Organizations in different industries need to visualize their customer interactions in different ways. With customized columns in the conversation table, organizations can enable agents to quickly summarize the purpose of the interaction, and they can associate conversations with leads. The ability to customize the conversation table improves agent productivity and creates positive customer outcomes.  

Improve agent productivity and CSAT with conversation table customization 

When agents converse with customers, the Active Conversation form helps capture the details of the interaction. And consequently, supervisors and other agents can easily understand it. 

Ana is a customer service agent at Contoso who works tirelessly, juggling multiple customer problems over chat throughout the day. After every conversation with a customer, she patiently reviews her interaction, summarizes the issue, and writes wrap-up notes. She wishes there were a better way to quickly capture the outcomes of customer interactions and move on to serve other customers instead of spending time wrapping up the conversation.   

Dynamics 365 Customer Service does not have an out-of-the-box solution to serve her needs. However, admins can now customize the conversation table to help agents like Ana wrap up cases more quickly. Conversation table customization now supports adding columns, charts, views and connecting conversations to leads or any other activity-enabled table. 

Now that the conversation table is customizable, contact centers can tailor the agent experience to business-specific use cases like Ana’s. When the conversation table is customizable to Ana’s needs, she can save time, serve more customers, lower wait times for customers, and leave them happy with Contoso’s service.  

Create positive customer outcomes by associating leads with conversations  

Contoso enabled Conversation disposition as a custom column on the conversation table and added it to the active conversation form.  

Olivia, a Contoso customer, contacts Contoso support over webchat. She wants to find out why she was charged full price for her coffee subscription instead of the promotional price. The agent assigned to address Olivia’s concern, Ana, checks with her account team, and rectifies the error. Ana quickly wraps the conversation by specifying “Pricing dispute” disposition instead of having to write elaborate notes. Ana or any other agent connected to Olivia in the future can quickly get the context and complete interaction history through dispositions instead of having to go through one note after the other.

With the ability to view service and sales data in a single record, Ana can pitch a special offer to Olivia and associate a lead to this conversation immediately in the same form. Contoso’s sales team can follow up with Olivia subsequently through the lead.  This single source of information offers a true end-to-end customer experience without having to juggle between sales and support lines.  

Contact center supervisors can review interactions like Olivia’s pricing dispute or other dispositions and take appropriate preventive measures based on aspects of the conversation such as volume or sentiment.  

The use cases for customization are truly limitless and best left to the imagination of our customers and their business scenarios.  

Customize the conversation table 

Now you can extend the conversation table just like any other Dynamics 365 table from the customization experience in Power Apps. Use the Regarding column to associate any activity enabled entity to Conversation. You can create additional columns, views, and charts. This feature is enabled by default for all customers with our April 2023 release wave.  

Learn more

Watch a quick video introduction.

To find out more about conversation customization in Customer Service, read the documentation:

• Customize the Active Conversation form | Microsoft Learn
• Customizations supported by the Conversation table and form | Microsoft Learn 

The post Customize the conversation table for your business needs  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In today’s competitive business landscape, maximizing the value sellers derive from sales tools is paramount. One key aspect of achieving this is the ability for customers to customize Viva Sales forms, enabling them to have the right business information at the right time. This blog post explores how the latest Viva Sales update empowers administrators to add relevant out-of-the-box or custom entities to enhance the Viva Sales experience, so sellers can reduce context switching across applications and instead focus on building stronger relationships with their customers to close deals faster. 

We have integrated Viva Sales settings with the underlying CRM app, offering a more cohesive admin experience. When adding a new entity to Viva Sales, administrators now have the option to select an existing view from the CRM app to retrieve metadata information. This CRM view determines the fields to be shown, their order, filtering, and sorting definitions for Viva Sales forms and list views. 

Adding new entities to Viva Sales 

Viva Sales administrators can easily add entities from the Viva Sales settings. It’s important to note that only entities directly related to existing Viva Sales entities are available for selection. Additionally, administrators can control how the new entity is related to relevant existing Viva Sales entities. This influences its visibility in the Outlook side pane. For example, when admins add the Case entity, defining its relation to Contact and Accounts will determine how it displays in the main view and the detailed entities view within the Outlook side pane. Entities related to other entities will appear in the detailed view of their corresponding entities. For instance, adding the “Opportunity Product” entity will show the product list for a specific opportunity in the detailed view of opportunity records. 

Adding new entities through customization extends their availability across various Viva Sales experiences, including the Outlook side pane and the Teams message extension. This ensures that sellers can access and interact with the relevant information seamlessly within their preferred Viva Sales flow of work. 

Sellers have additional entities in the Viva Sales side pane and can click to see entity details and related entities. Sellers can also share any entity with their colleagues in Teams using an adaptive card. 

Keeping Viva Sales customization up to date 

When changes are made to the CRM entities exposed in Viva Sales it is important to refresh the Viva Sales settings area to reflect the update. These changes are not automatically refreshed and require action to keep a consistent experience across the applications.

Removing entities

Administrators have the flexibility to remove entities from Viva Sales. If an entity has related entities within Viva Sales, these related entities will be removed together with the main entity. This will happen unless they are still associated with other entities. Contact remains an exception and can’t be removed from Viva Sales. Removing entities doesn’t remove any data from Viva Sales or your CRM app. It only impacts the visibility of CRM data in the Viva Sales app. 

Saving Outlook emails and meetings to custom entities 

Empowering sellers with greater flexibility, the latest customize Viva Sales update enables saving Outlook emails and meeting activities to any Viva Sales out-of-the-box or custom entity. Sellers can now save activities to any entity that has been added to Viva Sales. Please note that today saving to custom entities is currently available exclusively for Dynamics 365 customers. 

The ability to customize Viva Sales forms plays a pivotal role in ensuring the information is highly relevant and impactful for the seller while keeping them working within the applications they prefer. The latest update allows Viva Sales administrators to:

• Effortlessly add new relevant custom and out-of-the-box entities.
• Leverage CRM views.
• Provide sellers with a tailored experience across various interfaces.

By keeping Viva Sales customization up to date and allowing for expanded options when saving Outlook activities, this update equips sellers with the tools they need to excel in their sales endeavors. Embrace the power of customization in Viva Sales and unlock a more efficient and personalized sales workflow. 

Next steps

Don’t have Viva Sales yet? get started now! Microsoft Viva Sales | Microsoft Viva 

Read the getting started guide to customize forms and fields 

The post Enhancing Seller Productivity: Customize Viva Sales Forms  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.