Customers don’t just want fast service—they expect businesses to stay one step ahead. Today’s customers want companies to anticipate their needs before they even ask, for example: sending a reminder before a payment is late; giving a heads-up when a delivery is delayed, or following up after a dropped call. These aren’t just nice-to-haves—we believe that they’re the new standard for customer experience.
That’s why we’re announcing proactive engagement and conversational journeys with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys, now available in public preview. With this solution, organizations can use custom-built AI agents and service representatives to proactively reach out across channels—like informing a customer about a canceled flight and guiding them to a resolution in the same conversation. Businesses can benefit from lower call volumes and support costs, while customers can get faster, more personalized experiences that drive satisfaction and brand loyalty. General availability is expected later this summer.
Of course, delivering proactive service at scale isn’t easy. Organizations can be under pressure to do more with less—fewer resources, tighter budgets, and higher customer expectations. Reaching out at the right time, with the right message, on the right channel takes orchestration, insight, and intelligent automation. That’s exactly what these new capabilities are designed to deliver: smarter, highly personalized engagement.
Proactive engagement
Create AI-driven proactive outbound experiences.
The impact of AI on customer service
Looking ahead, the influence of AI on customer experience will only deepen. According to the Microsoft Work Trend Index, 82% of leaders expect to expand their use of digital labor to boost workforce capacity in the next 12 to 18 months.
Our customers are already reaping the benefits of AI-powered digital teammates. Tourism and travel segments, for example, are using proactive engagement and conversational journeys to assist customers with travel planning—from bookings to itinerary guidance—with human reps available to further assist as needed.
Apollo Travel, a travel agency that fields more than 350,000 reservations annually across Scandinavia, is using proactive engagement to reduce inbound reservation calls.
“We’re always looking for ways to better serve our customers, and these new capabilities open up exciting opportunities to engage with them more proactively. We see clear potential for benefits on both sides—improving the experience for our customers while driving efficiency for our business.”
—Johnny Nilsson, Head of Group Power Platform Center of Excellence at Apollo Travel (part of DERTOUR Group)
Conversational journeys
Use AI to deliver customer experiences at scale.
Other use cases demonstrate the broader value of this approach: shipping and delivery delays, appointment reminders, system outages, prescription refills, loyalty reward notifications, and service updates are all possible through AI agent-based outreach. The interactions feel natural and helpful, and if needed, seamlessly transition to a service representative for personalized support—turning a potential issue into a moment of brand loyalty. Customers can communicate naturally with the AI agent, which, based on that dialogue, will offer resolutions like transferring to a different flight or issuing a refund. Depending on your requirements, proactive engagement can then follow up with additional actions like a confirmation email or text message.
Because these repetitive, time-consuming tasks are now automated, reps can focus on more critical problems and delivering meaningful engagements to each customer. This helps build trust and ensure customers feel valued, while allowing service teams to focus on more complex, high-value interactions—helping to reduce operational costs and improve overall efficiency.
A typical scenario has three parts. The first part is a customer journey that tells the AI agent who to call, when to call, and how to process choices that the customer makes during the call. The second part is the AI agent, which can communicate with customers using natural language. The final part brings it all together, with authors managing the agent’s customer queues, phone numbers, and the like. If a customer asks, this is also where an agent would transfer the call to a service rep and then manage that call until resolution. The entire solution can be authored with no code (including the ability to design the AI agent using natural language), making it accessible to non-technical business users to define their customer experiences with ease. With integrated consent management and designated quiet times/days, compliance with customer preferences and regulatory requirements can be effortlessly maintained. Additionally, it offers the flexibility to respond to real-time events or schedule an outreach in advance.
Enabling proactive engagement
To enable the solution, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights-Journeys and Microsoft Copilot Studio are required. As you use the solution, please send your feedback to pefeedback@microsoft.com, and continue checking this blog for updates about this and other upcoming releases.
