Microsoft has recently published the Dynamics 365 Sales (D365) Wave 2 updates and plans for the future. This comprises of many separate upgrades and modifications. We’ve chosen our top features that we believe most organisations and sales teams will enjoy utilising.
- Case Swarm (mix of streams and D365)
- Dynamics Marketing (Multi-Brand)
- Dynamics Marketing (Improved Lead Capture)
- Dynamics Marketing (Journeys now include phones, tasks and sequences)
- Deal Room Teams dashboard
- Enriched Teams Features (embed in timeline)
- Viva Sales
- Sales Sequences
1. Case Swarm
This feature makes it easier for customer service agents to discover the relevant subject matter experts to swiftly resolve complex issues.
Even with access to knowledge base articles, agents aren’t always well-equipped to handle every consumer issue on their own. Their work is frequently disrupted when they try to find the correct person to contact inside the organisation, leaving customers waiting for a solution.
That’s where the new swarming customer support function comes in. Dynamics 365 recognises prospective specialists and generates a Teams chat room to bring them together to assist agents in resolving the issue.
For example, suppose a customer contacts an agent about a contract billing issue. The agent recognises that technical expertise from billing experts, finance managers, and their account manager is required.
With customer support swarming, the agent may generate a swarm request in Dynamics 365 Customer Service with a single click, outlining the abilities required to address the problem. The system will attempt to discover resources with the necessary skill sets and invite them to a swarm chat in Microsoft Teams.
When they accept the invitation, everyone in the Team can work together to share ideas and insights to help address the issue. Because of the incorporated Teams chat features, the agent can stay in the Dynamics 365 interface during this process, since the conversation appears alongside their case record.
- Dynamics Marketing (Multi-Brand)
Dynamics 365 real-time marketing will organise emails, forms, and other digital assets to represent these structures for organisations with many brands. According to Microsoft, this new feature will be built on modernised business divisions in order to segregate data across these borders and deliver insights into specific brand performance. (Public Preview from October 2022)
- Dynamics Marketing (Improved Lead Capture forms)
Real-time marketing will include a new easy form editor with extra templates, intelligent forms with the ability to show/hide fields depending on prior interactions, and advanced form validation. (General Availability from February 2023)
- Dynamics Marketing (Journeys now include phones, tasks and sequences)
Prospect interactions may indicate a need for sales to follow up as they progress through automation journeys. Real-time marketing journeys will now feature options to create sales activities, initiate sales sequences in D365 Sales, or route leads to sales specialists for immediate attention. (General Availability from October 2022)
In addition to inbuilt real-time marketing channels such as email and SMS, this will enable content to be delivered through custom channels, such as WhatsApp, within the context of customer journeys. (Public preview from October. General Availability from December 2022)
- Deal Room Teams dashboard
A new deal room dashboard in Microsoft Teams delivers a single pane of customer information, activity coordination, and activity recommendations for specific deals.
Everyone working on a deal can check the activity, which includes the most recent account and opportunity information, access connected papers, get intelligent insights about the relationship’s health, and identify the next best steps using this collaborative spaces dashboard. (General Availability from March 2023)
- Enriched Teams Features (embed in timeline)
Chats can be tracked on the associated record timeline, as shown in the D365 Sales section. Users can view recent chat-related events in the timeline, such as document sharing.
Conversation auto-summarising will be generally available in this Wave Release, including shareable conversation summaries that are formatted to highlight the issue and proposed solutions. (Early access since August 2022)
- Viva Sales
Microsoft Viva Sales is intended to assist sellers in working in the manner in which they want, without the need for unnecessary context switching or manual data entering. It combines the platforms you use on a daily basis—your CRM, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Teams—to create a more simplified and AI-powered selling experience.
Viva Sales is a modern and innovative approach to selling. Viva Sales, as a smart CRM companion, makes a seller’s life simpler while enriching their CRM. Assume you have all of your customer and deal information in Outlook and Teams conversations. You must manually enter everything into your CRM system, which is a laborious effort. Previously, you had to rely on your recollection, email history, and CRM to acquire context and keep transactions going.
With Viva Sales, you can effortlessly mark contacts as customers in Outlook with a single click. Data from your CRM populates Viva Sales, giving you instant access to customer information. (General Availability from October 2022)
- Sales Sequences
Sequences aid in the spread of and success of selling methods. While configuring sequences, sales engagement managers will benefit from the enhanced user experience and functionality of the sequence designer.
With this Wave Release, you will now have a consistent automation experience across Dynamics 365 Marketing customer journey orchestration and Dynamics 365 Sales sequences, making it easier for you to use both platforms.
Using the new sequence designer, the sales manager and operations team can:
- Edit a sequence step using a side panel that provides more space with an improved experience.
- Discover and provide an exit criterion for a sequence.
- Understand the end of any sequence branch with an exit icon.
- Save all the changes of sequence steps with a single click.
If you have any questions about this Wave Release or would like to learn more about Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform, simply Contact us or your m-hance Account Manager.