Thoughts & musings from a Microsoft Business Applications Ninja!
Talking to Eswar about his dual love of AI & music (some interesting correlations!), & covering what could happen with specific commands being used on a NON-Microsoft system…
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Talking to the community legend that’s Damien about his vegetable garden, how he got into gardening in the first place, and a sudden medical condition coming out of nowhere that has an impact on life moving forward
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Chatting to the AMAZING rockstar that is Ken around our common love of BBQ – find out if he’s a low/slow or high/fast kind of guy. Also touching on a motorbike incident some years back that shaped his approach to life moving forward – some VERY powerful lessons to hear & learn from!
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Talking to the AMAZING Hardit about his love of sports, finding out just WHO his ultimate sports hero is, & discovering a life-changing event that happened as a child, with how it changed his life since…
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Finding out from Kristine about her love of chocolate & drumming (not sure which one is more important to her?), some challenges when she was growing up, and how her career has evolved over time!
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People sometimes wonder about what is the best way to interact with Microsoft. In fact, this post isn’t strictly aimed at interacting with Microsoft, but can also be taken as a general guide to interacting with any organisation. The reason for deciding to write about this comes from a conversation that I had last week with a good friend, who was having issues in finding a resolution to an issue.
Let’s start at the beginning. We, or our customers, have relationships with suppliers such as Microsoft. We’ll order software (licenses), need to have them supplied to us (show up in our account), and sometimes there may be issues that we need to help/support with. There are obviously general support channels available that support tickets can be raised through, but there are also other avenues to consider as well.
Apart from the ‘professional’ relationship/s that may be in place, we may also have ‘personal’ relationships with members of different teams. These can happen in various different ways, such as speaking together at events, organising communities, etc. They are very valuable to have in place, & many people that I know, as well as myself, strive to improve & increase the network & connections that we have with Microsoft & other organisations.
However, there’s something very important to keep in mind. Just as we are doing our day job (what we’re paid to do), they are as well. At the end of the day, they (as with ourselves) need to ensure that the job gets done.
So if we reach out to ask something from them, we’re essentially asking for a favour, usually without anything recriprocal being able to be offered. A really good analogy for this, shared previously with me by Mark Smith & Chris Huntingford, is the ‘Sweet Jar Concept’.
Here’s how it goes. Imagine that the person has a jar with 100 sweets in. There are a limited number (the number itself isn’t important though) available, and the person has to choose who to give the sweets to. If we ask for a favour without knowing them, it’s highly unlikely to be granted. Even if we do know them somewhat, it may still be unlikely – they’re not going to be getting any return on the sweet that they’re giving out. Potentially if we know them well, and have proven in the past that we’re of value to them, we’ll get a sweet.
But even if we do know them well, if we keep asking for sweets (aka favours), the likelihood of them being granted will diminish (rapidly). Again – there’s a limited supply of them, and we’re not going to be looked on favourably if we keep coming back & asking for more, whilst not giving anything in return.
So HOW could we go about this, to set ourselves up for success (ie getting the outcome that we’re desiring). Well, this is actually quite simple – we need to identify who will be gaining something by helping us. Let’s explain this in more detail.
Within Microsoft (& any organisation really), people have metrics that they need to meet for their role. These are usually referred to as KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators), and are used for things like salary & role progression. What we should be doing is finding the right person (or team) that has (one or more) KPI’s aligned to what we’re trying to accomplish.
Let’s use the example here of the situation with my friend last week. He had a client who had ordered licenses from Microsoft that were needed for a project to start, but hadn’t appeared in the customer account yet. If the licenses weren’t there on-time, the project would need to be delayed, which would be expensive (& very annoying) for the customer.
On hearing the situation, I suggested to him to find the person (or people) within Microsoft who’d be aligned towards ensuring the situation was remedied ASAP. Examples of these people could be:
Now the above list isn’t exhaustive, and is also applicable to the specific scenario above. Additionally, the people mentioned might not be able to actually deal with the situation themselves, but if they’re not, are more than likely to know the right person/team who can deal with it.
With this approach, we’d be lined up for success in three ways:
So in a nutshell – when we look to try to get something dealt with/resolved, we should ask ourselves who’s best aligned professionally to help us, with it being in line with their professional goals. This way we can drive value, as well as giving goodwill all round.
Have you ever been in a situation where this may have helped? How did you handle it? I’d love to hear – please drop a comment below!
