Omnichannel digital messaging with Dynamics 365 Customer Service and third-party PSTN

  • Article

This architecture supports the broadest possible contact center scenarios. Using this approach, Microsoft products are used for all omnichannel customer engagements. The PSTN services for voice and/or SMS are supplied by a third-party carrier/operator. Self-service activities are enabled by Microsoft Copilot Studio. There is a complete end-to-end experience for agents and supervisors in Dynamics 365 Customer Service and the ability to engage other employees using Microsoft Teams. Potential use cases include the following examples:

  • Retailers providing online sales and support

  • Healthcare providers offering support for patient questions

  • Financial Services companies providing help and advice for banking, investments, mortgages, and so on

  • Internally facing help desks for employees

Architecture

The following diagram illustrates the architecture. Choose the magnifier icon for a more detailed view.

Architecture with Microsoft for all support channels but a third party for phone calls.

Dataflow

  1. Customers engage via the channel of their choice, including potentially using Microsoft Teams as a channel for internally facing contact centers (such as employee help desks).

  2. Azure Communications Services (ACS) provides communication connectivity, but actual PSTN services are provided via a third-party carrier/operator and connected via ACS Direct Routing.

  3. Copilot Studio provides self-service automation in the form of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and/or messaging chat bots.

  4. Work is routed to agents, who use the customer service workspace within Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

  5. Both the agent experience and the supervisor experience are built upon and integrated with the Power Platform. Dataverse stores all core data and events to for the customer data platform.

  6. Supervisors interact with the built-in capabilities of Dynamics 365 Customer Service, including insights, forecasting, and scheduling.

  7. Using Context IQ, Teams collaboration is enabled between Dynamics users and Teams users, including the ability to collaborate one-on-one or through swarms. Users can also consult or transfer calls to Teams users.

Components

Assumptions

In all Digital Contact Center Platform architectures, wherever possible, we assume that all or most solution components use the core capabilities of Microsoft Azure, including, but not limited to, compute, storage, identity, security, management, and compliance.