As AI becomes central to contact center operations–powering every customer engagement channel–evaluation is no longer a back-office technical exercise. Evaluation is a critical business capability directly impacting customer experience, operational effectiveness, and business outcome 

But the evaluation is not one-dimensional. Organizations must think about when, how, by whom, and on what data AI systems are evaluated. This blog explores the key facets of AI evaluation and how they apply specifically to contact center environments. 

 1: Development-Stage vs. Production-Stage Evaluation 

Definition: Evaluation at development time refers to tests and assessments performed during the AI software creation phase. Production time evaluation occurs after deployment, when the AI software is live and serving real users. 

Implications: Development-time evaluation provides a controlled environment to identify and address issues before AI reaches customers. This helps reduce risk and prevent costly failures. However, it cannot fully capture real-world complexity. Production-time evaluation reflects actual customer behavior and operating conditions. While it offers critical insight into true performance and experience, manage it carefully to avoid customer impact when issues surface. 

How contact centers should think about this (example): 

• Use development-time evaluation to prevent issues. These include incorrect intent detection, poor prompt behavior, broken escalation flows, non-compliant responses, or unacceptable latency before they ever reach customers. 

• Use production-time evaluation to detect and measure real customer impact, like drops in containment, rising transfers to human agents, customer frustration, regional or channel-specific issues, and performance degradation caused by real traffic patterns. 

 2: Manual vs. Automated Evaluation 

Definition: Manual execution involves running evaluation tasks at human command. Automated evaluation is run at predetermined time or based on triggers.  

Implications: Manual evaluation brings human judgment, context, and nuance that automation alone cannot capture, making it especially valuable when evaluation needs are unpredictable, environmental changes are not captured by automated triggers, or when automated runs would be too costly. Automated evaluation complements this, providing consistent, scalable coverage as AI systems evolve, reliably reevaulating systems after known changes, such as releases or configuration updates through CI/CD pipelines.  

How contact centers should think about this: 

• Use automation for baseline quality, regression, and continuous monitoring 

• Use manual evaluation for exceptions, deep dives, and human judgment 

• The best strategy combines both. Automation ensures assessment of critical changes, while human evaluators interpret results, investigate anomalies, and adapt to unexpected conditions. 

 3: Evaluations Run by the Platform vs. by Customers 

Definition: Evaluations can be conducted internally by the developer organization (such as Microsoft) or externally by customers using the software in their own environments.  

Implications: Developer-run and customer-run evaluations each provide distinct and necessary value. Internal evaluations establish a consistent baseline for quality, safety, and compliance. Customer-led evaluations surface real-world behaviors, operational constraints, and usage patterns that cannot be fully anticipated during development. Relying on only one limits visibility and can leave gaps in reliability or usability. 

How contact centers should think about this: 

• Rely on platform evaluations to establish a trusted baseline. This ensures core capabilities—such as accuracy, safety and compliance, latency, escalation behavior, and failure handling—meet enterprise standards before features are rolled out broadly. 

• Platform providers should partner closely with customers. This enables them to run their own evaluations and deeply understand AI performance within their specific domains, workflows, and operating environments. This collaboration helps surface both expected and edge-case behaviors—across positive and negative scenarios 

 4: Synthetic Data vs. Production Traffic 

Definition: Synthetic data refers to artificially generated datasets designed to simulate specific scenarios. Production traffic comprises actual user interactions and data generated during live operation.  

Implications: Data Fidelity and Risk: Synthetic data enables safe, repeatable evaluation without exposing sensitive information or impacting real users. However, it may lack the complexity and unpredictability of production data. Production traffic delivers high-fidelity insights but carries risks of data leakage, performance degradation, or user impact. Relevance: Synthetic data is valuable for early-stage, edge-case, or privacy-sensitive evaluations. Production traffic is essential for verifying AI system behavior under real-world conditions. 

How contact centers should think about this: 

• Begin with synthetic data to evaluate safely and iterate quickly, especially when testing new scenarios, edge cases, or changes. 

• Leverage production data to validate performance at scale, ensuring AI behaves as expected under real customer traffic and operating conditions. 

• Treat production evaluation as a continuous monitoring and learning loop, focused on measuring impact and improving quality—rather than experimenting on live customers. 

 5: Evaluation After vs. During Execution 

Definition: Post-execution evaluation analyzes the results after a process or test run finishes, while in-execution (real-time) evaluation monitors and assesses behavior as it unfolds.  