Talking to the wonderful Liz around her love of cooking (in specific circumstances), her rock climbing hobby, and some very important lessons learned from a specific rock climbing incident!
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Talking to Hillel about his love of drones – how he got into it to start off with, the joys of it, and why he thinks that they’re so amazing! Also talking about entrepreneurs, launching new products/services, and the KEY things to be aware of when bringing something new to the market!
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Talking to Dani about how he recently started getting into karate, what happens when a project discovery goes wrong, & how to engage & set up for success overall!
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I know it’s taken me a week (or two) to get round to this, but I’ve had other things on the go (such as starting my new job, for instance). However it wouldn’t be this time of year without doing a summary of new features for the Wave 2 2022 release.
As with previous posts in this area, I’ll be focusing on the Customer Service side of things, and also more precisely with a focus on the Omnichannel capabilities. However, whilst previously I’ve tended to focus just on the Omnichannel items, Customer Service is now being much more tied together with the Omnichannel offering, so it makes sense to broaden things out a bit.
So let’s start taking a look at the wonders that will (hopefully!) be in store for us within a few months:
Customer Service Workspace – enhanced layout
Public Preview – August 2022. GA – October 2022
I’ve previously taken a look at some of the capabilities of the Customer Service Workspace (see Omnichannel vs Customer Service Workspace), and how they compare to Omnichannel. With Microsoft now rollowing out the ability to have multi-session capabilities within it, it’s sometimes a hard decision for organisations to decide which one to use (there are some key differences though).
With the upcoming release, there are going to be new layouts for the site map (navigation menu), sessions & tabs. Some of the key changes coming are:
These look to be quite good (I definitely wouldn’t have thought of all of them!), and I can’t wait to try them out for myself.
Single sign-on capabilities
GA – October 2022
One of the things that can be quite frustrating for customers is that if they’re interacting through live chat capabilities, and then switch over to a Power Virtual Agent, they need to re-authenticate. This is of course not quite optimal for a seamless customer experience.
Microsoft are therefore enabling single sign-on capabilities. What this means in practise is the following:
Voice channel – expansion of availability
GA – October 2022
The voice channel (which I still need to do a write up on!) is really amazing, allowing customers to call in directly via phone etc. It’s been rolled out already to several regions, but customers in other regions have been asking for it.
Microsoft has now confirmed that the voice channel will now be available in the following countries:
This is a great move – it still doesn’t mean that every country has the voice channel available, so I expect that Microsoft will keep on adding more countries for the availability of this (I know that there’s a decent amount of back-end systems that are needed, which is why it’s taking this long to get in place).
Voicemails
GA – January 2023
This one is getting me really excited. Obviously, being able to connect to a customer service agent is important. But what if the agent isn’t around? We could of course send an email, but if we’re already connected through a specific method of contact, ideally we’d like to continue with that method.
Especially when it comes to actually calling into an organisation, it can be quite frustrating to not reach the person we’re trying to get hold of, and then need to send an email.
Voicemail capabilities, coming in early 2023, will mean that customers will be able to leave voicemails for customer service agents to pick up. The agents will be able to set up welcome messages, as well as manage & playback voicemails that have been left.
This is really cool – I’m wondering if there are going to be AI capabilities included in this in the future, so as to automatically transcibe voicemails for the agents, for instance. I don’t think that it would take a LOT more technical capabilities – we already have Azure Cognitive Services that audio can be fed through to for a written transcription to be produced.
Customer Callbacks
GA – January 2023
One of the frustrations that I think is shared universally is when contacting an organisation, and being told that you’re in a queue. Not only are you in a queue, but there may be dozens/hundreds/thousands of people ahead of you…and the number doesn’t seem to be decreasing at a rapid rate.
Some organisations offer the ability to ‘reserve’ your spot in the queue, and will call you back when you’re next. To date, this hasn’t been a feature of Omnichannel.
However, coming in early 2023, this feature will be rolling out!. It will give customers the ability to keep their queue position, and to choose if they’d like a callback to happen when they’re at the front of the queue. Note that this would require a phone number to be provided, for the customer service agent to use to contact the customer.
I think that this is a nice feature, but will be curious to see how it plays out ‘in the real world’. I know that when my local doctor surgery implemented this, it was supposed to be great, but in practise actually didn’t work well.
I’ll be looking deeper into the different functionalities when they land, and will share them here. If there’s anything you think would be helpful to focus on, drop a comment & let me know!