromant, one of the world’s leading suppliers of tools, tooling solutions, and know-how for the metalworking industry. “We are very excited about Sales Copilot helping us accelerate here with opportunity summary,” shared Per Hoffner, Product Owner, Dynamics CRM at Sandvik Coromant, referring to the ability to get auto-generated opportunity summaries including status, progress, and highlights of key changes; all from within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales. “The feedback from our pilot groups has been very positive.”

For insight into day-to-day selling assisted by Copilot, read the guide “How Sellers Can Use AI to Better Engage with Customers” at Microsoft WorkLab.

Copilot helps marketers improve customer experiences

We previously announced Copilot capabilities for marketers, including AI assistance to help brainstorm marketing copy for email campaigns, create targeted marketing segments, and use natural language to infer key insights from customer data. These and newly announced Copilot capabilities are available in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights which, as reported last month, will offer both customer data platform and customer journey orchestration capabilities as a single solution.

NC Fusion, a professional soccer team and sports organization serving the Triad region of North Carolina, is an early adopter of Copilot. Marketing director Chris Barnhart shared the team’s experience. “Normal engagement runs about 20 to 30 percent and there’s a lot of factors that go into the email itself, but with the email written with content ideas the engagement was about 70 percent.” The content ideas feature helped them save time, too. “[It] helps us tremendously to efficiently produce emails,” said Barnhart. “In fact, I can tell you it was normally at least an hour, and I did it in 15 minutes, it takes me ~25 percent of the time it took before to create email content!” Learn more about how NC Fusion is using Copilot to inspire young soccer players.

Campari Group, a worldwide leader in the spirits industry, is also benefiting from the ability to prompt Copilot to generate content ideas. “Setting the tone allows Campari Group, a global company, to tailor the tone of voice for each brand and region’s communication style saving us hours of copywriting,” said Liam Barnes, Global IT Director – Marketing Technologies at Campari Group. 

“It’s pretty impressive,” said Keith Perfect, Director of Technology and Intelligence from Northrop & Johnson. “Our team has been very happy using the feature. it’s making delivering great content faster and easier.”

Institutions for higher learning can also benefit from Copilot by equipping departments and colleges with Copilot capabilities to better engage a variety of audiences. “Once we share this with our teams, it has the potential to be quite transformational,” shared Sidney Fernandes, Chief Information Officer and Vice President for Technology at the University of South Florida. “Students and staff won’t need to be educated on the nuances of student data or copywriting to engage the right audiences impactfully.”

Coffee + Dunn, a leading technology and customer engagement consulting firm, shared its experience using query assist to use conversational, everyday language to quickly build targeted segments. They can simply describe the attributes of the target segment—such as demographics, psychographics, behaviors, or preferences—and query assist will automatically generate the list of contacts. “Using query assist was quick and easy,” said Tyler McClain, Senior Solution Consultant. “I just typed ‘anniversary within the past five years,’ and it gave me exactly what I was looking for. This feature can further empower our clients to engage their customers with ease, and I’m excited to share it with them.”

To learn more about AI-assisted marketing tasks, read the guide “How Marketers Can Use AI to Unlock Breakthrough Creativity” at Microsoft WorkLab.

Using AI for breakthrough customer service experiences

Customer and field service teams are on the frontline for customer satisfaction and retention. Based on early reviews, Copilot promises to help service agents and field teams to improve service delivery and customer experiences.

Firesafe, a market-leading provider of fire protection components and systems in Nordic countries, will deploy Copilot as part of an extensive customer engagement transformation. “We are excited about the Copilot capabilities for customer service and omnichannel and are looking forward to see the anticipated productivity gains for the customer service agent in real action,” explained Petter Aamot Vangstein, CDO.

Delivering more strategic value across operations, supply chain, and finance roles with AI

With Copilot, you can further unlock the potential of enterprise resource planning (ERP) by bringing together data and AI to accelerate the speed of execution and business outcomes. Bartek is the world’s largest producer of malic and fumaric acid—two key ingredients for many foods, beverages, and industrial applications. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, it now has perpetual inventory sales that gives the company visibility to see inventory and customer orders all in one system. “Business Central and the Power Platform really lets us leverage a small team, and create very big outcomes,” explained Steven Chambers, Chief Financial Officer, Bartek. “As we move into more automated planning and bringing in AI-assisted demand planning, I know Microsoft and Business Central are there.”

Explore what’s possible with Dynamics 365 Copilot—and share your review

We are dedicated to helping your employees be more effective and provide customers with amazing experiences. With Copilot, your teams can do more with less and focus on higher-impact work. Best of all, teams across your organization can start experiencing Copilot. Many Copilot capabilities are available now, with more coming over the following months. Explore more about what’s possible with Dynamics 365 Copilot and get started on your journey today.

The post The early reviews are in: Dynamics 365 Copilot helps to reclaim time, drive innovation, and engage customers    appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.