Implications: post-execution evaluation enables deep analysis and long-term improvement, while in-execution evaluation allows faster detection and mitigation of issues. Using both helps contact centers balance insight with real-time protection of customer experience. 

How contact centers should think about this: 

• Post-conversation evaluation can provide a large amount of information about correctness, groundedness, resolution effectiveness across completed AI interactions.  

• Real-time evaluation of empathy and sentiment enables timely intervention, such as escalating to a human agent or allowing supervisor guidance during the interaction 

Together, these approaches form a core part of AI evaluation in the contact center, helping organizations balance deep analysis with real‑time protections.

Final Thoughts: A Modern Evaluation Mindset 

There is no single “right” way to evaluate AI systems. Instead, evaluation should be viewed as a multi-dimensional strategy that evolves alongside your AI systems. 

By thoughtfully strategizing across evaluation dimensions, organizations can build AI systems that are not only intelligent, but also trustworthy, resilient, and customer-first. Evaluation is no longer optional- it is how modern organizations ensure AI delivers on its promise, every day. 

Get more details:  

Measuring What Matters: Redefining Excellence for AI Agents in the Contact Center 

Evaluating AI Agents in Contact Centers: Introducing the Multi-modal Agents Score 

The post The Key Facets of AI Evaluation in the Contact Center  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Frontier Firms are a new type of organization that puts AI at the heart of business—reinventing customer experience and employee productivity while reshaping processes and bending the curve on innovation. Copilot is powering this transformation with unprecedented adoption by more than 100 million commercial and consumer users and by more than 70% of the Fortune 500. Today, we’re announcing the addition of role-based AI solutions to Microsoft 365 Copilot for sales, service, and finance professionals to help these critical functions move to the Frontier.

Reinvent productivity with Microsoft 365 Copilot
Sales
Sales professionals are the revenue engine for every organization and the function where time is literally equal to money. The Sales solution in Microsoft 365 Copilot brings AI directly into the applications that sellers use daily—Copilot, Outlook, and Microsoft Teams—to help them move with speed and agility while staying focused on customer engagement.

For example, sellers can now prepare for customer meetings with the help of Copilot, right in the flow of work, with fast access to customer relationship management (CRM) opportunity details, recent communications, and company insights. They can also ask Copilot to help with tasks like “Give me a list of deals at risk of falling through,” “Help me create a plan to close this deal,” and even “Update this CRM record” all in the flow of work.

Microsoft 365 Copilot connects with leading CRM tools, including Dynamics 365 and Salesforce, to make it easy to stay informed and engaged.

The role-based sales solution can transform the way our teams work. Now that it’s part of Microsoft 365 Copilot, we can scale AI across the business much faster to accelerate adoption.

Shaun Worsley, Sales Process & Technology Manager, Sandvik Coromant

Sales solution preparing for upcoming meetings and updating CRM records in Outlook.
Service
Customer service professionals are the frontline of brand loyalty, balancing rising customer expectations with growing workloads and fragmented toolsets. The Service solution in Microsoft 365 Copilot helps these professionals resolve issues faster and deliver personalized experiences that build lasting relationships.

For example, customer service professionals can now generate a concise case summary to quickly get up to speed without poring through pages of notes, draft a customer-ready email with resolution details and other contextual information that can be further customized before sending, or simply view and update records without having to switch windows and navigate to the CRM. This can mean fewer clicks, faster responses, and more time spent helping customers.

Finance
Finance is about more than transactions—it’s about making sure the business has accurate numbers, steady cash flow, and insights needed to pursue a growth agenda. The Finance solution in Microsoft 365 Copilot brings enterprise resource planning (ERP) connected data directly into Copilot, Excel, and Outlook to help finance teams manage tasks and gain faster insights.

For example, finance teams can now draft customer emails with account details and payment history; enable accelerated financial reconciliation by matching transactions, flagging discrepancies, and preparing reports; perform variance analysis (public preview) that highlights anomalies, surfaces potential drivers, and generates draft explanations for leaders; and use data preparation (public preview) to clean, reshape, and structure ERP exports into analysis-ready reports and enabling time savings on manual work.

Microsoft 365 Copilot connects with leading ERP tools, including Dynamics 365 and SAP.

inance solution showing a financial workflow in Excel, with variance analysis and data preparation tools within a Finance pane. The interface supports financial reconciliation tasks, with the cursor interacting across spreadsheet cells and tool options.
Powering Frontier sales, service, and finance teams
With role-based solutions in Microsoft 365 Copilot, sales, service, and finance teams can work smarter and faster—right where work happens. These role-based solutions will be available for installation to Microsoft 365 Copilot customers via the Microsoft 365 Copilot Agent Store starting in October 2025.

