Intro to OmniChannel

Written By Kelly Simpson

For those who have been following my blog for a little while, it has mainly been focused on Marketing and the features of D365 Customer Insight Journeys.

Whilst I will continue to blog about this, I’m also going to be writing about my learning journey for OmniChannel.

The one thing I am going to say with Microsoft is how similar their user interface is for the various apps; which is making this learning journey that I am on all the more easier! Having understood the Marketing features and the channels that are available in CI-Journeys it’s no surprise that the terminology and concept feels a little similar.

What is OmniChannel?! 😱

Omni-Channel is a customer centric approach whereby all objective and outcomes consider the needs of the customers and the end user experience and service. It’s about providing a consistent positive customer service where you communicate with the audience through all appropriate and available channels.

OmniChannel for Customer Service

This is an extension of the D365 Customer service App allowing companies to instantly connect and engage with their customers by offering the following support channels:

  • Live Chat

  • Voice

  • SMS

  • Microsoft Teams

  • Socials (Facebook, WeChat)

The key thing to mention here, is that whether a Customer Service agent is using a Live Chat or on phone support that they can use the same repository of information to provide a solution to their customer

The benefits of OmniChannel

  • context of an issue is handed over to each department rather than the customer having to explain themselves 10000 times!

  • Consistent end user experience and service

  • Increase customer satisfaction scores

  • KPI improvements due to the ability to resolve issues faster

  • Increase revenue of business due to increased customer loyalty

The key features of OmniChannel

  1. Session Management : agents can work on multiple sessions at once

  2. Conversation panel : agents can directly interact with customers as well as other agents to reach a solution

  3. Other D365 tools : agents can access all the benefits of D365 such as search functionality, quick create and agent presence information, Agent Scripts, Smart Assist and Copilot

Key learnings to note

  • When you first deploy OmniChannel it is important that consent on behalf of the organisation is provided. Otherwise you will not be able to access the features and functionality of the app!

  • The Live Chat widgets are not utilised for profiling or collecting PII

  • An additional licence is required ; from my understanding it is the D365 Customer Service Premium licence which gives access to the Self-service Chat Bots and voice channels with inbound routing.

Kelly Simpson
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