The theme of version 8.6 is Service, Simplified. The outcomes reflect our close attention to a number of common customer service scenarios where time can be saved, customer effort reduced, or business agility increased. Key enhancements, organized by role, include:

Simplify service for customers

We’ve focused on making it easy for customers to self-serve and get faster resolutions on self-service channels. Notable improvements include:

• More choice with enhanced chat and messaging.

  With the channel switching capability within the new web messaging channel, customers can start conversations via website on the new web messaging (chat) widget and then move the conversation to third-party messaging apps, such as WhatsApp.

• Contextual self-service using personalized IVR API to contain calls.
  • New enhancements to the IVR API include the use of business conditions to help deliver personalized treatments to customers, getting information of interest to them to them earlier in the IVR interaction.
  • You can also use business conditions to suggest appropriate service tasks to the customer. For example, suggest making a payment to customers that are approaching or have just passed a payment due date.

Simplify service for agents

We’ve continued our emphasis on improving agent productivity with industry-specific service journeys and enhanced tools for agents. Notable improvements include:

• The ability to solve issues faster through expanded industry Microjourneys.
• New options for keeping email conversations between different parties separate but connected with outbound multi-party email for faster resolution.

Simplify service for IT Teams

We’ve focused on allowing your technical product owners to quickly configure and make changes in order to drive greater business agility. Highlights include:

• New visual authoring flows for the Intelligent Virtual Assistant.
• App Studio enhancements for management of customer search, verification, and customer composite configuration.
• Support for Genesys PureCloud in Pega Call.

As usual, this is just a very brief summary of some of the new features, so if there was a feature that you are keenly awaiting that isn’t outlined above, then read on! You’ll find information about additional enhancements in the other sections of the release notes.

For more information about key features, see What's New in Pega CRM.

For information about new Pega Platform features, see the Pega Platform Release Notes.