Microsoft has released three AI agents to enable a more autonomous, self-learning contact center.
These agents include a Customer Intent Agent, Customer Knowledge Management Agent, and a Case Management Agent.
Each agent will be available on the Dynamics 365 Contact Center and Dynamics 365 Customer Service platforms.
These are Microsoft’s respective CCaaS and customer service CRM offerings.
A Breakdown of the Three Agents
The Customer Intent Agent continuously learns from contact center conversations to help service leaders uncover: why are customers contacting us?
In doing so, the Agent builds an evolving library full of these contact reasons or “intents”.
Moreover, it unpacks key troubleshooting steps that agents, both live and virtual, may take to resolve each query.
The Customer Knowledge Management Agent then utilizes this knowledge to autonomously generate and update knowledge articles from real-world, successful cases.
Highlighting the value of this agent, Kos Srivastava, Microsoft’s Principal PM Manager, noted in a Microsoft blog:
Creating and maintaining knowledge assets is a time-consuming process. Service reps don’t always have time to put their learnings from cases and conversations into a knowledge article.
Yet, perhaps most notably, these knowledge articles could feed a customer-facing AI agent that utilizes the articles to automate customer service.
Microsoft customers can build such an agent via the new-look Copilot Studio.
Meanwhile, as the Customer Intent Agent picks up on emerging contact reasons and the Knowledge Management Agent automatically picks up on them, this customer-facing AI agent will keep up with the latest customer queries and improve over time.
Finally, there’s also a Case Management Agent. This aims to support live agents by creating new cases, updating case details, and automating customer follow-ups.
The purpose of this automation is to reduce handling time, minimize errors, and free up customer service reps to focus on more value-driven tasks, according to Srivastava. He said:
From managing high case volumes to reducing average handling time, this agent makes life easier for your team.
Microsoft Continues to Expand Its Contact Center Portfolio
These agents add to Microsoft’s momentum in the contact center sphere.
At the start of 2024, the tech giant was merely dipping its toes in the field.
Now, it has released a new CCaaS platform and a Queues app for Microsoft Teams, promising to turn the UC platform into a contact center for SMBs.
Sure, it had its Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform come before this, but recent headlines suggest Microsoft has its sights firmly on dominating the contact center sector.
Other Recent Microsoft Contact Center News
Earlier this week, Microsoft announced a new contact center integration model for Teams.
The Unify integration model empowers solution providers to create native CCaaS applications on Azure Communication Services (ACS), harnessing Teams’ calling infrastructure.
According to the vendor, Unify facilitates the development of “intelligent” CCaaS solutions that share the same back-end as Microsoft’s popular communications app.
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