Describe the options for tailoring customer engagement apps to meet business needs

Features such as the Lead Qualification Agent automatically work leads and hand them off to a live salesperson when they're ready. Dynamics 365 Contact Center is built to help provide help and support customers across all the different channels that an organization supports. Features such as the Case Management Agent can evaluate data from items such as incoming chats and use that information to automatically create case records.

Prebuilt capabilities help you get started quickly. However, you may need to enhance them for specific needs. For example, your organization might support industries that aren't covered out of the box. You can add or modify columns to address these requirements.

Organizations customize Dynamics 365 customer engagement applications in many ways. Customization can range from simple configurations to advanced development. Each approach depends on business needs, complexity, and available resources. Since customization can come from multiple levels, Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides several options to tailor the experience.

Here are some of the most common ways:

Out-of-the-box configuration

Out-of-the-box configuration tools offer an easy way to tailor applications. They enable quick modifications and custom solutions. For example, you can add a column to your Dataverse database to store product documents or firmware information, making it accessible to representatives working on cases.

Dynamics 365 customer engagement applications include several out of the box configurations that can be used to tailor the application experience.

• Data Model: A data model represents real-world data that your organization is working with. For example, a service organization might have a data model that includes the customers they service, cases, IoT data and more.

• Forms and Views: Forms can be customized to show or hide fields, add sections, and rearrange tabs. Views can be modified to display relevant columns and filters for different roles. For example, a sales team might need a view that shows only active opportunities sorted by estimated revenue.

• Business Rules: Business rules allow you to apply logic without code. For example, you can automatically set a field value based on another field or make a field required when certain conditions are met.

• Dashboards and Charts: Dashboards provide role-based insights by combining charts, lists, and key performance indicators (KPIs). Charts can be configured to visualize trends, such as sales by region or case resolution times.

Let’s explore a scenario where an organization might tailor Dynamics 365 to meet their needs.

Contoso Coffee, a global coffee manufacturer, prides itself on delivering great customer experience. They recently launched a new subscription service for premium coffee blends, which led to a surge in customer inquiries about delivery schedules, payment options, and product recommendations. Customers often ask about subscription status, delivery tracking, and a blend of recommendations. Contoso wants to ensure agents have quick access to relevant information and customers can self-serve common questions.

Contoso is using Dynamics 365 Customer Service. They want to use its out-of-the-box configuration tools to tailor the application to meet their needs without heavy custom coding.

How they use out-of-the-box tools

• Customizing case forms

  • Using the Power Apps form editor, Contoso adds new fields like:
    • Subscription ID
    • Preferred Coffee Blend
    • Delivery Frequency
  • They can rearrange the layout, so these fields appear prominently for their representatives that are handling subscription-related cases.

• Creating custom queues

  • To simplify case distribution and routing, they created a dedicated “Subscription Support” queue.
  • Routing rules are configured so any case mentioning “subscription” or “delivery” automatically routes to this queue.

• Configuring knowledge articles

  • Using the Knowledge Management feature, Contoso publishes articles like:
    • “How to Change Your Delivery Date”
    • “Top 5 Coffee Blends for Your Taste Profile”
  • These articles are linked to cases and surfaced in the Customer Service Workspace, enabling agents to resolve issues faster.

• Setting up SLA policies

  • Through Service Level Agreements (SLAs), Contoso defines:
    • High Priority: Delivery issues must be resolved within 4 hours.
    • Normal Priority: Blend recommendations within 24 hours.
  • SLAs are applied automatically based on case type.

Let's take a look at a video that demonstrates how a user can tailor Dynamics 365 to meet their needs.