Configuration improvements
Pega Customer Service includes numerous enhancements to improve the configuration experience.
Improved customer search
Improvements to the customer search feature make it easier and faster to configure search criteria and search results in App Studio. You can define multiple search criteria views (the input view), and multiple search result views (the result view), as needed for your business. At the start of an interaction, you can select which search criteria to use for that interaction, or you can use the default search criteria.
For more information, see Customer search.Update impact
When you update, the new customer search feature is disabled by default, but there is a toggle to enable the new version of the feature. The feature is enabled automatically when new customers run the Application Wizard to create their implementation application. For information about how updating customers can adopt the new feature, see Adopting customer search.
Improved customer verification
Configuration of customer verification settings and questions in App Studio is now simpler and more streamlined. A more modular approach lets you select different question categories for different case types, and you have the flexibility to dynamically change the questions presented based on business conditions.
- Instead of defining a pool of questions, you now define groups of related questions in one category (for example, questions for an inbound phone call), and then you associate the different question categories with each interaction type and service request type.
- For each case type, there are three options for customer verification:
- No verification
- One question category for all contexts
- Different question categories in different contexts, as determined by predefined business conditions.
- The verification process will skip a question that was already answered correctly, including questions asked during the (IVR) portion of an interaction.
- You can localize questions so that the CSR sees the questions in their preferred language.
Update impact
The little-used legacy customer verification rules are deprecated. To add the new, enhanced customer verification capabilities to your application, see Adopting customer verification.
Improved customer composite configuration
Customer composites are now configurable in App Studio. Business users can configure the tab names and visibility settings. Administrators can use Design mode to configure the data to show on each tab.
For more information, see Customer composite.Update impact
When you update, the new customer composites feature is disabled by default, but there is a toggle to enable the new version of the feature. The feature is enabled automatically when new customers run the Application Wizard to create their implementation application. For information about how updating customers can adopt the new feature, see Adopting customer composites.
Improved customer inquiry configuration
The Customer Inquiry section (formerly known as Express history) of the Customer composite Account tab displays commonly requested account information, for example, the account balance, which CSRs can use to quickly respond to customer questions. To create an entry in the interaction history when the CSR provides inquiry information to a customer, the CSR selects the check box next to the property that was discussed. For each check box selected, the application generates an automatic response if the inquiry was made through a digital messaging or email channel, which saves the CSR time and eliminates manual steps. For example, for a chat interaction, if the CSR selects the Available balance check box, then the application generates a chat reply that contains the requested account balance. To show or hide the check boxes, click the Customer Inquiry toggle.
In this release, App Studio is enhanced so that business users now modify the following information in the Customer Inquiry section:
- The properties to show in the Customer Inquiry section and where to show them.
- For each property, the message to display in the interaction history, including the interaction reason code.
- For each property, the automatic reply content to generate if the inquiry was a digital message or email.
Also in this release, the IVR-IVA system can respond to and track commonly requested account information by using the same properties as the Customer inquiry feature. For IVR-IVA, business conditions trigger the responses. For information, see Creating a smart network-based IVR-IVA channel.
The new dashboard widgets for customer inquiries are described in the "Customer inquiry reporting" release note, next.
Update impact
After you update, you can edit your Customer inquiry properties and layout in App Studio.
Customer inquiry reporting
Pega Customer Service 8.6 provides two out-of-the-box dashboard widget reports for customer inquiries. These widgets identify the most common customer inquiries, based on the check boxes that the CSR selects in the Customer Inquiry section of the Customer composite Account tab. From the Interaction Portal, you can add these widgets to your dashboard.
The following dashboard widgets reports are now available for customer inquiries:
- Summary of customer inquiries: A weekly summary of the top five customer inquiries over the past seven weeks
- Daily top 5 customer inquiry types: A graph of the top five customer inquiries by type for the week
You can filter the reports to show only digital messaging, email, or phone inquiries. For more information, see Adding the top customer inquiry reports.
More templatized case types
Several additional out-of-the-box (OOTB) case types have been templatized, meaning that they have been rebuilt to take advantage of the consistent stages, steps, and features available in the case type templates, and they can be easily updated through the App Studio interface.
The following case types are modified:
- General Service Request
- Start Co-Browse Session
- Guided Troubleshooter
In this release, the General Service Request case type is added to the list of templatized case types that can be selected as a template when creating a new case type.
For more information about case type templates, including detailed information about the stages and steps in the generic case type template, see Case type templates.
Business conditions personalize interactions
In App Studio, a new Business conditions tool defines criteria that are required to personalize a customer interaction. For example, a business condition can detect when a payment is due. With this enhancement, you can configure business conditions without defining When rules in Dev Studio.
You can apply business conditions to the following features:
- An IVR bot uses business conditions to trigger automatic replies to customer queries, and to optionally suggest and initiate a case type if appropriate.
- A case type uses business conditions to determine which customer verification questions to ask.
Consistent address fields
Several out-of-the-box case types and flow are modified to use platform-provided address properties that collect consistent address data based on the country selected. The re-usable address fields accommodate address requirements for multiple regions, and can be extended to accommodate additional patterns if needed.
The following case types and flows include this change:
- Address change case type
- General service request case type
- Statement copy case type
- Create new contact flow
When creating new case types that include address fields, always use the platform-provided address properties for consistency.
Simplified interactions settings
App Studio provides the new Interaction configuration page for defining the behavior for each interaction type. This new page replaces the separate settings pages for configuring each interaction type's behavior.
For more information, see Configuring interaction type settings.
Duplicate case checking is optional
Duplicate case checking is now disabled by default in order to maximum screen load times. A switch in the Suggested actions settings enables this feature.
Update impact
If you were previously using duplicate case checking to identify potential duplicate cases at the start of an interaction, enable the setting required to use this feature.
Transfer reasons configuration
Business analysts and developers can now use App Studio to configure transfer reasons for all Customer Service channels.
Transfer reasons configured in App Studio are available for Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) to select when they initiate a transfer.
For more information, see Configuring transfer reasons.
New Web Messaging Widget
Web Messaging, the new React-based chat, is the customer-facing widget with an improved user interface (UI) and provides an enhanced user experience (UX) with its wide range of features.
Update impact
Updating to Web Messaging allows customers to switch their conversation to different third-party messaging applications, such as Apple Business Chat, SMS, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. Plus, Web Messaging also supports many of Legacy Webchat features, making it easier for the customers to get acquainted with it.
For more information, see Migrating from Legacy Webchat to Web Messaging.
Previous topic Interaction improvements Next topic Email improvements