Dynamics 365 2021 Wave 2 Release Highlights: Customer Engagement

Twice a year, Microsoft announces new features and updates across their Dynamics 365 platform. Here, our team have picked out a few Customer Engagement highlights from the 2021 Wave 2 release.

(Please note: Delivery timelines may change, and Project Operations functionality may not be released.)

Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Teams integration is now allowing customer service agents using Dynamics 365 Customer Service to collaborate with other people across their organisation with ease, including other agents, supervisors, and support teams. By making the most of this integration, agents can resolve customer issues without leaving their existing case or conversation.

Meanwhile, further changes are supporting agent productivity, with the Customer Service workspace and Omnichannel for Customer Service allowing customer service agents to multitask on several customer cases simultaneously, switching between issues seamlessly without losing track of the work in progress.

Microsoft has also introduced rich, knowledge-authoring enhancements, with AI being used to suggest keywords and brief descriptions for knowledge-based article administration.

Dynamics 365 Sales

This year’s Wave 2 release brings the sales accelerator workspace, which offers a guided selling experience that’s powered by AI to enable sellers to close more deals.

An enhanced collaborative sales experience is brought to life with Teams integration, and the engagement platform and productivity intelligence enable seamless partnership between D365 Sales and other communication platforms, making the introduction of digital selling capabilities much easier.

Elsewhere, new relationship intelligence will help sellers use the information in their selling system across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 to identify, build and nurture customer relationships.

Dynamics 365 Marketing

In a bid to help organisations boost their customer loyalty, Microsoft has placed emphasis on taking personalisation to the next level with their latest updates to Dynamics 365 Marketing. Wave 2 2021 introduces the capability to create personalised journey across all touch points, in the moments that matter with AI-based content ideas, enhancing customer experience to not only gain loyalty, but new business as well.

Wave 2 also brings the ability to easily create webinar registration experiences in Teams, then design the participants' journeys in just a few clicks using D365 Marketing. When used in conjunction with Customer Insights, marketers can also orchestrate journeys using their own data lake and information stored in Customer Insights and visualise these journeys on the Customer Insights activity timelines.

Dynamics 365 Field Service

The improved Dynamics 365 Field Service introduces a self-scheduling feature that enables customers to schedule service visits at their convenience, directly from their devices. This will improve their experience by providing them with flexibility, reducing scheduling errors and unwanted rescheduling. Additionally, customers are given the ability to track technicians while they are en route.

This new functionality can reduce back-office costs as it lessens support call volume associated with scheduling, freeing up those resources to focus on other value-driving activities instead.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Joining Dynamics 365 Customer Insights’ existing churn prediction for individual customer records is Wave 2’s account churn predictions, which work in the same way. Meanwhile, data ingestion enhancements in Customer Insights include additional Power Query connectors.

Dynamics 365 Project Operations

New Dynamics 365 Project Operations functionality supports the administration of subcontracting or outsourcing project work to vendors, as well as the management of vendor resource assignments and delivery of work.

With the ability to make subcontractors team members, it’s easy to assign tasks, review and reconcile subcontractor time, and clear vendor invoices for payment, while the subcontractors themselves can swiftly grasp the context of the projects that are assigned to them.