Over the past six months we’ve outlined our vision for the evolution of Microsoft’s portfolio targeting customer service and related markets, beginning with the introduction of Copilot for Microsoft Dynamics 365 as the world’s first Copilot for both CRM and ERP, and more recently reaching the general availability of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. In this blog, we will discuss the opportunity for organizations to delight their customers with generative AI-powered service experiences and explain some of the new innovations we’re announcing to make it a reality.
Generative AI is transforming customer service
Customers expect fast, personalized service at every touchpoint. Effective customer service strategies not only delight customers, but also build long-term loyalty, create efficiencies and ultimately grow the business. The stakes are high, yet access to relevant data and the right technology tools continues to be the greatest barrier for agents seeking to resolve customer issues.
Generative AI is transforming customer service by boosting agent productivity and unlocking organizational efficiency. For example, Microsoft’s Customer Service and Support (CSS) team—one of the largest customer service organizations in the world—has been using Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service for the past six months. We recently shared findings demonstrating how generative AI has impacted the way our CSS agents work to resolve support cases, as well as their efficiency in customer engagements and overall productivity in areas like reducing average case handling time by 12 percent, increasing the ability for agents to independently resolve cases (13 percent of cases in one support business), and more.
Introducing Microsoft Copilot for Service
Today we’re taking the next step in our journey to help organizations deliver compelling service experiences by modernizing their existing contact centers with generative AI—introducing Microsoft Copilot for Service. Copilot for Service synthesizes vast amounts of data already available from an organization’s trusted knowledge sources to provide relevant, timely guidance to agents in their flow of work. Copilot for Service provides flexibility for organizations to quickly begin realizing the benefits of generative AI by extending their existing investments in CRM and contact center solutions—including Dynamics 365, Salesforce, ServiceNow and more.
Connect to existing contact center and CRM solutions
Without costly development time or rip and replace efforts, organizations can simply point to their data—such as public websites, SharePoint, knowledgebase articles, and offline files—and in a few minutes unlock generative AI-powered conversations across all of their data. Copilot for Service reduces time to production with out-of-the-box integrations for Dynamics 365, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk.
Assist agents in the flow of work
Copilot for Service accelerates agent onboarding and case resolution, improves efficiency, and automates tasks to help free agents to focus on customers. Embedded in their desktop of choice or deployed in Teams, agents can simply ask the generative AI-powered Copilot questions in natural language to receive relevant answers that leverage existing contact center knowledge to enhance agent productivity and customer satisfaction.
Since Copilot for Microsoft 365 is included in Copilot for Service, organizations will also benefit more broadly from productivity enhancements in the tools agents already use every day, such as Outlook and Teams. For example, Copilot can quickly bring agents up to speed on email threads within Outlook by providing summaries, as well as accelerate responses to customers by providing draft emails. In Teams, agents can stay on top of meetings with customers or subject matter experts by viewing AI-powered meeting recaps with summaries of key discussion points, sentiment, and next steps. Furthermore, agents can use Copilot to get the latest account and case information from CRM systems.
In the future, Copilot for Service will make agents even more productive by enriching email summaries, email drafts, and meeting recaps with CRM data. It will not only provide them the ability to view/update CRM records directly in Outlook and Teams in their flow of work, but also automate CRM tasks such as case wrap ups, meeting scheduling, adding new contacts, and task follow up—all with a single click based on context from emails, knowledge sources, and previous customer communications, comparable to the agent assist capabilities that are part of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
Copilot for Service will also make proactive recommendations for creating new or updating existing knowledge assets by curating information across email threads, cases, Teams chats and more. These updated knowledge bases will in turn benefit an organization’s broad set of agents as they seek to accelerate the resolution of customer issues, as well as knowledge workers in other roles by providing a full 360 degree view of the customer (inclusive of cases, recent activities, knowledge sources, and other information) from the CRM systems—all in their flow of work via Outlook and Teams.
Customize and extend to meet your needs
Copilot for Service enables extensibility with Microsoft Copilot Studio. Add additional topics, automate actions and workflows, and further customize for a uniquely tailored solution. Additionally, Copilot for Service can be extended to other systems with more than 1,100 pre-built and custom connectors that eliminate the need for expensive IT integration work.
Copilot for Service availability and pricing
Copilot for Service will be available in public preview in early December. General availability is targeted for the first quarter of 2024. Pricing will be $50 USD per user/month.
Learn more about Copilot for Microsoft 365 licensing requirements.
For Dynamics 365 customers, comparable agent assist capabilities are included in Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise. Learn more about Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
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