The post Moving sales, service, and finance to the Frontier with Microsoft 365 Copilot appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

For decades, growing revenue in business-to-business (B2B) sales meant expanding the sales team. More sellers, more deals. But AI is providing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine customer relationship management (CRM), and business leaders are keen to use its potential to boost sales outcomes and do more with less. Organizations are building the sales teams of the future by investing in generative AI and autonomous AI agents that can empower sales teams to deliver faster, hyper-personalized buying experiences—deeply understanding customer intent and proactively guiding decisions to influence pipeline.

Autonomous agents can handle the manually intensive parts of a typical sales workflow; for example, researching sales leads while allowing reps to spend more time in front of the customers selling and closing revenue. This is what we call agentic sales—where humans guide agents through fully autonomous workflows, transforming the sales journey and delivering meaningful customer engagements. Becoming an agentic sales organization is top mind for leaders, but many don’t know where to start.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

Close more deals and increase seller efficiency with an AI-powered CRM solution.

Get started today.

The pressure to deliver on customer expectations is higher than ever. Buyers want faster responses and better customer experience and are willing to walk away if those needs are not met. But with data barriers and organizational silos teams globally are struggling to meet these demands. In the face of these challenges, yesterday’s CRM systems are taking time away from what matters—building relationships and delivering personalized interactions across the sales journey. Sales leaders now rely on AI to provide sales insights and recommend next best actions from their customer data; and they are increasingly looking to agents to automate and augment work like researching, qualifying, and drafting outreach. Gartner predicts that by 2028, at least 15% of day-to-day work decisions will be autonomously through agentic AI, up from 0% in 2024.¹

We’re excited to share that Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant* for Sales Force Automation for the fifteenth consecutive year.

How Microsoft is making selling easier

Reimagine resource-intensive workflows across the sales pipeline

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales enables sellers to boost sales outcomes and improve customer experience powered by a CRM system that embeds AI and agents throughout the key stages of the deal cycle. Sellers can develop, prioritize, and close pipeline faster by adopting a consistent cadence across teams with autonomous AI agents and Copilot. Dynamics 365 helps sellers stay on top of their deals and deliver high-quality customer engagements across touchpoints with AI-powered engagement guidance and real-time action recommendations. With conversational intelligence built-in, sellers get real-time call transcriptions, sentiment analysis, and actionable insights that help them stay focused and responsive. Sales managers are able to use these insights to scale winning teams and grow their business with intelligent forecasting. Sales operations leads are able to tailor the agentic sales solution to meet the needs of the business and deliver sales efficiency with trust and accountability.

Integration with an expanded ecosystem 

Organizations can harness the breadth of the Microsoft Cloud to empower their sales teams with intelligent, connected experiences—easily integrating data, collaboration, and AI-powered insights. Integrated collaboration tools that streamline communication and drive accountability across marketing, sales, and service departments. Embedded Microsoft Teams chat within Dynamics 365 enables real-time discussions through dedicated teams and channels, fostering cross-functional alignment. With Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales sellers can easily share opportunities, leads, and account information plus set up deal rooms directly in Teams with automatic sharing of data and files from Dynamics 365 Sales. Copilot in Power Apps makes it easier than ever to tailor the sales experience. Whether it’s customizing dashboards, building forms, or automating workflows, sellers can use natural language to optimize the user interface around how you work. It’s a smarter, faster way to extend Dynamics 365 Sales—without needing to write a single line of code.

Our customer’s success 

Ricoh Japan drives digital transformation with Dynamics 365 Sales incorporating generative AI for enhanced sales capabilities and seamless integration with Microsoft 365.

Among the most significant benefits of implementing Dynamics 365 Sales for Ricoh was their new access to generative AI technology. As an example of how Ricoh Japan is using generative AI, product recommendations from four sources appear when users access the new system: from daily reports entered in Dynamics 365 Sales, from industry information on the web, from purchase history, and top-selling products by customer segment. “These all appear automatically,” says Kazunari Sakai, CRM Promotion Group Leader in the CRM Planning Office, Marketing Center, Digital Service Sales Division at Ricoh Japan. “Microsoft 365 Copilot is used to summarize Outlook emails as well as chats and meetings conducted using Teams.”

There are many strengths in our sales process that we have honed over a 20-year period and hope to carry forward. Dynamics 365 Sales integrates with Power Platform, a line of products facilitating low-code/no-code development and able to meet our Fit to Standard framework.”

