I am currently revising for the MB-230 exam. This exam is for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and covers all aspects of customer service. As I revise I plan to publish blog posts that collectively will become a complete revision guide for anyone embarking on the same journey as me. In this post I will describe the agent experience within Omnichannel for Customer Service.

You can see an extract from the current skills measured statement below. What we can immediately see is that Omnichannel for Customer Service covers a large section of the exam! And also that this topic includes numerous subjects for us to revise. I will attempt to cover as much information as possible in a collection of blog posts that should aid your understanding of Omnichannel. In this post I will concentrate on the agent experience elements of Omnichannel.

Tip:
My blog also includes many posts about Omnichannel for Customer Service. You might also benefit from reading at least some of those as they might dive deeper into specific topics.

Using conversation panel

I will begin by covering how the agents use the conversation panel, as after all this is something they may do almost constantly during their working day.

Within either the Customer Service Workspace or Omnichannel for Customer Service we have the conversation pane. This will typically be docked on the left hand side of the screen. It can however be minimised if required.

The basic usage is simple enough! The agent will see messages from the customer as they arrive and can enter and send replies as required. They can then see the conversation history as the conversation progresses.

Another feature the agent may find useful is the sentiment analysis. As the conversation progresses AI will suggest the customers sentiment. Above the conversation had a neutral sentiment. (After all it had just started!)

As the conversation progresses the sentiment value will change. This maybe a useful trigger to help the agent judge the mood of the customer. It is also useful as later we will see that supervisors can see this information, helping them to spot and react to negative conversations. Additionally reporting can later be produced on overall customer sentiment.

Agents can also End the conversation by clicking the large read "End" button. (Or obviously the customer may end the conversation by closing the chat widget!)

Plus the "…" menu can (if enabled) present the agent with options to escalate the conversation to a voice or video call.

Additionally at the bottom of the screen the agent can have multiple icons that will help them perform various tasks. The exact icons available may differ depending on your Omnichannel for Customer Service setup.

Firstly notice the public and internal buttons. Typically by default the "Public" option is selected. When this happens the agents responses are a blue colour and are seen by the customer. But clicking the "Internal" button will allow the agent to send a message that only other agents / supervisors can see. This can happen if a supervisor joined the conversation or if the agent uses the consult feature to speak to another agent.

We also have the paperclip icon. As you can probably guess this allows the agents to send files to the customer. (A feature which can be enabled and disabled in the workstream.) It is also possible for the customer to send files to the agent. (As shown below.) Notice how image files show directly in the conversation pane but documents would be a link that has a download icon.

Tip: The agent can use a variety of icons to trigger various features. They can also use quick keys. (I will highlight these below!)

Below I will list the remaining icons and highlight their purpose.

or "/q"

This first icon is used to send quick replies. These are "canned messages" that allow the agent to quickly respond with commonly used phrases. (I will cover these in more detail later in this post.)


or "/c"

Next we have the initiate consult option. Here the agent will see any other that are available and can begin a conversation with them. In this scenario the agent may typically have an internal conversation with another agent. Maybe they simply need to ask another agent a question about how to deal with the customers query.

or "/t"

In some respects the transfer option operates like the consult. In that the agent can select another agent. But in this scenario the conversation is passed to the other agent and the current agent plays no further part in the conversation. The agents can transfer to conversation to other agents or to a queue.

Tip: If you have Power Virtual Agents connected to Omnichannel then these appear as agents. Meaning in theory we can also transfer a conversation to a BOT if required.

This icon can open the "notes" pane … once an agent has linked any record to the conversation the notes feature can be used to open a panel that allows them to keep notes. When ready they can click the "Add note" button which links the note to the record associated with the conversation. This might be really useful! Often the agents can create the notes as the conversation progresses and then can opt to only add them to the related record towards the end of the conversation once fully formed.

The agents can also use "…" to uncover additional options.

The "Knowledge Articles" option will open the knowledge search in a tab within the current session.

The "Link to conversation" option may be useful if the agent opens a contact (for example) and now wants that contact to be the one linked to the current conversation. Or maybe they open an existing case and want to link that.

"Turn on translations" will be available if your admins have enabled real-time translations. This allows an agent to speak to customers without needing to know the language of the customer. I blogged about how to enable real-time translations here.

Customer Summary

Another important aspect of the Omnichannel for Customer service app is the "Customer Summary" form. This contains details of the current conversation and associated records. This is the "anchor tab" in most conversations and therefore loads automatically as chats commence.

The customer summary form includes two search options. One allows then to search for existing customers and link them to the conversation. Or they can use the "+New Account" and "+New Contact" options to create new records as required. The other is very similar but supports searching and creation of cases.

We also have the conversation section. This will show the agent several useful pieces of information. The first tab available shows anything the customer entered in a pre-chat survey. It also shows the channel and queue of the conversation. Along with the customer's wait time and the start time of the conversation. (Knowing the waiting wait, for example, might help the agents respond proactively. "Hi, my name is Neil, sorry to have kept you waiting …".

The next tab is the visitor details. Here the agent can see details about the customer. Including their location, language and which browser / device they are using.

The skills tab will show any skills used during the routing process to allocate this conversation to this agent. (That is if you are using skills based routing options.)

Tip: Knowing the device (for example) might be useful if the agent wants to escalate the conversation to a voice or video call. As not all devices are supported!

Quick Replies

As already mentioned quick replies are a method for the agents to easily reply with common responses quickly. They also have an advantage of creating standardised replies which in turn mean all the agents would respond with consistent messaging.

We have two types of quick replies. Ones that an administrator has defined against a single workstream or globally and are available to all users. And personalised replies that an agent can create for themselves. That is if the administrator has enabled the feature for them to create personal quick replies! (An option you will find in the Omnichannel admin center in the agent experience advanced settings.)

Below I have highlighted the options used to maintain quick replies.

Alternatively quick replies can be defined for each workstream. To do this open your workstream. Then at the bottom of the screen you'll find an advance settings option. The quick replies specific to the workstream will be held here.

I have previously bogged about quick replies. You can read that post here.

Productivity panel

The productivity panel is designed to help agents resolve queries by giving them features to access contextual agent scripts, search for knowledge articles and even get "smart" suggestions on how to resolve cases. Often the productivity panel will be expanded by default but agents can shrink it out of the way if required.

Below you can see that I have completed a knowledge search from the productivity pane. Opening an article will trigger it to open in a tab within my session.

I can also use the "case" icon to link this knowledge article to the current case. Or click "…" to email the article to the customer.

Setup of productivity panel

We can use the "App profile manager" to define the settings for the productivity panel.

You access the app profile manager from make.powerapps.com. Here you will find either your omnichannel for customer service app or the customer service workspace app. (As both have a multi-session experience.) Once you have located the app, use the "…" option to find and open the app profile manager. (As shown below.)

The app profile manager allows us to create / tailor the multi-session apps for users (agents) as required. Below you can see that I have options to enable / disable the productivity pane. And set its default mode, be that expanded or collapsed.

I can also turn the agent scripts, knowledge search and smart assist sections off / on as required.

In this post I have covered many of the elements of Omnichannel connected with the agent experience. I hope these details will help with your MB 230 revision. As always I encourage you to spend as much time as possible during your revision gaining hands on experience of these features. Enjoy.