In previous series of posts, we have seen how we can use Omnichannel to configure the transfer to live agent. In case the bot is an enterprise wise bot and is used by only internal employees, employees are already used to Teams and Live agents are also available on Teams, we can even escalate the conversation directly to Teams channel instead of implementing Omnichannel integration.
Here we can configure Live agent escalation from PVA with two options as mentioned below
- Implement Omnichannel integration with PVA for live agent escalation – which we have seen in my earlier series of posts (Integrating PVA with Omnichannel Live Agent: Part-1 )
- Use Power automate flows and initiate the chat with live agent within the Teams channel itself
Feature comparison between Power Automate vs Omnichannel integration approach is as mentioned below
| Seq # | Area | Parameters | Omnichannel Integration | Power Automate integration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | User experience | Facility to talk to live agent in Teams | This is possible in Omnichannel by implementing Teams channel and workstream. User can escalate from Teams to live agent and live agents would get alert in the customer service workspace | New chat session can be created in Teams and user can chat with the live agent. User has to switch from bot conversation session to new chat session |
| 2 | User experience | Passing the conversation context to agent | Available out of box | A context variable can be passed through Power automate |
| 3 | Agent Assignment | Skilled based routing | Available out of box | Can be implemented by configuring different power automates per skills and adding agents based on skills to the chat session |
| 4 | Optimized operations | Adding requests to Queues | Available out of box | Not available, all the agents would be added to the chat session and agent has to proactively start conversation in the session with the user |
| 5 | Optimized operations | Analytics and reporting | Available out of box | Not available. There is no way to identify Agent’s usage, call drops, |
| 6 | Optimized operations | Adherence to defined process to connect with live agents | User can not directly chat with live agents as they have to go through bot first. This is available out of box. | Once user is added to the new chat session with live agents, he or she can directly pick any of the agents and directly ping them bypassing the bot conversation. We have no control over this process |
| 7 | Costing | Licenses | Dynamics CRM customer service and Omnichannel licenses are required | Power automate licenses come for free with PVA enterprise licenses |
User Experience with Power Automate Approach
Chatbot is available for users in Teams and user chats with the bot.
Bot introduces itself and user can start the conversation
When user wants to chat to agent instead of bot, they mentions the same in the conversation
Based on this request, a new conversation gets automatically started and the user and live agents are added to the conversation. This chat session is popped up for all participants in their Team.
All agents from that team are added along with the user in the session
Session is available for all agents
Any agent who is available, starts the conversation with the user and responds to his/her questions
This conversation is stored in Teams conversations as per organization level Teams policies.
Pros:
- Cost saving – Microsoft Dynamics customer service + Omnichannel and Digital messaging Add in licenses are not required
Cons :
- This entire conversation is out of Power virtual agent and not tracked anywhere.
- User can anytime restart the conversation in this session as session and participants are still available for chat
- User can even initiate separate conversation with the any agent as their IDs are available in this chat session instead of going through chatbot
- We can not track the response time, agent utilization etc as this is manual activity
- For any process improvements, no analytics is available and developing any reports seems tedious
User Experience with Omnichannel Approach
With Omnichannel for customer service, entire process seems to be smoother and for user it would be single window experience
Chatbot is available for the user in the Teams
User starts conversation with the chatbot
When user wants to chat with agent, user mentions that and the chat is escalated to the agent
Based on the skills and availability , the agent is assigned to the user and agent gets a notification that user wants to chat with him. Agents use Customer Service Workspace
Agent accepts the request and starts chatting with the user from the Omnichannel chat window
Here onwards the conversation between the live agent and user would continue. User would get the response in same Teams chat session
Cons
- License costs Microsoft Dynamics customer service + Omnichannel and Digital messaging Add in licenses are required
Pros
- This entire conversation is tracked .
- We can track the response time, agent utilization etc as this is OOB functionality
- OOB analytics is available in terms if omnichannel dashboards
In this post we have seen the comparison between two options of the live agent escalation from PVA from the usability and features perspective.
Omnichannel integration is already discussed in earlier posts, now let us see how to escalate to MS Teams using Power automate from the technical perspective.
Till then happy enhancing the customer experience 😊!!
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