—Makoto Nagai, General Manager of the CRM Promotion Office, DX Promotion Center, Corporate Planning Division, Ricoh Japan

As organizations continue to begin adopting AI agents, Microsoft is here guiding each team as they become an agentic sales organization built on trust and security in leading products like Dynamics 365 Sales.

¹Gartner®, Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2025, October 2024

²Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms, Adnan Zijadic, Guy Wood, Steve Rietberg, Wendy Butler-Mafuz, 21 July 2025.

*The report was titled Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation from 2007-2008. Microsoft was recognized as Microsoft Dynamics CRM from 2011-2014 and as Microsoft (Dynamics CRM Online) in 2015-2016. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

**This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Microsoft.

The post Microsoft named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Sales Force Automation Platforms    appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We’re excited to share that as of March 5, 2025, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center has officially become Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant. This significant achievement highlights our dedication to security, privacy, and regulatory standards, particularly benefiting customers in healthcare. 

Why HIPAA compliance matters 

Healthcare providers deal daily with sensitive patient information, making data security essential — not just for compliance, but to maintain patient trust. With Dynamics 365 Contact Center now meeting HIPAA standards, healthcare organizations can confidently use AI agent-driven interactions and human support, knowing patient data remains secure. 

With HIPAA compliance, healthcare providers can: 

• Safely utilize AI-driven voice agents (IVR) and digital messaging bots for tasks like patient scheduling and information management. 

• Provide human agents with compliant, secure tools to improve patient interactions. 

• Build greater patient confidence through robust data security measures. 

Recent compliance achievements 

In addition to HIPAA, Dynamics 365 Contact Center has achieved several other critical compliance milestones in recent months: 

• Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) Compliance (January 2025): Ensuring secure handling of financial transactions within contact centers. 

• International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Compliance (December 2024): Meeting rigorous international standards for security and operational excellence. 

• System and Organization Controls (SOC2) Compliance (November 2024): Demonstrating strong operational controls and reliable management practices. 

These certifications reflect our ongoing commitment to maintaining high security and privacy standards. To explore more about Dynamics 365 Contact Center compliance, visit the Dynamics 365 Contact Center Compliance page here. Additionally, you can learn about broader Dynamics 365 Customer Service compliance here. 

Recent enhancements in Dynamics 365 Contact Center 

Since launching in July 2024, Dynamics 365 Contact Center has continuously improved its capabilities, making it easier for agents to provide exceptional service and for customers to have better experiences: 

• Multilingual voice agents: Support multiple languages using a single voice agent authored in Copilot Studio, simplifying bot management, accelerating deployments, and allowing customers to switch languages seamlessly mid-call. Learn more 

• Enhanced speech sensitivity settings: Adjust voice recognition sensitivity according to your specific use cases, improving accuracy and interaction quality. Learn more 

• Advanced reporting dashboards: Quickly access real-time and historical data, with filters based on phone numbers, caller details, and interaction languages, enabling better decision-making and faster responses. Learn more 

• Enhancements in unified routing and automatic assignment: Assign work from higher-priority queues to agents first, update queue memberships for agents in real time, and use overflow to manage long waiting conversations in queues. Learn more  

• Improved third-party integrations: Seamlessly connect the customer service representative (human agent) experience with ServiceNow, accelerating integrations with third-party CRMs for enhanced efficiency. Learn More 

• Copilot Studio-powered Customer Feedback Surveys (preview): Easily gather valuable customer feedback during interactions, leveraging AI to continuously enhance service quality. Learn more 

• First-party WhatsApp integration (preview): Seamless integration of the WhatsApp channel into the contact center via Azure Communication Services.  Learn more 

• Self-serve customer facing diagnostics in AppInsights (preview): Customers can now view conversation lifecycle telemetry including routing to detect issues and drive for resolution. Learn more 

Learn more

Dynamics 365 Contact Center provides Microsoft Copilot Studio, the AI-agent authoring tool, to create intelligent agents for both customer self-service and support for customer service reps. Discover the latest innovations on the Copilot Studio blog. 

For additional details on Dynamics 365 Contact Center’s capabilities and compliance achievements, please reach out to your Microsoft representative — we’d love to connect. 

