The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into business practices signals a significant move towards enhanced efficiency and innovation. Microsoft’s launch of its AI Copilot, utilizing the capabilities of OpenAI’s GPT-4, is a notable advancement in this realm. Unlike traditional tools, AI Copilot is tailored for seamless integration across multiple business functions, reshaping AI’s role within corporate environments. As a frontrunner in technological advancement, Microsoft’s rollout of AI Copilot underscores the company’s dedication to harnessing AI for impactful and transformative business solutions.
What is Microsoft Copilot for Sales and Service?
Microsoft Copilot for Sales is an AI-powered assistant designed specifically for sales professionals within Microsoft 365. It seamlessly integrates with various sales solutions to provide advanced AI capabilities and CRM platform enhancements, delivering valuable insights across productivity workflows. Compatible with Salesforce Sales Cloud and Dynamics 365 Sales, it can be customized to connect with other sales solutions. Microsoft’s aim with Copilot for Sales is to provide AI-guided answers and resources tailored to each customer situation and conversation.
Both the Sales and Service applications of this program are included with Microsoft 365 Copilot. These new additions to Microsoft’s portfolio were unveiled at the 2023 Ignite conference, and leaders in businesses across every type of industry have been anxiously awaiting the release and availability of these products.
Copilot for Service
The Copilot for Service application collaborates with customer relationship management (CRM) applications, as well as call center or contact center applications such as Zendesk, Salesforce, or ServiceNow, to offer guidance to service professionals who are on the frontlines, interfacing with customers and handling their questions and problems. This program can be taught to extract answers from a company’s knowledge base, as well as from the repositories of contact center and CRM applications. This integration allows AI to facilitate easier discovery of information and solutions, customized to each individual customer service team members come into contact with.
Beyond this, Copilot Studio, a development application introduced at Ignite, allows further customization of functions.
The use of generative AI in the customer service field is allowing employees to meet the high expectations of today’s customers, enabling them to provide quick, personalized service at each touchpoint in their journeys. With the introduction of Microsoft Copilot for Service, organizations can focus on strategies that better delight their customer bases and facilitate the building of long-term loyalty.
Microsoft Copilot for Service adds a number of benefits to organizations using the platform, including:
- Connections to contact center and CRM solutions that already exist. Removing the need for expensive development or extensive system overhauls, organizations can quickly leverage their data—comprising public web pages, SharePoint, help articles, and offline information—to initiate generative AI-powered discussions amongst all their data in a matter of minutes.
- Assistance with workflow management. Microsoft Copilot for Service is an AI-powered tool that streamlines employee onboarding and problem resolution, boosts efficiency, and automates otherwise manual tasks, allowing team members to concentrate on customer interactions. Integrated into the desktop or implemented directly into Teams, customer service reps (CSRs) can use natural language to query Copilot for relevant answers, leveraging organizational knowledge that already exists. It’s included in Copilot for Microsoft 365, enhancing productivity in tools like Outlook and Teams, providing quick email thread summaries and draft emails, and facilitating meeting summaries with key conversation topics. Future enhancements will enrich email summaries, drafts, and meeting recaps with CRM data, allowing agents to view and update CRM records directly and automate CRM tasks, as well as provide preemptive recommendations for knowledge asset creation and updates. This will benefit a wider set of CSRs and knowledge workers, speeding up customer issue resolution and providing a comprehensive overview of the customer from customer relationship management systems, all within a cleaner workflow via Outlook and Teams.
- Customization to meet companies’ unique needs. Copilot for Service offers greater flexibility through Microsoft Copilot Studio, allowing the addition of extra topics, automation of tasks and responsibilities, and supplementary customization for a uniquely customized application. Even better? Copilot for Service can be expanded to other platforms using over 1,100 templated and custom connectors, eliminating the necessity for costly IT integration efforts.
Copilot for Sales
Copilot for Sales represents an advancement of a program previously introduced for Dynamics 365, known as Sales Copilot. This updated version offers several enhancements, including connectivity with Microsoft Word.
With this tool, sellers can perform tasks such as instructing Copilot to generate a meeting preparation notes in Microsoft Word, which will be automatically filled in with customer details such as opportunity and account summaries, specific information about meeting participants (such as the names and titles of attendees), ongoing to-do items, highlights from past conversations and email chains, and more.
Additionally, Copilot for Sales is now integrated with Microsoft Teams, which has the ability to display key takeaways and follow-up items, conversation key performance indicators (KPIs), and sales-related keyword triggers.
A study recently released by Gartner shows that 70% of sellers are responsible for the management of more customers and accounts than the prior year. The research suggests that, in order to enhance sales effectiveness, the salespeople need to allow today’s technologies—such as generative AI, emotion AI, and digital humans—to alleviate some of their workload, thereby allowing them to strengthen their connections with buyers on a personal level so they can better understand their needs, motivations, and objections. Microsoft took these findings to work, creating an AI solution that meets these requirements. Copilot for Sales was designed to allow sales teams to boost productivity and close more deals.
A quick look at some of the immediate benefits Microsoft Copilot for Sales teams will enjoy includes the following:
- Creation of sales meeting preparation briefs in Word;
- Condense emails and present pertinent buying intent and BANT analysis in Outlook;
- Produce emails in Outlook containing relevant product, account, relationship, and opportunity data from their CRM systems and Microsoft Graph;
- Integrate leads and modify CRM records directly from Outlook;
- Access meeting prep notes and live sales insights during calls in Teams;
- Review sales meeting summaries in Teams, including conversation analysis, sales keywords and KPIs, and recommended follow-up tasks;
- Establish collaborative deal rooms in Teams that sync with CRM data;
- Create presentations in PowerPoint;
- Develop plans and structure team data in OneNote;
Soon, Microsoft will introduce a CRM integration, connecting Copilot for Sales with the Microsoft Copilot experience, enabling sales teams to swiftly obtain insights on conversion rates, win rates, sales cycles, and pipeline status. The chat experience will allow sales professionals to utilize a natural language to catch up on customer interactions.
Some early adopters of Microsoft Copilot for Sales report the application successfully reduces the necessity to switch between various interfaces, and some of the features immediately started saving team members minutes to hours each week.
Let MIBAR Lead the Way to Your Company’s Enhanced Sales and Service Efforts
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into business practices represents a significant shift towards enhanced efficiency and innovation.
If your business has not yet embraced AI, now is the time to do so. Unsure of where to begin or struggle to comprehend the practical applications? You will not want to miss our Tuesday, 3/19 webinar: An Introduction to Transforming Your Business With AI.
Or, learn more about our AI consulting services. Our team at MIBAR AI Labs functions as the scientists of AI, applying a methodical approach to unravel the complexities of integrating AI into your business. Based on our experience, we collaborate closely with you to determine AI use cases, akin to conducting experiments in a laboratory. By aligning high-impact AI initiatives with your overarching business goals, we create a roadmap that mirrors a meticulously designed experiment, ensuring a strategic and effective implementation of AI for sustained business growth.
To learn more about how Microsoft Copilot for Sales and Service offers a comprehensive solution that can significantly improve your sales and service operations, reach out to our team at MIBAR. Our expertise in AI and implementing and customizing Microsoft’s solutions makes us the perfect partner to help you leverage the full potential of Microsoft Copilot.
Additional Resources
Everything You Need to Know About Microsoft Fabric and Copilot for Your Business
How to Get Started with Microsoft 365 Copilot
The AI Co-Pilot of Your Dreams: Microsoft Copilot’s Impact on Everyday Work
