Introduction to the voice channel
Applies to: Dynamics 365 Contact Center—embedded, Dynamics 365 Contact Center—standalone, and Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Note
Voice-enabled Copilots provide enhanced voice capabilities. If you have an existing voice channel configured, migrate your existing workstreams to make sure that they are compatible with the enhanced Copilots. New deployments and voice workstreams get the enhanced experience out of the box.
Important
Power Virtual Agents capabilities and features are now part of Microsoft Copilot Studio following significant investments in generative AI and enhanced integrations across Microsoft Copilot.
Some articles and screenshots might refer to Power Virtual Agents while we update documentation and training content.
Tip
If you’d like to try Dynamics 365 Customer Service for free, you can sign up for a 30-day trial.
Enable your customer service representatives (service representative or representative) to communicate with customers on the phone to resolve issues using the voice channel in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. While many customers increasingly use chat, SMS messages, and social media to engage and request support from organizations, phone calls continue to be an important communication channel. The voice channel provides representatives with the ability to receive and make public switched telephone network (PSTN) calls through a native calling experience in Dynamics 365. Real-time AI-powered features such as live call transcription, sentiment analysis, and AI-based suggestions are available to boost productivity. The application also provides a rich set of analytics and insights, including AI-driven topic clustering and call insights.
Why choose the voice channel
Most organizations manually integrate standalone telephony and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, which result in fragmented experiences for service representatives and customers across engagement channels. Such solutions from multiple providers are complex to roll out and maintain, and create data silos with disconnected insights of customer interactions and service representative performance across channels.
Native platform
The voice channel is built, owned, and operated completely by Microsoft. It's an all-in-one customer service solution that reduces time to value by enabling quick and easy deployment of the voice channel for your business. Also, the voice channel is built on Microsoft Azure Communication Services with the scalability and reliability of the calling platform.
Built alongside existing omnichannel capabilities with a common data framework
The voice channel allows customers to with Chat, SMS, and social media, ensuring consistent, personalized, and connected support across all channels of engagement. As an example, service representatives can escalate web chat conversations to voice and video calls. As another example, routing a voice call to a service representative is completed with unified routing, the same way an incoming chat message is assigned to a service representative. The voice channel works well with other features like a Copilot Studio agent, as they share the same platform. The process to create and deploy a conversational interactive voice response (IVR) agent is the same as the process to create and deploy a chat agent.
Beyond workflows and processes, the voice channel benefits from a common data framework with the other channels, allowing organizations to better understand each customer's journey whether the customer sent a chat, made a phone call, or used social channels. This means the solution provides a single view of the customer that empowers service representatives to provide personalized service across all channels, and true omnichannel analytics and insights for service representatives and supervisors alike.
Differentiating AI
The voice channel has Microsoft's award-winning AI built into the product. This enables service representatives to resolve issues faster with tools like call transcriptions and sentiment analysis, and gain instant insights into trends.
Support for emergency calling
The voice channel supports emergency calling where service representatives can dial in the emergency number in a crisis. Any omnichannel voice service representative with a capacity profile associated with a voice outbound profile can make an emergency call. The emergency responders can call the service representative back over a temporary callback number if the call is dropped (even if the service representative makes the call via a shared outbound number).
Key capabilities of the voice channel
Take a look at some of the key capabilities that makes the voice channel great for IT administrators, supervisors, service representatives, and customers.
User experience | Capability |
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Customer service representative |
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Calling and routing |
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AI |
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Supervisor |
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Customer |
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Related information
Install the voice channel
Supported cloud locations, languages, and locale codes
International availability of Omnichannel for Customer Service
System requirements
Provision channels
FAQ about the voice channel in Omnichannel for Customer Service
Blog: New voice channel streamlines omnichannel customer experiences