In October, Microsoft made the Dynamics 365 2019 release wave 2 generally available, bringing a plethora of updates for various services in its suite of enterprise planning applications. These included Customer Service, Sales, Marketing, Finance and Operations, and more.
Today, a new addition for Dynamics 365 Customer Service has been unveiled. Service teams will now be able to assist their customers through Facebook Messenger, which becomes the latest digital channel to be included with the service.
Microsoft has indicated that the asynchronous nature of conversations in Messenger are a key factor toward its inclusion. In the words of Erin Amstrup, Product Marketing Manager for the service:
"The convenience provided by this asynchronous nature gives customers the flexibility to ask questions on-the-go and respond to answers when their time permits. The difference with live chat is when the window closes, the session ends and the dialog is over. With Facebook Messenger, the customer can initiate a new experience with an agent through the same window at a later date. Plus, if the customer initiates a conversation from your company’s Facebook page on their desktop computer and then later switches to continuing the conversation from the Facebook Messenger app on their phone, the conversation is continued, creating a seamless support experience."
The consistency and familiarity Messenger brings to the digital support service and its further add-ons has been noted as well. Not only will support agents be able to communicate with customers across the same interface, but support center supervisors and managers will also get access to contextually relevant reports that help increase the overall efficiency for the process.
Aside from the aforementioned capabilities being offered, Messenger will also be expanding the set of features on offer through the paid Omnichannel add-on for Customer Service. The configurable, productivity-centric interface already provides users with a variety of components that help make communication between service teams and customers a smooth process.
You can learn more about the new messaging capability here. It is planned to be made fully available by next month. Interestingly, in related news, reports from yesterday indicate that the United States Federal Trade Commission may block Facebook"s plans to unify its messaging infrastructure across Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.