Microsoft has released a preview of their new Customer Service capability called Swarms. The goal is to bring together the right talent to effectively resolve complex cases. Agents and subject matter experts can swarm cases in the applications they're accustomed to using, including Customer Service workspace and Microsoft Teams. This will transform an entire organisation into unified customer service and bring faster resolution to customers. With Swarming, the system automatically invites individuals with the required expertise to join a swarm Teams chat to help solve a customer problem.
It's important to note this feature is in preview and not ready for production use, however you can look at the user interface and configuration setup to get to grips with the options available to you, we would recommend doing this in a sandbox environment to prevent any unforeseen errors.
Before you can see the Swarm in your Unified Interface on Customer Service app, you need to enable it in the settings, as well as have the Teams integration enabled.
By creating conditional rules you can automatically have the system add required skills to a swarm request. For example, if an issue is related to a bill you might want to get someone added to the swarm from the accounts department. These rules are not a requirement for the swarming capability to work, but will make it easier as they will automatically suggest skills when a new swarming request is created.
Create your first Swarm
If you have finished setting up your configuration for Swarms, you can setup your first case to utilise this feature. You can create a new case, or open an existing case in Dynamics 365. Once you open the case record, you’ll notice the ‘Create Swarm’ button on the command bar. This will open the swarming form, and you’ll notice the case form with details on the left side of the screen. You can enter a short description in the swarm request field, and the steps that were tried, or other details. If you created swarm rules, you should see some skills already populate below the ‘What skills do you need’ section on the form. You can add additional skills/characteristics if needed.
Once you click the ‘Save and send invitation’ button a Microsoft Teams chat will be created, related to this swarm. Dynamics will query for users with relevant skills and send them an invitation to a Teams Chat. Now, users can collaborate on the issue and keep each other updated until the issue has been resolved. At any time the swarm can be closed and details on how the problem was resolved can be entered and captured in the system. Currently, Swarms only work with 'cases' but could be expanded by Microsoft at a later stage. We will update this article when we have further updates or understand when this will be released for general availability and production environments.
We think this is a very productive feature that will add value by delivering better customer services and more positive experiences when users engage with your organisation by saving time and producing more accurate results.
