By: Linda Rosencrance
Microsoft has selected CafeX Communications, a provider of WebRTC-based mobile and web engagement solutions, to be its preferred omnichannel customer service solution provider for Microsoft Dynamics 365.
The companies are working together to develop a roadmap as well as a go-to-market collaboration to ensure ongoing and proactive integration of CafeX’s omnichannel capabilities within Dynamics 365.
Hosted in the Azure cloud, the joint solution embeds real-time customer interaction channels within Dynamics 365’s Unified Service Desk and web clients, according to company officials.
CafeX’s Live Assist embeds real-time assistance in websites and mobile apps to help customer service representatives connect with customers live to resolve issues more quickly, without leaving Dynamics 365. The immersive solution extends in-app live assistance to customers, who can interact with service representatives via text chat, co-browsing, click-to-call, and face-to-face video collaboration, officials said.
“We’ve been working with Microsoft for the last eight to nine months,” says CafeX’s chief marketing officer Sajeel Hussain. “Microsoft is a leading CRM player but one of the gaps they had in their portfolio was this rich collaboration capability offered as a part of Dynamics. With this collaboration, the CafeX capabilities are now immersively integrated into the Dynamics solutions set.”
With a joint solution, agents who use Dynamics 365/CRM no longer have to leave their agent consoles to go to chat consoles to chat with customers, he says.
The vision was to offer an immersive experience to agents so that they have all the information at their fingertips, between the omnichannel components coming from CafeX as well as well as from Dynamics.
“This integration is across the CRM stack,” Hussain says. “And going forward, because there is a giant roadmap, then all the functionality that’s going to be introduced and all the enhancements that are going to be coming will be tightly integrated so when customers get new CRM releases these will already have the pre-integrated and pre-tested capabilities from CafeX so they are never mismatched or misaligned.”
Hussain says CafeX’s Live Assist capability is currently offered in a variety of vertical industries, including financial services and any industry where there is a lot of collaboration happening between agents and consumers through digital channels. Mobile or web apps will be best suited for the joint solution, he adds.
Although CafeX has integrated with other CRM products, the joint solution with Microsoft is unique because of the level of pre-integration and the level of immersiveness, Hussain says. He attributes that depth to a massive R&D initiative between Microsoft and CafeX.
“Our customers are going to enjoy that next immersive and seamless level of experience, which is what they are looking for,” he says.
Trials for the unified solution will begin in the third week of November with general availability set for early 2017. The initial offering will feature web chat and co-browsing, with click-to-call and video collaboration to be added in a subsequent release.
“Dynamics CRM customers and partners can come to our website to learn more about what Live Assist can do for Dynamics 365,” Hussain says. “We will have a comprehensive portal where people can sign up for a trial and also purchase the capability. We’ll have FAQs and how-to videos to walk Dynamics customers through how to get up and running. The portal will go live at the same time as the trials begin on November 18.”