The post Dynamics 365 Contact Center strengthens patient trust with HIPAA compliance  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Sellers often need to manage numerous long documents to understand customers’ unique requirements and deliver the personalized attention advancing deals. These documents require sellers to invest significant time reviewing and understanding them, leaving sales team less time for their customers. With the summarization capabilities provided by Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales, sellers can now obtain pertinent details from sales documents in minutes. Sellers quickly gain insights into customer requirements, budget details, timelines, and main decision makers, enabling them to prepare for prospect meetings more effectively and engage in more informed and meaningful conversations. 

Close deals faster with seller-specific document summary

Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales can create summaries of sales documents that include insights specific to your sales team’s needs. For example, sellers can quickly get details about the issuing organization, items to be procured, deadlines and timelines for submitting a proposal, contact information and meetings with stakeholders mentioned in the document, and other important information needed to move a deal forward, such as compliance and legal considerations. 

Sellers can ask Copilot to summarize sales documents stored in SharePoint or associated with any lead, contact, opportunity, and account in Dynamics 365 Sales. 

Next steps 

• Learn more about summarizing documents linked to records in Dynamics 365 Sales. 

• Not yet a Dynamics 365 Sales customer? Take a tour and start your free trial today. 

The post Boost seller productivity with document summary by Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In today’s rapidly evolving sales environment, staying ahead of the curve is more crucial than ever. The latest updates to Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales, particularly its enhanced integration with Outlook, are transforming how sales professionals gear up for their meetings. Let’s dive into how these new functionalities not only streamline preparation but also enrich customer interactions. 

Streamlined Outlook integration for comprehensive sales meeting preparation

Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales expands its integration capabilities with Outlook, specifically accommodating users who have not enabled server-side sync. This pivotal update accelerates adoption, providing a unified platform where sales professionals can access and prepare for their Outlook-scheduled sales appointments directly within Dynamics 365. This coherence not only simplifies the logistical aspects of sales preparation but also enhances the overall efficiency and effectiveness of sales operations. 

Proactive meeting preparation

Copilot now allows sales teams to fetch Outlook meetings for the upcoming week, enabling them to prepare proactively. The ability to view detailed agendas and prepare in advance transforms how sales teams interact with clients, paving the way for more successful outcomes.

Refined meeting summaries for enhanced client interactions

The upgraded meeting preparation tool in Copilot for Dynamics 365 Sales now offers richer, more detailed summaries. This enhancement provides sales teams with critical insights and key talking points, tailored to each meeting’s context. Such targeted preparation boosts confidence and competence, enabling sales professionals to tailor their approaches to meet the specific needs and interests of each client, enhancing the effectiveness of their pitches. 

Harnessing innovations for sales excellence 

The recent updates to Copilot in D365 Sales are a testament to our commitment to enhance the user experience and functionality of our sales management tools. By leveraging these new features, sales teams can enhance their productivity, improve client interactions, and ultimately drive more successful outcomes. As the digital landscape evolves, tools like Copilot in D365 Sales are invaluable for staying competitive in the fast-paced world of sales. 

Next steps

Learn more on leveraging Copilot in D365 Sales to prepare for meetings: 
Stay ahead with Copilot | Microsoft Learn 

Not a Dynamics 365 Sales customer yet? Take a guided tour and sign up for a free trial at Dynamics 365 Sales overview.    

The post Leveraging Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales to prepare for sales meeting appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In today’s digital-first environment, effective communication is crucial for maintaining strong business relationships and driving sales success. Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales enhances this aspect by integrating with the rich text editor, revolutionizing how professionals manage their email interactions. This blog delves into how the Copilot’s capabilities can simplify and refine the email drafting process, ensuring every message is crafted to engage and convert. 

Copilot integrates seamlessly with the rich text editor, providing a sophisticated platform for composing emails. This integration facilitates the use of AI-driven suggestions during the drafting process, enabling quick creation of precise and impactful communications. The combination of the Rich Text Editor’s user-friendly interface with Copilot’s intelligent recommendations bridges the gap between rapid email drafting and maintaining content quality.

AI-Powered drafting for enhanced precision and relevance

Copilot transforms email drafting into a more efficient and targeted process. Leveraging AI, it offers contextual suggestions based on the customer’s interaction history and previous communications. This not only speeds up the drafting process but also ensures that each email is personalized and relevant, significantly enhancing the quality and effectiveness of outbound communications.

Dynamic adjustments for tailored email interactions

Beyond basic drafting, the rich text editor equipped with Copilot allows for dynamic adjustments to emails. For example, fine-tuning aspects like language, tone, and style to better match the recipient’s expectations and the specific sales context. This adaptive functionality ensures that each email is crafted to maximize engagement and impact, fostering stronger customer connections and driving superior business results.

