From call center to profit center: Transforming customer experience with Dynamics 365 Contact Center

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our webinar today. My name is Alice Newsome. I'm a senior soft solution engineer at Microsoft. And we'll be covering the topic today from call center to profit center. Joining me is Julian from one of our trusted partners in this space, TTEC Digital. So to get us started, we'll just go briefly over our agenda. As we head into a new year in twenty twenty six, what are some of those trends that we need to maybe start to think of in our modernization journey and our transformation? Why change now? We'll talk a little bit about Microsoft's end to end vision for contact center, as well as share some real world outcomes and proof that we're seeing from our customers across a variety of spaces, but particularly in retail and manufacturing. And then we'll end with a quick call to action as you think about how can you realize value within your call center on your transformation. So with that, I'll turn it over to Julian to get us started with an introduction and our trends. Awesome. Thanks, Alice. You can hear me okay? Okay. Great. Yes. Yeah. So good morning from most, afternoon as well. So Julian here. I'm a director here at TTEC, supporting our clients along their digital transformation with Microsoft's platform and tools. Just for some context on TTEC, so to Alice's point, we're we're one of Microsoft's top Dynamics and Azure implementation partners globally, and specifically their number one contact center implementation partner. This is heavily driven by the fact that we've been consulting within the contact center space for over forty years and have worked with a number of technology solutions like Genesys and Cisco, Nuance, Talkdesk, Five nine, etcetera. But, you know, not only have that that deep expertise across the technology solutions our clients use, but also because we are one of the world's largest BPO organizations as well. So a number of companies outsource their contact centers to TTEC. So to that end, if you call, you know, FedEx, Bank of America, ESPN streaming services, The Gap, Chanel, or even Home Depot, you're likely speaking to a TTEC agent because they outsource their contact centers and some sales operations to us as well. Point being that, you know, by running contact centers ourselves, we, you know, understand our clients' business processes and the challenges at a deep level because we're, you know, legitimately in the trenches with them every day, hands on keyboards, and the teams actively, you know, executing their operations. So it gives us a, you know, not only a strong technical expertise, but also more than forty years of, you know, live experience improving the people and process aspects of their their customer operations. So we we can bring that kinda holistic insight and guidance to this type of engagement with our clients. So over the past few years, we've had a number of conversations with our clients tied to the contact center shift from a reactive call center to one of the most strategic levers inside the enterprise. And, you know, heading into twenty twenty six, we're seeing that transformation accelerate even further. You know, we talk to executives daily about their plans to redefine their contact centers heading into twenty twenty six. And at a high level, are really three key areas of focus that seem to be, you know, priority for the executives we've been engaging. The first is that, you know, the contact center becomes a revenue and supply chain intelligence hub. So rather than being seen only as a call center, the contact center is now feeding critical data back into the business, Right? So every service interaction can serve as a real time demand signal that influences, you know, everything from decisions in inventory, production, fulfillment. For example, if a if a flood of customers are calling about a particular product, that insight can trigger adjustments in stock levels or manufacturing. Likewise, agents are evolving into revenue and retention advisers, not just solving problems, but identifying upsell opportunities or saving at risk customers. You know, really in practical terms, the voice of the customer in the contact center is directly shaping product strategy, pricing, and promotions. And we're seeing customer conversation data being used to tweak marketing orders or excuse me, marketing offers or adjust supply chain forecasts on the fly. You know, this trend really means that the executive audience should, you know, really view their contact centers as a strategic asset for growth and not just a support function. The second area of focus is tied to hyper personalization and also tied to the fact that AI orchestrated journeys are replacing static omnichannel. So traditionally companies tried to offer the same experience across channels, the omnichannel approach, but it was, you know, becoming fluid and or excuse me, customer journeys are becoming, you know, a bit more fluid and adaptive now so that the technology can orchestrate the next best action in real time, whether that's moving from a chat to voice call, offering a specific discount, or sending a follow-up via SMS based on what it learns moment by moment. Instead of a kind of static flowchart for customer interactions, AI looks at each customer behavior and intent and tailors the journey dynamically. So, you know, this results in much a much more personalized experience. It feels like, you know, the company knows that you know, excuse me, knows what the customer needs in the moment regardless of the channel. And importantly, you know, the walls between departments are coming down. Sales, service, and marketing start to act as, you know, one continuous motion, which is why our customers really see the value of the single Microsoft platform. For the customer, it's all one connected experience. And for the business, it means higher engagement and conversation because you're meeting customers where they are exactly with exactly what they need. And then lastly, the rise of the autonomous contact center. This is