Microsoft launches new Digital Contact Centre platform

The contact centres are equipped with digital tools to engage customers across voice, video, and other digital engagement channels

Microsoft is taking a big step into the CRM market as it launched its new Digital Contact Centre Platform during its Inspire Partner event.

The contact centres are equipped with digital tools to engage customers across voice, video, and other digital engagement channels.

These are powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365, Teams, Microsoft Power Platform and Nuance, which was acquired by the tech giant for $19bn in March.

This will bring in artificial intelligence (AI) to power self-service and live customer engagements, collaborative experiences with live and virtual agents, business process automation, fraud prevention and advanced telephony.

"The addition of Nuance brings a new level of conversational AI, security, and automation to the contact centre," Charles Lamanna, corporate vice president of business applications and platform at Microsoft, said.

"This gives both customers and agents tools to resolve issues faster and with more personalised service, thus reducing resolution times while improving customer satisfaction.

"It also enables contact centres to offer targeted incentives to build brand loyalty and upsell opportunities to boost revenue. "

The Microsoft Digital Contact Centre Platform uses AI and deep analytics to anticipate customer requests, predict intent and provide resolution.

Customer experiences are protected with integrated biometric identification, authentication, and fraud prevention to build and maintain brand trust.

Lamanna said: "The open nature of our platform enables companies to build on what they already have and easily add any combination of capabilities they need to take their contact centre to the next level. It integrates with a variety of contact centre infrastructures and customer relationship management (CRM) systems."

Microsoft says the platform is also cloud-scale and elastic to "accommodate seasonal or surging demand".

Accenture-Avanade, a customer experience (CX) transformation partner, will deliver its customer engagement solutions starting with the Microsoft Digital Contact Centre.

Additional launch partners include systems integrators EY, HCL, Hitachi, KPMG, PwC, TCS, and TTEC, and ISVs such as Avaya, Genesys, and NICE.

"With this robust set of launch partners, customers around the globe will be positioned to create new and sophisticated solutions to address specific contact centre challenges," Lamanna said.