Enable customers to bring their bots

Important

This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, see Microsoft Dynamics 365 product documentation. For the latest release plans, see Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans.

Note

These release notes describe functionality that may not have been released yet. To see when this functionality is planned to release, please review What’s new and planned for Dynamics 365 for Customer Service. Delivery timelines and projected functionality may change or may not ship (see Microsoft policy).

Today, consumers are increasingly demanding that companies serve their needs and meet their requirements quickly, efficiently, and accurately. At the same time, there is a strategic shift toward use of self-service channels, with customers looking to solve product or service issues themselves.

Recent evolution in machine learning technologies, natural language research, and linguistic analysis, along with the ability to provide scalable, immediate, and contextual assistance, has made self-service tools like chatbots (or virtual agents) a key necessity to be incorporated within an organization’s customer service operations.

Apart from the ubiquity and nonstop availability offered by these chatbots, interactions with them could also be analyzed in regard to understanding consumer sentiment, level of engagement, and product feedback. Integration of intelligent bots within customer service operations positively impacts customer service KPIs like average handling time and average number of cases, while simultaneously reducing cost.

Bring your bot to Omnichannel for Customer Service

With Omnichannel for Customer Service, customers can now bring their own bots (built on Microsoft Bot Framework) and connect them with the Omnichannel for Customer Service ecosystem.

As part of the Bring Your Own Bot feature, customers can now:

  • Configure their bots in Omnichannel for Customer Service through a simplified setup experience to enable routing of conversations to bots.
  • Provide seamless, contextual escalation with consistent experience for end users.
  • Enable agent productivity with rich bot-user conversation transcript and chat context.

Intelligent conversational bots at the frontline help to deflect the routine queries, while maintaining a natural experience for users. Integration with Omnichannel for Customer Service enables a smooth, contextual handoff to the agents, helping them to focus on complex queries, while empowering them with relevant information, leading to a good experience for end users.

Schematic representation for customer-owned bots with Omnichannel for Customer Service