Microsoft plans to release two new AI agents for Dynamics 365 Contact Center in “early 2025.”
The first is Customer Intent Agent, which discovers new intent by listening in on customer conversations across all channels.
It then analyzes case notes, transcripts, and summaries to map issues and uncover key troubleshooting steps agents can take to resolve each query.
The second agent is the knowledge management agent. Leverage intelligence from the intent agent to create new knowledge articles.
Additionally, we separate the opportunity to update existing articles, suggest changes, and submit them for review.
Customer service teams, including both human and AI agents, can leverage knowledge articles to autonomously resolve customer issues.
Businesses can build customer-facing AI agents for Dynamics 365 Contact Center through Copilot Studio. For audio, you can also use native conversational IVR powered by Studio.
In either case, AI agents can interact with customers and solve many of their problems if connected to the right systems.
Of course, there are still cases that cause problems with virtual agents. After all, many customers will ask questions that defy common sense.
So you still need an escalation path to a live agent who receives a summary of previous conversations.
Nevertheless, when AI agents work together, contact centers can recognize new intents, create action plans to handle them, and execute them autonomously.
Therefore, this announcement evokes a self-learning contact center.
Alluding to this, Bryan Goode, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of business applications and platforms, wrote in the company’s blog post:
Collectively, these agents are trained to autonomously learn how to address emerging problems through self-service, improving the quality of problem resolution across channels and driving time and cost savings. .
Of course, some competing vendors may offer similar solutions. For example, Verint offers three “bots” that companies can chain together to create equivalent continuous learning cycles.
Nevertheless, Microsoft could demonstrate a continuum of customer service innovation by releasing these AI agents early in the transition to contact centers.
Some may doubt this, considering how the tech giant entered the space just six months ago.
But the company is putting its feet firmly on the ground by making its CCaaS platform the target of two of its first 10 AI agents for enterprises.
As such, the platform could receive even greater PR power alongside the publicity it received recently when global business services provider HCLTech announced Dynamics 365 Contact Center as its “preferred” platform for CCaaS migrations .
With this in mind, Microsoft is off to a big start on its contact center adventure in 2025, with announcements continuing…
What else is added to Dynamics 365 Contact Center?
As part of the latest release, Dynamics 365 Contact Center is introducing many new features over the next four months.
Consider additions to Copilot to support agents and supervisors on the platform. First, Microsoft added Copilot-generated notes to help human agents capture important facts about the issue.
Additionally, Copilot may soon connect to non-Microsoft CRM platforms such as ServiceNow and Zendesk, sending Copilot-generated prompts to these systems. Again, this helps to better provide human agents with real-time, relevant knowledge, this time from the CRM.
By May, Microsoft also plans to use native Copilot to capture customer feedback. In doing so, CCaaS solutions live up to their billing as “Copilot-first” solutions.
Other exciting features coming soon include proficiency-based routing, proactive outreach solutions, and fraud prevention tools.
But most of the additional features, such as the availability of key operational metrics, messaging APIs, and broader regional voice coverage, are add-ons built into the wall.
Microsoft will need to continue building these baseline capabilities throughout 2025 in order to appear on more enterprise CCaaS shortlists, including NICE, Genesys, and Five9.
Microsoft challenges and opportunities in CCaaS
Microsoft offers CCaaS as a solution that provides seamless integration with widely adopted tools such as Teams and Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
Additionally, customers and agents will find the solution familiar and comfortable, leveraging the same design language and ease of use as other Microsoft tools. This reduces the learning curve.
For these reasons, Microsoft will find success in this space, along with brands that are already invested in the Dynamics ecosystem.
Additionally, we may face challenges in attracting new types of buyers. After all, Microsoft is great at marketing to CIOs. However, traditional buyers of CCaaS solutions are often contact center leaders without strong existing ties to Microsoft.
They may also lag behind mature markets or struggle with recognition of market readiness.
That said, when Microsoft enters an area, it enters with a bang. Bringing agent AI to the platform this early will also expand its visibility in the market.
Doing so could potentially take advantage of a number of mid-market CCaaS contracts scheduled for renegotiation in 2025.