about AI taking on a far bigger role in handling interactions where we're moving beyond AI just suggested responses or analyzing sentiment. Now AI agents can completely resolve common issues from start to finish without any human involvement. Think of tasks like password resets, order status checks, basic troubleshooting. AI can handle those entirely freeing, you know, our agent for more complex needs. So in this model, you know, our agents become really more specialists. They handle, you know, exceptions and high value clients and relationship focused interactions. Meanwhile, automated workflows can even, you know, self heal operations issues. For instance, if there's a known glitch in an order system, the AI can detect and correct it behind the scenes. So we're really seeing this because of the shift. The KPIs are changing. Instead of obsessing over average handle time of number of calls, leaders are looking at metrics like customer lifetime value, retention rates, and overall business impact of services. So we're really seeing that the success is measured by the outcomes and satisfaction, not just the efficiency and the autonomous trend doesn't, you know, remove people from the process. It just elevates their role and allows the AI to do some heavy lifting on repetitive tasks. So I'll pass it over to Alice to kinda share some context around why organizations see twenty twenty six as the critical time to begin to embark on some of these strategic changes. Thanks, Julian. Yeah, when we think about AI, right, it's delivered value in customer service already. And in fact, according to BCG research, support functions like customer service now accounts for thirty eight percent of the total business value companies are getting from AI investments. And that's significant. And we've seen this play out with customers in three key ways so far. Conversational AI gave us better chatbots. Generative AI brought smarter, faster answers and summaries. And then AI assistance started helping reps move through tasks a little faster. But the reality that we're seeing is that for most organizations, these improvements have been incremental rather than transformational. And so while AI has touched specific moments like improving chat interaction or summarizing a case, you know, it hasn't changed the underlying service model. And that's a problem because the pressures of service teams or on service teams today aren't small. They're continuing to grow, and they're becoming more complex. Now as Julian was sharing, you know, the the good news and really why we're seeing, now as a key time to consider your modernization is because the next wave of AI is already here, and it's called AgenTake AI. And it's not just about making agents faster. It's about introducing AI agents that can orchestrate, automate, and resolve entire service processes. And this is really where, real transformation begins, and that's what we'll dive into next. Now let's take a minute to ground, in these broader trends that Julian shared, but what we're seeing, across the service industry in relation to them. First, AI is fundamentally changing how service gets done. Like we mentioned, it's already, helped organizations with things like reducing handle time and boosting agent productivity. But the next wave of impact, is coming where Gartner predicts that by twenty twenty nine, AgenTake AI will autonomously resolve eighty percent of common customer service issues without human intervention. And so when we think about that's not just incremental efficiency, it's really a step change in how service work gets done. And beyond faster resolution, organizations adopting this model are expected to see up to a thirty percent reduction in operational costs. Now secondly, we think about consolidated technology stacks are really becoming the new normal. According to Gartner, by twenty twenty eight, sixty percent of service organizations are undergoing some sort of tech transformation will move to a unified customer support and service suite. That's up from less than five percent today. So when you think about the swivel chair that your people might be doing within the call center today, let's talk a little bit about the the reasons why this consolidation of the tech stack is happening. First, it reduces the complexity from an integration standpoint as well as the maintenance cost, which is something every organization is is always striving towards. But the second, I think really key piece when it comes to agentic service is that it improves data consistency, which is critical for AI driven insights and automation. And so while AI agents can help bridge the gap between disconnected systems today, organizations are realizing that a unified platform and that smaller footprint makes it easier to scale AI. It reduces those silos, and it delivers more consistent experiences for both customers and your call center agents. Now lastly, organizations are scaling capacity without adding headcount. You know, we think of service teams everywhere being asked to do more with less. More than eighty percent of service leaders say they plan to rely on digital labor in the next twelve to eighteen months to meet the rising demand and volumes that they're seeing, all without expanding their teams. And that means AI agents aren't just a nice to have. They're really becoming essential for scaling operations and meeting customer expectations. So taken together, these trends point to one thing. We're entering the era of agentic service where AI agents don't just, assist humans, they take on full workflows and service processes, on their own with human oversight. So let's hear from the team behind Dynamics three sixty five contact center, who's building it for leaders like you who are focused on delivering exceptional customer experiences, empowering service representatives, and driving efficiency with AI. Good customer engagement is when you know about the customer, when you know why they are reaching out to you, when you can provide them the service that they're looking for in the fastest amount of time and by connecting with them on a personal note. Our design