The customer profile became a proposed common starting point

Microsoft published its Dynamics 365 wave 2 plans on 16 July, with delivery planned from October 2025 to March 2026. Customer Insights – Data was intended to provide Copilot and agents with more current, unified customer profiles. Customer Insights – Journeys would use Copilot, agents and orchestration for personalised journeys. The document described direction and release windows rather than finished capabilities already ready for production.

In Dynamics 365 Sales, a redesigned workspace was intended to shift attention from data entry towards insight. Agents were planned to research and engage leads, recognise purchase signals and surface emerging deal risks. Marketing and sales would be connected more closely, but quality depended on shared definitions of consent, identity and a qualified signal across systems.

Service and field work needed one continuous case

The Customer Service plan highlighted agents and Copilot for case and knowledge work as well as AI-driven routing. Contact Center would automate more of the service journey across digital and voice channels and add omnichannel and supervisor capabilities. If an agent created or enriched a case, the service leader still needed to see the source, the action and the point at which a person took over.

For Field Service, the plan described agents, improved scheduling tools, better mobile usability and deeper Microsoft 365 integration. Its connection with Project Operations made the transition from agreed work to capacity and delivery particularly significant. A reliable handover needed the correct customer location, asset, skills requirement, time commitment and commercial basis; otherwise, a fast agent action could create planning errors.

Gartner reported in June that 95 per cent of 163 surveyed service leaders planned to retain human staff to define AI's role. In March, the company had also forecast that agents could resolve a large share of common service issues by 2029. Neither the prediction nor the small survey demonstrated an outcome, but together they showed the tension between increasing automation and people designing policies, exceptions and escalation.

The roadmap needed testable handovers

Before rollout, a process owner could define four controls: signal to customer journey, journey to lead, lead or enquiry to case, and case to work order. For each, the team could record mandatory data, consent status, accountable role and target response time. Once capabilities became available, tests could measure complete handovers, incorrect routing, manual corrections and whether customers repeated information. A broad product roadmap would then become concrete decisions about the customer process.

Sources

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog: 2025 release wave 2 plans, 16 July 2025.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog: AI-powered proactive engagement in public preview, 3 June 2025.

Gartner: Organizations will retain customer service staff as AI expands, 10 June 2025.

Gartner: Agentic AI and common customer service issues, 5 March 2025.

For discussion

Which data and decisions must follow a customer from the first signal to service or field work?