Launched in previews in 2023, both versions of Microsoft Copilot, covering Sales and Customer Service have now reached general release status.
What is Microsoft Copilot?
Copilot is Microsoft’s next-generation AI technology, designed to assist users across many aspects of their work life. It has integrations with a range of Microsoft products, including the Power Platform and Dynamics 365. Its aim is to boost productivity, increase creativity and upskill users by enabling them to work smarter and more efficiently.
Microsoft Copilot for Sales
First announced in March 2023 and later released in Preview in Autumn in the same year, Copilot for Sales aims to let salespeople focus on where they excel – engaging buyers on a human level to understand their needs, motivations and objections – by accelerating the technical and repetitive aspects of a sales role.
Currently, Copilot for Sales already has a range of useful features:
- Generating sales meeting preparation briefs in Word.
- Summarising emails and presenting relevant buying intent and budget, authority, need, timing (BANT) data in Outlook.
- Generating emails in Outlook with relevant product, account, relationship, and opportunity information from their CRM system and Microsoft Graph.
- Adding and updating CRM leads directly from Outlook.
- Viewing meeting preparation notes and sales insights during calls in Teams.
- Viewing sales meeting summaries in Teams, including conversation analysis, sales keywords, KPIs, and suggested tasks.
- Creating collaborative deal rooms in Teams that synchronise with CRM data.
In addition to this, Copilot for Sales also includes Copilot for Microsoft 365, providing additional functionality, including:
- Generating presentations in PowerPoint.
- Generating plans and organising team information in OneNote.
- Asking questions using natural language to catch up on customer interactions.
Later this month, Copilot for Sales will also add CRM connectivity to the Microsoft Copilot chat experience, allowing sellers and sales managers to get insights on conversions, sales cycles, and pipelines. Later this year, Copilot experiences in Microsoft PowerPoint and OneNote will also be enhanced, tailoring them to address seller-specific needs with CRM connectivity.
Microsoft Copilot for Service
First launched in December 2023, Copilot for Service aims to simplify the role of a Customer Service agent by utilising the business’ trusted knowledge resources to accelerate onboarding and case resolution, improve efficiency, and automating repetitive work processes. Without the need for costly development time, organisations can simply point to their data and, in a few minutes, generate AI-powered conversations across their knowledge bases. And for agents, they can take advantage of this knowledge with a copilot embedded directly in their software of choice such as Dynamics 365 Customer Service, as well as their other day-to-day tools, like Outlook and Teams.
Currently, Microsoft Copilot for Service already has several useful features:
- Enabling generative AI-powered conversations across all data points, with simplified point-and-click access to public websites, SharePoint, knowledge base articles, and offline files.
- Accessing knowledge sources with pre-built integrations for third party solutions such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk.
- Embedding a copilot into agent desktops from Salesforce and other channels to support agents where they work.
As Copilot for Microsoft 365 is also included in Copilot for Service, additional features will be launched later this month that will integrate data from CRM systems like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Salesforce Service Cloud, including:
- Outlook – use Copilot to summarise and draft emails, access case summaries, browse and update CRM records, and also schedule meetings, informed by case summaries and other relevant CRM data.
- Team – use Copilot to browse and update CRM records during a meeting, as well as having the ability to recap meetings, suggest follow-up action items, and create tasks that can all be saved directly to CRM.
- Microsoft Copilot chat – The ability to ask questions about cases and contacts, as well as summarising cases – all using CRM data.
Summary
It’s clear that AI and Microsoft’s Copilot technology is here to stay and it is important that organisations don’t miss out on potential time-saving and productivity enhancements that Copilot could potentially bring to their business. If you want to discuss how Copilot can help your organisation, why not get in touch with one of our experts today?
