Configure quality and coaching skills

Applies to: Dynamics 365 Contact Center only

Quality and coaching skills help organizations consistently monitor, measure, and improve customer conversations by using AI-powered evaluations and real-time coaching. By using a centralized quality library and flexible evaluation plans, supervisors can identify problems early, coach representatives at the right moment, and help ensure that AI-driven conversations meet organizational and compliance standards at scale.

Key concepts

Evaluation plans: Evaluation plans define how quality indicators and guardrails are applied and monitored. They specify the indicators and guardrails to use, the conversations included in evaluations, the timing and frequency of evaluations, and the actions or alerts triggered by the results.
Quality library:
- Quality indicators: Quality indicators represent measurable dimensions of conversation quality, such as use of empathetic language, greeting etiquette, or handling of sensitive information. Each indicator contains one or more questions that the AI evaluator uses to score conversations. Scored indicators contribute to an overall quality score. You can reuse indicators across multiple evaluation plans.
- Guardrails: Guardrails define the allowed and prohibited behaviors in a conversation, such as providing financial advice or handling conversations that involve vulnerable customers. The system evaluates guardrails for violations rather than assigning numeric scores. Each guardrail has a priority that indicates urgency. You can optionally generate a suggested next response for the representative when a violation is detected.

Important

This feature is intended to help customer service managers or supervisors enhance their team’s performance and improve customer satisfaction. This feature isn't intended for use in making—and shouldn't be used to make—decisions that affect the employment of an employee or group of employees, including compensation, rewards, seniority, or other rights or entitlements. Customers are solely responsible for using Dynamics 365, this feature, and any associated feature or service in compliance with all applicable laws, including laws relating to accessing individual employee analytics and monitoring, recording, and storing communications with end users. This responsibility also includes adequately notifying end users that their communications with representatives might be monitored, recorded, or stored and, as required by applicable laws, obtaining consent from end users before using the feature with them. Customers are also encouraged to have a mechanism in place to inform their representatives that their communications with end users might be monitored, recorded, or stored.
Customers should avoid using the system to infer or make conclusions about emotional or psychological states of employees or customers, such as stress levels, intent, or sentiment beyond supported signals. The system doesn't reliably detect mental or emotional conditions.

Prerequisites

You must have the Omnichannel Administrator role.
Set up Microsoft Copilot credits.

Access quality and coaching skills

In Copilot Service admin center, go to Customer support > Quality and Coaching.
Select Evaluation plan to create and manage evaluation plans, or select Quality library to manage quality indicators and guardrails.

Manage evaluation plans

The Evaluation plan page lists all existing plans. Use the following procedure to create an evaluation plan.

Select Add new.
In the New evaluation plan dialog, select one of the following Frequency options:
- In real-time: Evaluations run continuously throughout the conversation, with quality scores and guardrails assessed in real time to enable immediate action.
- On conversation close: Evaluations run once at the end of the conversation. Results are available only after the conversation is closed.
Select Next.
In General details, enter the following information:
- Plan name: Enter a descriptive name for the evaluation plan.
- Description: Enter optional information about what the plan evaluates.
- Quality criteria: Select one or more quality indicators and guardrails.
Select Next.
In Conditions, add one or more conditions that determine which conversations the plan evaluates. For example:
- Queue equals a specific messaging queue.
- Workstream equals a selected workstream.
Select Next.
In Actions, define score ranges and select whether to notify the supervisor, send a coaching nudge to the representative, or both. Nudges appear as real-time messages during the conversation.

For scored quality indicators:
- Define score ranges as Critical, Warning, or Normal.
- For each range, select whether to notify a supervisor, send a coaching nudge to the representative, or both.
Save the changes. On the Quality and coaching page, activate the plan to begin evaluations.

Manage the quality library

The Quality library lists all quality indicators and guardrails available in your environment. Quality indicators and guardrails define the criteria used to evaluate conversations. You can create an indicator or copy a built-in indicator to edit and use. You can delete inactive quality indicators.

Manage a quality indicator

In Quality library, under Quality indicators, select Add new or select an existing indicator.
On the Add quality indicator dialog, enter the following information:
- Quality indicator name: Enter a name for the indicator.
- Description: Enter an optional description of the quality behavior being evaluated.
- Questions:
  - Add one or more questions that the AI evaluator uses to assess conversations.
  - For Type of answers, select Yes/No, Multi-select, or Single select. Multi-select allows evaluators to select multiple options, while Single select allows only one option to be selected.
  - Assign scores to each answer option.
  - Optionally, add evaluation instructions to improve scoring accuracy.
Save the changes. On the Quality and coaching page, activate the quality indicator to use it in evaluation plans.

Manage a guardrail

In Quality library, under Guardrails, select Add new or select an existing guardrail.
On the New guardrail dialog, enter the following information:
- Guardrail name: Enter a name for the guardrail.
- Description: Describe the behavior that the guardrail requires or prohibits.
- Priority: Select Low, Medium, or High to indicate urgency.
- Nudge text: Optionally, enter the nudge text to display to representatives.
- Suggest next response: Select this option to allow AI-generated guidance when a violation is detected.
Save the changes. On the Quality and coaching page, activate the guardrail to use it in evaluation plans.

Best practices

Build your quality library first so you can reuse indicators and guardrails across plans.
Keep indicators focused on a single quality dimension for clear scoring.
Use conditions to limit real-time evaluation to priority queues or workstreams.
Start with conservative actions and expand notifications or nudges based on operational readiness.

Contact center agents in Dynamics 365 Contact Center

Use quality and coaching skills

Use the Quality Assurance Agent dashboard

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