Advancing email communications with Copilot

The synergy between Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales and the rich text editor marks a significant advancement in how sales professionals handle email communications. By employing AI for both drafting and refining emails, sales teams can optimize their time on high-value sales activities. As businesses navigate the complexities of digital interactions, Copilot emerges as an indispensable tool, empowering sales organizations to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in their communication strategies.

Next steps

Read more on Copilot in D365 Sales email integration: 

Add the Copilot control to the rich text editor  

Use Copilot in the email rich text editor  

Add the rich text editor control to a model-driven app  

Manage feature settings – Power Platform   

Not a Dynamics 365 Sales customer yet? Take a guided tour and sign up for a free trial at Dynamics 365 Sales overview.   

The post Elevating email efficiency using Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales and the rich text editor  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In today’s fast-paced sales landscape, prioritizing core selling activities over low-value tasks is crucial. Time spent on tasks that don’t directly contribute to sales represents missed opportunities to connect with prospects and close deals. With Dynamics 365 Sales, we’re committed to using AI to support sellers in focusing their time on what truly matters: forging meaningful connections, establishing trust, and nurturing long-term relationships to increase their sales productivity. Copilot empowers sellers to achieve greater results with less effort, enhancing your sales organization’s effectiveness. We’re happy to share that the following features are releasing this month.

Copilot chat Q&A in Dynamics 365 Sales

Copilot chat with Q&A transforms how sellers access data in your customer relationship management (CRM) system. Instead of building complicated queries or manually searching for information, sellers can ask questions using natural language. They can access vital information immediately, allowing them to focus on high-value activities like engaging customers and closing deals. The result is more time for meaningful interactions, potentially leading to higher conversion rates and increased revenue.

Natural-language Q&A is particularly valuable in fast-paced sales environments, ensuring quick, informed actions. This feature elevates customer interactions, positioning teams for higher sales productivity. Its impact extends beyond convenience, shaping the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire sales process.

Sales-specific chat experience  

One of the key features of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales is that the chat experience is specific to the sales process. Sellers can use common sales terms and phrases to ask questions and get answers from the CRM system, without having to navigate through complex menus or screens. This saves time and effort for sellers, allowing them to focus on their customers and prospects.

Some of the sales terms that Copilot understands are conversion rate, deal cycle, pipeline, deal size, win rate, and deal value. Sellers and managers can use these terms to query various aspects of the sales process, like the performance of individual sellers, teams, or regions, the progress of opportunities, and the trends and forecasts of sales outcomes. Copilot can also handle complex queries with multiple terms, filters, and aggregations.

For example, you can ask Copilot:

• “Show the opportunity conversion rate for the last 4 quarters by quarter.”
• “What’s the win rate for Kenny Smith?”
• “What is the average deal size for successful opportunities?”

These examples illustrate how Copilot can help sellers access relevant information from your CRM system in a natural and intuitive way, using sales-specific terms in a chat experience. Copilot chat Q&A enhances your sales team’s productivity and efficiency and their ability to meaningfully engage with customers and prospects.

Your CRM data is always secure

Copilot respects the security and user access privilege settings of your CRM system. This means that if a seller doesn’t have permission to view or edit certain records, those records aren’t included in Copilot’s responses. For example, if you ask Copilot about the pipeline value for a region that you aren’t assigned to, Copilot informs you that you don’t have sufficient privileges to view the requested data. This ensures that Copilot maintains the integrity and confidentiality of your CRM data while providing insights and recommendations. 

Immersive Copilot workspace

We are also launching the public preview of a new immersive Copilot experience in Dynamics 365 Sales. An expanded workspace enhances focus on productive conversations with Copilot, while real-time insights and effortless natural language chat functionality help sellers efficiently manage sales activities, nurture customer relationships, and drive sales success. Seamless access to insights from CRM data simplifies prioritizing actions and smarter decision-making. 

The immersive experience works in sync with the Copilot chat pane. Start a conversation in the immersive workspace, select a record, and continue the conversation in the Copilot chat. The coherent experience makes it easy to navigate in the app without losing context. 

Use the immersive workspace

The immersive experience is in preview so that we can make improvements based on your valuable feedback. To use the immersive experience in your environment, you’ll need to turn on preview features for Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales. In the Sales Hub app, Copilot is automatically added to the site map under My Work. If you use a custom app, add the Copilot page to your app’s site map. To enter the immersive workspace, select My Work > Copilot.