goal for Dynamics three sixty five Contact Center was to infuse AI throughout the entire customer journey. From the moment the customer reaches out to the contact center Hi, Claudia. Are Are you calling about the Northwind X700 backpack you bought recently? Yes. I was wondering if it was waterproof. I get to talk to a lot of customers. One theme that has been very common across the board is that at the end of the day, they want to create better connections with their end customers. Microsoft has a unique set of assets. We have the telephony. We're built on Teams phone system. We have the cloud itself, Azure. We've got the AI that runs in our data centers. We have all of the CRM capabilities that come with Dynamics. We're bringing all of that together to absolve our customers from the complexity that goes into stitching all of that together. That's why we've created a complete but composable contact center. It is the innovation that will help bring the power in the hands of organizations to create better connections with the customers to bring operational efficiencies. And we're not stopping there. We're taking that now to the next level. AI agents, you could think about them as being able to be decoupled from the person. The human can issue a command. The AI agent can go out and do work and come back when it's done. The idea is to be able to give them quick answers, whether that's through self-service or through the AI tools that we're providing to the human service rep. It's critical that we're delivering awesome customer experiences. And that's what we built with Dynamics three sixty five Contact Center. Right. So when we think about that complete but composable system, right, that's where Copilot and agents are happening and combined with every customer interaction. Whether that starts in chat, voice, email, or social. It's intelligently routed based on real time context, like sentiment, intent, and service rep availability. And for from self-service, would say, the way through to assisted support and operations, teams are supported by AI at every step. So as we click into that, what does smarter service look like with agents? Some of these, challenges you see on the top of our slide may be things that you're familiar with. Right? Maybe your team is struggling with siloed insights, making it hard to spot emerging customer issues. Knowledge updates, we know, can be, oftentimes they're manual, or slow, depending if the team has time to take, take a chance at updating some of those articles or creating new ones where you see gaps. But it's often leaving agents and customers with outdated answers, especially as you maybe look to stride into that self-service model a little bit more than you maybe have traditionally in the past. And then reps traditionally have been stuck in what we call maybe low value work. Maybe it's case creation, it's waiting, continuously checking if a customer has followed up yet, or ticket closures. So if we move to the bottom, half of the screen, we can see where AI agents now in place are helping to impact some of these, right? Because AI can detect things like intent and route, in faster and smarter ways. And it can help us keep knowledge fresh, autonomously curating and updating from every customer interaction. Things like case creation, those, follow ups and closures are automated. You think of those kind of multiple small steps along the way through the lifespan of a case, AI can be helping your teams to do some of those steps, keep things flowing very efficiently through the process, and help your representatives focus on those more complex customer problems. Now when we think about, the bottom, what does this really drive? What's the why behind this? We've talked a little bit about the why now, but when we think about the why, it's really the business impact that we're seeing from customers who are starting to utilize this technology. All the way from improved first contact resolution and customer satisfaction, thanks to that smarter routing and faster answers to lower average handle times with AI automating those repetitive tasks, as well as increased, rep productivity as agents spend more time again on those complex high value interactions. And so holistically, it's it's not just incremental improvement. It's a step change in how service is getting done. And this true service transformation happens when AI is part of a secure connected ecosystem that's unifying data, tools, and workflows at your pace. And this is where Microsoft really has a real advantage because AI by itself, we know isn't enough. But most organizations today are trying to to layer AI onto disconnected tools and legacy platforms. That leads to, I would say, a patchwork of either automation or missed insights and inconsistent customer and employee experiences. Where Microsoft's approach is different is we're giving you that flexible, composable system where everything works together securely and at scale. Now when we think about this, I would like to think about it kind of in three ways, right? Every interaction is connected. The customer experience flow seamlessly across the channels into the rest of the business and organization. Again, with that unified routing, that shared data, and that AI driven context. Secondly, every system is integrated and it's natively built to work together. Whether that's Dynamics, it's Microsoft three sixty five with Teams and Outlook, but that can also extend to third party apps. We know that you have made investments across your business and we want this to be at your pace. So you can meet your customers with speed and relevance, but also take on that modernization journey at the pace with which your teams can also see the most value of it and get the best return on investment. So just to be clear on that piece, you don't need to adopt everything on this on this slide on day one. It's not an all or nothing, right? This is about giving you choice and making sure that your needs are met as you grow and you have a platform that can grow with you without creating new silos. All right, so when we think of context centers, kind of these