Last week I was in Las Vegas, for the second year in a row, representing Capventis at the Modern Customer Experience conference organised by Oracle. Once more, it was great to have the opportunity to hear from, share with, and meet so many thought leaders, innovators and industry specialists. A fantastic event, really worth attending, with great key notes, sessions and hands-on workshops.

Oracle Service Cloud Focus

My focus was on the Modern Service Experience (MSE) track and Oracle Service Cloud (OSvC), starting very early in the morning of the first day, with a deep dive workshop “Supercharge your Agents – A Guide to Advanced Desktop Automation” where the Product Development team shared some tips and tricks around automating processes using workspace rules, JavaScript API, Agent Scripts and Desktop Workflows.

From that moment until the end of the conference it was 3 days with back-to-back meetings and sessions. The MSE agenda had plenty other great hands-on workshops, with beginner and advanced sessions around extensions and APIs, analytics or customer portal. The Oracle Product Management and Product Development teams shared, in several breakout sessions, not only insight but some great news re. the product strategic direction and roadmap. And roundtable discussions, as well as “fireside” chats, were also very popular and insightful.

Customer Success Stories

One of the highlights of this conference are the sessions where Oracle customers share their stories, and the ways they are using technology as an enabler, to innovate, become more efficient, and thus more successful. Two great examples were presented by Kohl’s and Toshiba Medical Systems (TMS). Both companies implemented OSvC, to transform a vision and desire to improve customer service and experience into reality.

Asked about the reasons to have chosen OSvC, Sebastiaan Dammann, Senior Business Consultant at TMS, said… “Cloud. Easier to collaborate across value chain, and increase CX (…) Completeness of vision. CX, Field Service, planning, back-office (…) Highly configurable and flexible solution. Support Vanilla approach”.

Oracle Service Cloud Roadmap

The most interesting news (at least for us OSvC advocates) always come from the roadmap sessions. And there were some great news shared by the Product Management team. As usual it was all subject to the Safe Harbour Statement, but here it is…

• The Aug 2017 release will include significant changes to the Business Rules, with a new interface, and enhanced engine to support custom objects (meaning that you don’t need to write code to create automation in custom objects).
• After the WeChat integration, available since Feb 2017 release, Oracle will publish the Facebook Messenger integration, in the Aug 2017 release (allowing customers to chat / text with agents via that Facebook facility/app).
• Video chat will also be released in Aug 2017, even though it will only be available for companies in the USA (first agent-side video will be available with customer-side video being introduced at a later stage).
• Oracle will release a release manager, with versioning capability. An absolute game-changer for administrators and developers, allowing to package configurations/customisations from one interface/instance to export/import into another interface/instance (avoiding the need to re-key or manually replicate configurations). The Aug 2017 release will include a limited number of components (e.g. workspaces, reports) and others will become available over the next few releases.
• External data virtualisation is also something that Oracle is working on and preparing to make available in the next few releases. It will use Odata and Open API Initiative, enabling custom objects to have reference to external data, allowing the surfacing and/or virtualisation of external data within OSvC.

A big investment and development effort has been put into the Browser UI (BUI) and its Extensibility Framework, where Oracle is hoping to have the majority of agent-facing functionality (currently available in the Dynamic Agent Desktop – .NET console) by the end of 2017.

The BUI Extensibility Framework will enable automation, integration and extension of the BUI. And the next few releases will make available the following extensibility types…

• Console – e.g. extension areas on Global or Sidebars (e.g. CTI media-bars); additional widgets on Status Bar; new items on Main Menu; modal and pop-up windows.
• Workspace – e.g. buttons that trigger actions (e.g. set fields), rules or integrations; browser extensions to show other web-based applications.
• Analytics – e.g. define virtual schemas and tables to display data from external systems, and allow read and write.

The add-in manager, as well as the add-ins area in the workspace designer, will have a specific section for BUI extensions and add-ins, alongside the one currently available for DAD add-ins.

If you are already excited about it, and feel like jumping straight onto it, know that the BUI Extensibility Framework requires knowledge on the below technologies, and that answer id 5169 is available on the community with documentation.

• JavaScript
• HTML
• CSS
• JSON

All Stars and Heros

But the icing on the cake, at this year’s conference, was the OSvC All Star and CX Hero status, areas and activities (see photo below)…

• The Hero Hub booth, where we were able to hang-out with other OSvC heroes, join the Justice League of Customer Service, and have some fun.
• The CX Hero Lounge, where we could meet fellow CX advocates, do some work during breaks, as well as relax and have a bite to eat.
• The All Star Appreciation Event, where we got together with the OSvC crew, for some drinks, food and great conversations.

A big thank you to: Keith McFarlane, Stephen Fioretti, Shon Wedde, Jens Lundell, Jeff Wartgow, Vimal Chopra, Susie Boyer, Kent Swartz and Daniel Foppen.

And a very special mention and huge thank you to Erica Leep and Danette Beal for organising all of this, for being absolutely tireless, and for spoiling us with treats.

I’m already looking forward to next year’s conference!