Transform your sales processes with Copilot

Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales helps your sellers save time and stay focused on the things that really matter. They get the information they need faster with less context switching, making their day-to-day activities more efficient and boosting your team’s overall sales productivity.

Next steps

Learn more about Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales

Turn on and set up Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales 

Not yet a Dynamics 365 Sales user? Sign up for a free trial today.

The post Transform seller effectiveness with Dynamics 365 Sales Copilot appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Sellers are often faced with situations where they need to sift through a lot of information to find the one piece they need. There are often extensive knowledge bases where sellers need to search for information, and lots of precious time is lost in the process.  

We are here to help with that! 

With our new features outlined below, sellers can access relevant sales information from SharePoint through the Copilot chat interface in Dynamics 365 Sales. 

By automating the extraction of critical insights from sales documents, Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales frees up valuable time for sales teams to focus on nurturing leads, closing deals, and delivering exceptional customer experiences. With Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales, businesses can streamline their sales processes, gain deeper customer insights, and ultimately drive greater revenue growth. Copilot in D365 Sales empowers sales teams to work smarter, not harder, and achieve unparalleled efficiency in their daily operations. 

Contextual content recommendations

With this feature, the system seamlessly reads the CRM context, and intelligently recommends relevant product and account-related files. For example, sellers are provided with content recommendations regarding the products added to opportunities. From PDFs to Word documents and PowerPoint presentations, the Copilot pane in D365 Sales provides instant access to the most pertinent sales materials, empowering sales reps to make informed decisions and deliver personalized experiences to customers. This could include sales pitch decks, account strategy collaterals, product brochures and training materials that are made available to sellers. As a result, sales interactions are tailored and impactful, driving stronger customer engagement and business growth. 

Users effortlessly access contextual file recommendations in Copilot in D365 Sales by selecting from the sparkle icon (marked in the image below) or typing queries in their preferred language. Sorted by relevance, the latest files and most popular results appear first. Files can be viewed, downloaded, or shared via email, ensuring seamless collaboration. Additionally, users can specify keywords for targeted searches, enhancing efficiency while upholding data security. Copilot in D365 Sales respects user permissions, displaying only accessible SharePoint files. 

SharePoint Q&A

Sellers can now easily navigate through sales documents and literature by simply asking questions. Leveraging Azure OpenAI technology, Copilot in D365 Sales swiftly scans through data and literature, summarizing pertinent information from SharePoint documents. This seamless integration empowers sellers to swiftly access insights, enhancing productivity and enabling quick, informed responses to customer inquiries. 

In Copilot in D365 Sales, accessing answers is seamlessly integrated with your SharePoint documents. Simply type your question in the Copilot pane using natural language and hit Enter – no need to navigate through any of your files and folders! For instance, inquire about warranty periods or prices directly. Copilot initiates a search in SharePoint. Should the answer reside in one or more files in SharePoint, Copilot offers a concise response alongside links to relevant documents, ensuring comprehensive insights are just a click away. 

Next steps

Increasing your sales team’s efficiency could be as simple as having all the information just a click away! 

To get started with this new capability: 

Use Copilot to get content recommendations and answers from SharePoint

Not a Dynamics 365 Sales customer yet? Take a guided tour and sign up for a free trial at Dynamics 365 Sales overview. 

AI solutions built responsibly. 

Enterprise grade data privacy at its core. Azure OpenAI offers a range of privacy features, including data encryption and secure storage. It allows users to control access to their data and provides detailed auditing and monitoring capabilities. Copilot is built on Azure OpenAI, so enterprises can rest assured that it offers the same level of data privacy and protection.  

Responsible AI by design. We are committed to creating responsible AI by design. Our work is guided by a core set of principles: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. We are putting those principles into practice across the company to develop and deploy AI that will have a positive impact on society.  

The post Copilot in D365 Sales boosts efficiency with content recommendations and Q&A   appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Editor: Denis Conway

Introduction:

Dynamics 365 Commerce is a comprehensive omnichannel solution that empowers retailers to deliver personalized, seamless, and differentiated shopping experiences across physical and digital channels. In the 2024 release Wave 1, Dynamics 365 Commerce continues to innovate and enhance its capabilities to improve store associate productivity and meet the evolving needs of customers and businesses. Here are some of the highlights of the new features coming soon:

Copilot in Site builder is going global and multi-lingual:

Copilot in Site builder is a generative AI assistant that helps users create engaging and relevant content for their e-commerce sites. Copilot uses the product information and the user’s input to generate product enrichment content that is crafted using brand tone and tailored for targeted customer segments.

