Earlier this week I started to share information around the Productivity Tools that Microsoft provides (as a separate solution, admittedly) for Omnichannel – https://thecrm.ninja/omnichannel-productivity-tools/. With it, I also covered Macros, and some of the benefits that using macros can bring to a company

Now, we all know that the absolute key point in ensuring a consistent & holistic approach is to have a method for getting something done. A ‘script’, in other words. With this, we can set out the steps that we want to be carried out, in the order that they should be performed, with appropriate information against each item. This results in agents (hopefully!) following this, giving the customer the same (and great) experience each and every time they need to interact.

Scripts isn’t just about instructions to be carried out though. It also allows macros to be included, that agents can run as they go through the script.

Here’s an example of something that I’ve been playing around with in my test environments (ninja’s are just SO cool, that I’ve had to rein in my imagination!):

So that’s an example of what you can do. Let’s now see how we set these up. There are several steps to it

In the Omnichannel Administration Hub, you should see the Scripts entry in the left hand bar:

Open it, and click on ‘New’ in the main menu bar. You’ll get the following form appearing:

Type in a name for the script, and a description (personally I find it annoying that I can’t see all of the text in the Description field – perhaps Microsoft may change this at some point). Save the form, and the grid to the right becomes active!

Clicking the ellipse (3 dots) in the Agent Script Steps grid gives several options:

One of the very helpful options here is to add an existing script step. What’s a script step, I hear you ask. Well, each specific item in a script is referred to as a ‘script step’. You set these up as you go through your scrip, as shown below. You don’t need to create a new script step for each script if they’re the same thing – you can just create one, & add it as needed to multiple scripts (just be careful, because if you need to change it at some point, the changed/updated version will display in all scripts that it’s associated with!.

As with any record, you’ll put in a name, and a description. What you’ll also do is give it an order number (this is manual, not auto-generated). The order number is how the system orders the different steps. There’s also the option (which is a required selection) as to whether this is text, macro, or a script:

• Text. This will be free text that you enter into the script step, which will then be displayed on the screen for the omnichannel agent to see
• Macro. This will give you the option to point to a macro that you’ve already set up. When the agent will click on it during the session, the macro will run
• Script. This allows you to reference existing scripts – you can have smaller scripts that you can then use as ‘building blocks’ to create more complex scripts

Once you’ve gotten the script set up, we then need to configure the chat sessions to actually use it. This allows us to set up multiple scripts in our system, and use them as appropriate (eg by using pre-survey questions, it’s possible to direct a customer to a specific queue, and then have the agents use a specific script for this).

To do this, we go to Sessions, and open the session entry that we’re wanting to set the script up for:

Once it’s open, switch to the Agent Script tab. This has a grid that shows all of the script/s that are set up for it. To add script/s, use the drop-down menu on the top of the grid:

The last thing that needs to be done is to enable the Productivity Pane, as otherwise agents won’t be able to see all of this in the first place! Thankfully this is a single setting, and is done as follows:

• Go to the Productivity Pane option in the left-hand menu. Click on it
• Set the Productivity pane option to ‘Enabled’
• Set the Mode option based on your requirements (this is how it appears in the agent interface). By default it’s set to ‘Collapsed’

And VOILA! It’s now all set up and ready to go: