Customer Service Platform Updated

The Customer Care Framework (CCF), Microsoft’s specialized developer platform for customer service applications, has been updated to speed development and support the company’s latest developer technology. The CCF supports customer service applications that layer on top of existing business applications (e.g., billing and customer relationship management applications) and existing systems for interacting with customers over voice, chat, e-mail, and other channels. The resulting applications can speed work and reduce errors in call centers and other customer service systems.

Toolkit for Customer Service Applications

The CCF delivers a customizable client (called the Agent Desktop) and server that can log into and communicate with the user interfaces of multiple back-end applications, enabling a developer to create a single user interface for customer service representatives that automates business processes (e.g., customer sign-up) across multiple existing applications. Developers can also integrate communication sessions (for example, chat and voice sessions hosted by Microsoft’s Communications Server) into the combined user interface, enabling representatives to coordinate conversations with customers from their desktops. Separately, the CCF provides a customizable self-service Web portal that can enable customers to perform some operations (such as reviewing account balances) over the Web.