Microsoft has confirmed a new multilingual voice agent for its Dynamics 365 Contact Center.
The voice agents are front-end, conversational autonomous agents that brands can customize in Copilot Studio to support 26 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Turkish.
While some contact center multilingual support solutions necessitate a separate bot for each language, Microsoft supports multiple languages via a single voice agent.
The solution also has the capacity to switch languages mid-call based on caller input; when a customer is choosing a language from a menu, for example.
In addition, contact center staff can assign dedicated phone numbers for each language, using a single voice agent to initiate conversations based on the dialed number.
Provided the bot supports the voice channel’s primary language, the tool may also begin the interaction in the caller’s preferred language.
Moreover, during instances where the voice agent cannot resolve a query or the customer requests human assistance, administrators can set routing rules to escalate the call to a live agent queue that matches the conversation’s language.
In a blog post on the company’s website, Microsoft’s Principal Product Manager, Hemang Shah, expressed his enthusiasm for the new release:
We are excited to announce support for multilingual voice agents authored with Copilot Studio for the Dynamics 365 Contact Center voice channel.
“This new feature expands Copilot Studio’s capabilities from messaging to voice interactions, enabling businesses to handle calls in multiple languages using a single bot.”
Outside of a more seamless experience for multilingual customers, Microsoft also outlined the following additional benefits of its latest feature:
- Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) – Using a single agent lowers TCO by simplifying maintenance. Updates are centralized, eliminating the need to manage multiple language-specific bots, which reduces complexity and operational overhead.
- Faster Deployment – Deployment is speedier and more efficient as updates and new features are rolled out simultaneously across all supported languages. This streamlines the process, ensuring quicker access to improvements.
- Improved CSAT – Microsoft believes that the ability to switch languages mid-call will help businesses enhance their Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores, as it allows for a more personalized and smooth experience.
Powering the Voice Agents
Dynamics 365 Contact Center customers may consider utilizing the voice agent alongside several other autonomous agents available within Microsoft’s CCaaS platform.
For example, there’s an Intent Agent that monitors how agents resolve queries, while a Knowledge Agent uses this data to create new knowledge content. This content can then power a customer-facing voice agent to automate more queries.
Such an approach demonstrates how autonomous agents can collaborate to automate multi-step processes with human oversight but minimal human intervention, a system that could potentially benefit the company’s multilingual voice agents.
More News from Microsoft
The Dynamics 365 Contact Center isn’t the only big CCaaS announcement from Microsoft this year. Additionally, it launched a Queues App for Teams, allowing businesses to manage, monitor, and handle inbound and outbound calls from the first platform they open up every day: Teams.
Yet, across enterprise software, agentic AI has been the talk of the town, with Microsoft launching a public preview of its new-look Copilot Studio. This will quickly become a hub for autonomous AI Agents.
Elsewhere, Microsoft and SAP recently announced plans to integrate their virtual assistants, 365 Copilot and Joule.
First hinted at during SAP’s Sapphire event in June and showcased at Microsoft Ignite 2024, the integration allows customers to choose either assistant as their primary tool within Microsoft-SAP environments while combining their capabilities.