three pillars, making every interaction count, elevating team impact, and operating smarter. And I'm just gonna touch a little bit on each one of them. The first one is making every interaction count. When it comes to modernized surface, meeting customers where, they're at is key because they expect that flexibility from us. And we want that interaction to be consistent and personalized across those channels. We know that self-service is a key piece of this. If you haven't leaned into that before, it's often an area where we're seeing customers be able to reduce their cost to serve because they're able to drive higher containment. Meaning more customers can get what they need without needing to speak to a service representative. Maybe it's two o'clock in the morning and they just have a quick order status question. Could we interact with an AI agent at that point, maybe on a customer portal or on your website and get that answer to them? As we mentioned, right, the the bots or the AI agents that they can interact with now are not just scripted like they used to be in the old days, right? It's really a natural conversational experience whether that's through IVR, so that interactive voice response system through a telephone call or digital channels. And when we think about providing the self-service, it's being able to connect to that trusted knowledge source and have that curated data that you know will answer the questions for them. Now, when we think about this, this is how, you know, we scale service without sacrificing quality and make every interaction more efficient. On the side of how do we elevate team impact, this really comes to how do we give your teams the the fullest view that we can. So they have a context rich ability to see your interaction with a customer, maybe see their sentiment on any given day. What's that real time transcription? Or maybe we're in a multilingual call center where we need to be able to help customers in a variety of fast moving conversations in in complex scenarios, but in their language. So there's a multitude of ways when we think of providing that that single unified desktop that's bringing together the context. It's bringing together, the data that your teams can use to best provide service to the people. Now here's a quick look at, what some of these new AI agents can do in terms of helping us gather more insights from interactions and elevating Copilot agents can help contact centers improve customer experiences, drive efficiency, and reduce costs. Let's see how the CustomerIntent and Customer Knowledge Management agents work in tandem to enable evergreen customer self-service and assisted service. I'm a senior service rep and I've just received an escalation for an issue that wasn't on our radar. As I work, the Customer Intent agent is continuously learning from me. How to identify and resolve this and other complex customer issues as they arise. It discovers new intents from customer conversations across all channels by analyzing case notes, transcripts, and summaries. Mapping issues to corresponding resolutions that the agent maintains in a library. In parallel, the customer knowledge management agent ensures knowledge articles are kept perpetually current, automatically identifying opportunities to update existing articles or draft new ones based on the discovered insights. The agent autonomously drafts and publishes the content. And since I have oversight, all I have to do is approve the update. Now the next time a customer reaches out, our self-service tools like chatbots and IVRs are ready, dynamically armed with the latest intents and knowledge content. No manual updates required, which means fewer escalations for me. And when I need help diagnosing a customer issue, Copilot is here for me too. Proactively surfacing prompts fueled by the customer intent agent and providing me with the latest guidance harnessed by the customer knowledge management agent. Right. So just the last piece around operating smarter. To truly operate smarter, right, we know that's that scalable cloud platform that's secure. It really lays the ground, groundwork and foundation. But also when we think about service, it's having, the right people with the right skills at the right time available while reducing operational overhead. So this comes into play with AI driven workforce management. With built in tools for calendar management, performance tracking, training, as well as things like, advanced forecasting and scheduling capabilities. You really can be there step by step with your team ensuring during peak times or or slow times, you can have the right team available to meet the demand for, coming from your customers. Another kind of big barrier when we think of modernizing service operations is the complexity of legacy telephone systems. We wanted you to know that you certainly can bring your own telephony, but you also have the opportunity where you can use Microsoft Teams. So if you, have phone Teams phone licenses today and you think about streamlining that full service spectrum from the front door all the way through, you can use Dynamics three sixty five contact center with Teams, really eliminating the need to manage a separate phone system. And again, you get that enterprise grade scalability and features that come along with that. And finally, we know that every organization is at a different point in their customer service journey, and that's why flexibility is key. With Dynamics three sixty five contact center, you have three experiences you could choose from. One that's a unified Microsoft solution for contact center as well as customer service case management. Secondly, you could extend if you already have a third party CRM to, embed Dynamics three sixty five contact center directly into your existing system. Or finally, if you want the teams to have a focused streamlined experience, there's the standalone option. It's a full screen workspace that brings together conversations, customer details, and Copilot. So no matter which path you choose or where you're at in your journey, the goal is the same, right? To unify that service experience, reduce friction, and empower your agents to deliver faster and more personalized support. With that, I'll turn it over to Julian to share some of the real outcomes we've seen. