Set up customer support swarming for complex cases
Customer support swarming is a collaborative approach to solving customer issues. It allows you to bring together experts across your entire business to help agents solve issues. For example, while working on an ongoing Internet of Things (IoT) related issue, an agent might require assistance from an IoT engineer who has knowledge of the device and how it integrates with a specific piece of routing equipment. The agent might also require assistance from an engineer who's familiar with the routing equipment. Additionally, they need to engage with someone in operations to solve a logistical issue with the device.
As an administrator, you can create a more unified customer service team by setting up your applications so that agents and subject matter experts can swarm together when resolving complex cases.
Key benefits of customer support swarming include:
Improved first contact resolution
Reduced average time to resolution
Accelerated on-the-job training for agents
Availability and licensing for customer support swarming
Swarming features are available in Dynamics 365 Customer Service workspace, Customer Service Hub, and custom apps. To use customer support swarming, you'll need to have a Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise license.
The Customer support swarming page is where you can set up the different elements that will be applied as part of case swarming. You can access the Customer support swarming page from the Customer Service admin center. Under Agent experience, select Collaboration and then select Customer Support Swarming.
The preceding image shows the various components of the Customer support swarming page (corresponding with the following numbered list):
Swarming toggle - Turns on the swarming feature.
Agent swarm guide - Administrator-provided guidance to help agents know what content to include to begin a swarm or manage the swarm process.
Case details - Add out-of-the-box case fields. Administrators can set up which case fields will show on the form.
Skills - Add relevant skills to help match experts for swarming. Add coworkers who are outside of your team as experts (through mapping or bulk-importing) so that they can be recommended for swarms.
Rules for skills - Conditions that define which skills to attach to swarms. The attached skills will be used to find and invite experts to swarms.
Participants automatically added to swarms - Team contacts are automatically added to swarms because of their relationship to the customer or the agent who's assigned to the issue.
Swarm expert notification - The Power Automate flow that turns on and manages swarm invitations that are sent to experts.
To set up customer support swarming, you'll need to have administrator privileges and then complete the following prerequisite steps:
Edit the swarm guide
The swarm guide is the direction that you provide as the administrator. The guide will appear in the swarm form when the agent opens it. The swarm guide helps ensure that your agent enters the appropriate questions. It provides helpful context to effectively match skills and experts. For example, an agent might enter a phrase such as, "Coffee machine not working." Additionally, you can provide other details, such as what you've tried to get to this point. Then, this information will be passed on to any subject matter experts who are created when a swarm request is initiated. The swarm guide will provide guidance to the agents regarding what should be entered into any swarm request that they submit. To edit the swarm guide, select Edit on the Agent swarm guide card.
Important factors to consider when creating the swarm guide:
You can edit the guide content, and the guide that you create will apply to all different swarm types. It can't be further customized.
The guide template is rich text enabled.
The guide template has a 500 character limit.
The following image shows a set of instructions that will be presented to the agent when they initiate a swarm request.
Edit case details
When creating a swarm, you'll need to provide as much information as possible. The goal is to provide thoroughly detailed context for the swarm participants who join the conversation. The Case form for swarming includes several fields that you can use to capture and provide information. Out-of-the-box, fields from the related case and the account that's associated with the case are included.
Out-of-the-box account fields include customer name, email, and phone number.
The following out-of-the-box case fields are included:
Case title
Case number
Subject
Customer priority
Status
Product
Case description
You can set up which case fields to include as part of the swarm form. Any case table column can be added to the form as needed. On the Customer support swarming page, select Edit case details, which will open the swarming form, and then edit the details in Power Apps. After you've made the necessary changes, select Publish in the upper-right side of the page.
Add and assign new skills
When a swarm is created, the system will use information on the case to help identify experts who can assist. For example, if a case is related to a specific product, the system can look for subject matter experts who have expertise with that product. This concept is similar to what's used to match and identify technicians in Dynamics 365 Field Service or to identify which agent to route a conversation to if your organization is applying skills-based routing. If your organization is already using skills, you can reuse them to define swarm rules.
You can define skills from the Customer support swarming page, but you'll need to select Go to skill in the skill section. When defining a skill/characteristic, you'll specify the following details:
Name - Defines the name of the skill or certification as it will be presented in the application.
Description - A short description that will provide more details about the skill.
Characteristic type - Specifies whether this item should be classified as a skill or a certification.
Attach the new skill to an expert
A bookable resource refers to a person, organization, facility, or piece of equipment that can be assigned to an item. It's different from a user record. Typically, a user who is acting as an agent will have a user record and a bookable resource record. The bookable resource record is where you can assign items, such as skills/characteristics, to them to help with activities such as routing and scheduling. In customer support swarming, the bookable resource is where you can assign skills to your experts who will be assisting agents. For more information, see Create resources.
A key advantage of bookable resources is that you can create and associate them with account or contact records. Essentially, the expert doesn't need to be a Dynamics 365 user. This factor helps provide flexibility. Open the skill/characteristic that you want to assign to your resource. On the characteristic, select the Related tab and then select Bookable Resource Characteristics.
Select New Bookable Resource Characteristic and then select the User (Agent) whom you want to associate the skill with. You can also specify a rating value to represent the agent's proficiency in that skill.
If the skills that you want to use to match experts to swarms are stored in another system outside of Microsoft Dataverse, you can import them by using Microsoft Excel. For more information, see Bulk import skills.
Define experts
As mentioned previously, swarming uses bookable resource records to identify experts who will be able to assist with the item. If your organization is already using bookable resources in resource scheduling or with Omnichannel for Customer Service, you can reuse the resources to define your swarm rules. If you haven't already set up experts, you can do so in the Customer Service admin center. Under the Operations group, select Service scheduling and then select Manage next to Resources.
If the experts that you want to use are stored in another system outside of Dataverse, you can import them by using Excel and then upload the experts who can be used as matches in swarms. For more information, see Import resources.
Define swarm rules
You can use swarm rules to identify which skills should be suggested when an agent makes a swarm request that matches specific conditions in a rule. Expert suggestions are defined with the goal of finding the minimum set of experts in your organization who match the maximum number of skills that are suggested for a swarm. For example, consider a scenario where an agent initiates a swarm request where they mention that a coffee machine is malfunctioning. A swarm rule could look at the request, and because it contains the words coffee and malfunction, it will attach a skill to the swarm request called coffee machine hardware. Any experts who have that skill will be added to the swarm.
Because you might want to assign multiple skills to a swarm request, it isn't uncommon to create several rules to handle many different types of requests. While you can add up to 100 rules, only the top four rules are shown on the main swarm page. To view more rules, select See more. You can define rules based on the related case and account attributes. By default, the swarm request or the question that the agent needs help with is automatically suggested as one of the conditions. Depending on the rules that you define, you can add one or more specific unique skills. When skills are being matched, the system runs through all possible rules, up to 100 of them. Rules are run in the order in which they're listed. You can reorder, edit, delete, or copy rules as needed.
Set up contacts to automatically add to swarms
In addition to matching skills to find experts, by default, the system adds out-of-the-box contacts to the swarm. These participants are added to the swarm automatically without a swarm invitation. Typically, their role is to observe the swarm process and provide customer information, if needed, or to manage customer communications.
A minimum of two participants are required for a swarm. Swarm contacts include the following persons.
The agent's supervisor (this setting can't be edited). Ensure that the agent has a supervisor. (This person can be the same for many agents on the team). If a supervisor isn't identified for the agent, the administrator who enabled the swarm is automatically added.
Optional: The administrator of the team that the agent is a member of.
Optional: The owner of the related account.