In the 2024 release wave 1, Copilot in Site builder is expanding its language support to include support for 23 additional locales including German, French, Spanish, and more. This feature demonstrates Microsoft’s commitment to making Copilot accessible globally and empowering users to create multilingual content with ease and efficiency.

Strengthening our dedication to creating a comprehensive B2B solution for Digital Commerce by supporting B2B indirect commerce

Dynamics 365 Commerce supports both B2C and B2B commerce scenarios, enabling retailers to sell directly to consumers and businesses. In the 2024 release wave 1, Dynamics 365 Commerce fortifies its B2B investments by introducing support for B2B indirect commerce, which enables manufacturers selling through a network of distributors to get complete visibility into their sales and inventory.

New distributor capabilities enable manufacturers to provide a self-service platform that simplifies distributor operations and builds meaningful, long-lasting business relationships through efficient and transparent transactions. Distributors can access product catalogs and pricing specific to their partner agreements, manufacturers can place orders on behalf of their customers with specific distributor, and outlets can track order status and history.

Dynamics 365 Commerce also streamlines multi-outlet ordering, enabling business buyers that are associated with more than one outlet organization to buy for all of them. Commerce provides the ability to seamlessly buy for multiple organizations using the same email account, enabling buyers to be more efficient.

Additionally, Dynamics 365 Commerce supports advance ordering, which is a common practice in some businesses to order products in advance to ensure they have adequate stock when needed. This feature enables customers to specify the desired delivery date and include additional order notes.

Also, introducing support for a promotions page on an e-commerce site that serves as a hub to showcase various deals and promotions that shoppers can take advantage of. The promotions page can display active and upcoming promotions.

Adyen Tap to Pay is coming to Store Commerce app on iOS

The Store Commerce app is a mobile point of sale (POS) solution that enables store associates to complete transactions through a mobile device on the sales floor, pop-up store, or remote location. The Store Commerce app supports various payment methods, such as cash, card, gift card, and loyalty points.

In the 2024 release wave 1, Dynamics 365 Commerce is introducing Adyen Tap to Pay capabilities into the Store Commerce app for iOS, so that retailers everywhere can accept payments directly on Apple iPhones. Adyen Tap to Pay enhances the utility and versatility of the Store Commerce app, as it eliminates the need for additional hardware or peripherals to process payments. It also enables retailers to offer a more customer-centric and engaging in-store retail experience, as store associates can interact with customers anywhere in the store and complete transactions on the spot.

Speed up your checkout process with simplified and consistent payment workflows for different payment methods on Store Commerce app

Efficiency and predictability are key to the smooth operation of a point of sale (POS) system, especially when it comes to payment processing. When store associates can process customer payments across a variety of payment types with minimal friction, customers spend less time waiting and more time shopping.

In the 2024 release wave 1, Dynamics 365 Commerce is improving the POS payment processing user experience to create more consistent workflows across payment types. The new user experience simplifies the payment selection and confirmation process, reduces the number of clicks and screens, and provides clear feedback and guidance to the store associate. The new user experience also supports split tendering, which allows customers to pay with multiple payment methods in a single transaction.

The improved POS payment processing user experience will contribute to efficiencies in the checkout process and more satisfied customers. It will also reduce the training time and effort for store associates, as they can easily learn and master the payment workflows.

Enabling retailers to effectively monitor and track inventory of Batch-controlled products via Store Commerce app

Batch-controlled products are products that are manufactured in batches and associated with unique identifiers for quality control and traceability. Batch-controlled products are commonly used in food, chemical, and electronics industries, where the quality and safety of the products are critical.

In the 2024 release wave 1, Dynamics 365 Commerce enhances the Store Commerce app to support batch-controlled products. This feature enables store associates to scan or enter the batch number of the products during the sales or return transactions and validate the batch information against the inventory records. This feature also enables store associates to view the batch details of the products, such as the expiration date, manufacture date, and lot number.

With these new features, Dynamics 365 Commerce aims to provide you with the best tools and solutions to grow your business and delight your customers. Whether you want to create engaging and relevant content for your e-commerce site, automate and integrate your order management workflows, expand your B2B commerce opportunities, or improve your payment processing and inventory management, Dynamics 365 Commerce has something new for you.

To learn more about Dynamics 365 Commerce:

Learn more about additional investments and timeline for these investments here in release plans.

Visit our website on commerce today.

The post Empowering Business innovation for modernizing Retailers and manufacturers with Copilot: Unleashing Dynamics 365 Commerce investments for 2024 Wave 1 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.