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks, Alice, for kinda showcasing the vision. Now to that point, let's kinda talk a little bit about the outcomes companies are seeing by modernizing their contact centers. One of the most common questions executive asks is, you know, what does the transformation really look like in measurable terms? And the good news is is, you know, the results are no longer hypothetical. They're they're here and they're and they're pretty substantial. So by optimizing how contacts are routed and how agents are organized, we're seeing that companies solve first contact resolution go up by as much as twelve to fifteen percent, meaning more issues are getting resolved on the very first interaction. Right? That directly boosts customer satisfaction because, you know, nobody likes having to contact support, you know, multiple times for the for the same problem. Through the better knowledge management, like using AI to keep the knowledge base up to date and accessible and really simplifying case workflows. Organizations are cutting average handle time by, you know, ten percent. Agents, you know, solve issues faster. So customers spend less time waiting and shorter calls or chats are also translate to cost savings for the business as well. We also tackle one of the silent killers of customer experience hold time. So with that unified agent desktop agents, you know, not needing to jump between, you know, five different systems to help customers, you know, one company that we work with reduced hold times by eighteen percent on average, right? So just thinking about what that means, customers spending nearly one fifth less time listening to hold music and more time getting their issue resolved promptly. That unification is a big thing, you know, or excuse me, big theme because, you know, with one of our clients, we we talked about a few different opportunities and and for a few of them, we eliminated six separate systems consolidating the agent experience into Dynamics three sixty five, right? So agents had everything in one place, you know, phone, email, chat, CRM data, knowledge base, integrated, right? This not only improves agent productivity, you know, less alt tabbing, less confusion, but it also reduces IT overhead for maintaining those silo systems. And then lastly, few more clients have seen around two million in annual operational costs were being saved by moving off of patchwork legacy contact center solutions into a modern cloud based platform like Dynamics that comes from a combination of factors, right? Lower maintenance costs, less licensing for multiple tools, efficiency gains, and even energy savings from shutdown of old hardware. It's a strong proof point that these, you know, transformations pay for themselves. Then some, each of these outcomes, you know, was really, you know, achieved with real world projects, really illustrating that, you know, you invest in next gen contact center technology like Dynamics Contact Center with the AI capabilities. You reenter your processes, you get both better customer experience and significant efficiency gains. So, you know, the higher first contact resolution, lower handle times means happier customers, consolidated systems and lower costs mean happier CFOs. Really the overall takeaway is, you know, transforming your contact center isn't just a tech upgrade, it yields measurable business improvements. You know, we're essentially turning those service improvements into financial outcomes, you know, moving the needle on both top line through better CX and loyalty and bottom line excuse me, bottom line through cost optimization. So enabled excuse me, AI enabled modernization doesn't just improve service, it dramatically improves the economics of service. Then next, there's a bit of a continuation on some examples of business impact where one of our clients solved, you know, twenty point NPS increase through migration of the legacy contact center to Dynamics Modern Cloud Platform, which is a huge jump in customer satisfaction and loyalty. For other clients, we've seen, you know, forty percent increase in call deflection due to self-service, twenty five percent to forty percent faster development cycles through customer experience visioning engagements where we essentially mapped out their future state service model and their technology roadmap. And then a few other examples tied to reduction in callbacks and lower cost to serve. You know, we've helped our clients turn their contact centers really into their competitive advantage. So, you know, as you consider the journey from call center to profit center, know that, you know, we've walked this road many times before. We bring not just the technology, but the deep understanding of people and process changes required to differentiate the customer experience, you deliver to the market. So with that, I'll pass it, back over you to you, Alice, to close us out. Wonderful. Thanks, Julian. So we wanted to leave you with a call to action. How can you start to realize the value of modernization and what that might look like in your own organization? So we have kind of just a quick step, right? Book a conversation with us, just thirty minutes, as a discovery call with solution experts like Julian, myself, and and your Microsoft account team members. Why would we wanna do that? Because there's a fantastic forty percent off contact center offer. Many of our customers are also preapproved for workshops, and there's funding available when you think about that curated road map and and the road forward for you. So feel free to reach out to your Microsoft account team or you can scan the q r o QR code and we'll, go ahead and reach out to you to get that next step, in. With that, we want to thank you for joining us today and we look forward to connecting with you to talk more as you, go on your journey from a call center to a profit center. Have a great day. Awesome. Take care.