Insights for Sales Professionals | The Microsoft Cloud Blog http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/job-function/sales/ Tue, 26 Nov 2024 19:26:09 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 AI agents — what they are, and how they’ll change the way we work https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/ai/ai-agents-what-they-are-and-how-theyll-change-the-way-we-work/ https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/ai/ai-agents-what-they-are-and-how-theyll-change-the-way-we-work/#respond Tue, 19 Nov 2024 16:00:00 +0000 An agent takes the power of generative AI a step further, because instead of just assisting you, agents can work alongside you or even on your behalf.

The post AI agents — what they are, and how they’ll change the way we work appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

]]>
It’s Monday morning, the caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet, and you have a busy day ahead: Maybe you have piles of returns or new shipping invoices to review, or you need to get the latest updates out to your field technicians or help employees get more efficient IT support.

Now you can get help with all of this and more by simply asking an AI agent to take care of it — while you drink a second cup of coffee and focus on your team’s long-term strategy.

An agent can tackle certain tasks with you or for you, from acting as a virtual project manager to handling more complex assignments like reconciling financial statements to close the books. Microsoft 365 Copilot is already a personal assistant that helps with everything from tedious daily duties to jumpstarting creative projects. Using it to interact with various agents brings a new world of possibilities for organizations to empower their employees, drive business and accomplish even more.

Agents can operate around the clock to review and approve customer returns or go over shipping invoices to help businesses avoid costly supply-chain errors. They can reason over reams of product information to give field technicians step-by-step instructions or use context and memory to open and close tickets for an IT help desk.

“Think of agents as the new apps for an AI-powered world,” says Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer for AI at Work. “We’re rapidly adding new capabilities to tackle individuals’ biggest pain points at work and drive real business results.”

Line drawing of a magnifying glass.

What are agents, anyway?

An agent takes the power of generative AI a step further, because instead of just assisting you, agents can work alongside you or even on your behalf. Agents can do a range of things, from responding to questions to more complicated or multistep assignments. What sets them apart from a personal assistant is that they can be tailored to have a particular expertise.

For example, you could create an agent to know everything about your company’s product catalog so it can draft detailed responses to customer questions or automatically compile product details for an upcoming presentation.

Other agents can do even more, acting on your behalf, like one that helps fulfill sales orders — freeing you up to focus on building new customer relationships. Having agents handle some of these routine needs can boost productivity across industries, from manufacturing and research to finance and retail, helping businesses save time and money.

You can use ready-made agents in Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365, or build custom agents to help with more specific needs in Copilot Studio.

Imagine you’re a salesperson with big quarterly goals to meet. Copilot acts as your personal assistant, drafting emails, recapping a meeting you missed and helping you design a polished sales presentation. Meanwhile, an agent specialized in sales lead generation works autonomously in the background to find new prospects you can follow up with later in the week. Copilot partners on daily tasks, and your purpose-built agent uses its customized skills to help you meet your end-of-quarter goals.

AI agents are not only a way to get more value for people but are going to be a paradigm shift in terms of how work gets done.

Agents are not new. Microsoft has done extensive research in the area and even created a multi-agent library last year for developers around the world, work that helped shape what agents can do today.  They’re getting more attention now because recent advances in large language models (LLMs) help anyone — even outside the developer community — communicate with AI. That agent-LLM duo makes AI tools more tangibly useful.

“People expect AI to do things for them,” not to just generate language, says Ece Kamar, the managing director of Microsoft’s AI Frontiers Lab. “If you want to have a system that can really solve real world problems and help people, that system has to have a good understanding of the world we live in, and when something happens, that system has to perceive that change and take action accordingly.”

Agents are like layers on top of the language models that observe and collect information, provide input to the model and together generate an action plan and communicate that to the user — or even act on their own, if permitted. So both agents and models are equally important pieces of the puzzle, as far as generative AI tools go.

Agents will become more useful and able to have more autonomy with innovations in their three necessary elements: memory, entitlements and tools.

Memory helps provide continuity so that each time you ask for something, it isn’t like starting from scratch.

“To be autonomous you have to carry context through a bunch of actions, but the models are very disconnected and don’t have continuity the way we do, so every prompt is in a vacuum and it might pull the wrong memory out,” says Sam Schillace, Microsoft’s deputy chief technology officer. “It’s like you’re watching a stop-motion animation, one isolated frame after another, and your mind puts it into motion. The clay model doesn’t move on its own.”

To build up the memory infrastructure to address this, Schillace and his team are working on a process of chunking and chaining. That’s essentially what it sounds like: They’re experimenting with dividing up interactions in bits that can be stored and linked together by relevance for faster access, akin to a memory — like grouping conversations about a certain project so an agent can recall those details when you ask for a status update and not have to search through its entire database.

The work with entitlements and tools is making sure agents have secure access to, or are entitled to, information they need in order to accomplish things for you, with your permission — like who your boss is, for example — and to the computer programs they need to take action on your behalf, like Teams and PowerPoint.

Line drawing of a hand holding a wrench.

How to use and build agents for work

You can already create and publish agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot that can help you in your daily work as easily as you’d create a spreadsheet or presentation — no coding skills required.

You don’t need to be a developer to build agents using Copilot Studio, either. Anyone can connect them to relevant business data such as emails, reports and customer management systems so they can perform tasks and provide insights.

And you’ll soon be able to enlist new agents in Microsoft 365 to help with common workflows and tasks. Interpreter in Teams will provide real-time speech-to-speech translation during meetings, for example, and you can opt to have it simulate your voice. The Employee Self-Service Agent will simplify human resource and IT help desk-related tasks like helping workers resolve a laptop issue or find out if they’ve maxed out certain benefits, and it can connect to company systems for further customization in Copilot Studio.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 will have agents as well for a range of common business workflows across sales, supply chain, finance and customer service functions.

And every SharePoint site will soon come equipped with an agent tailored to your organization’s content that allows employees to quickly tap into these vast knowledge bases and find exactly what they need in seconds, whether it’s project details buried in a workback schedule or a summary of a recent product memo.

Developers have even more options. With the new Azure AI Agent Service, you’ll be able to choose from small or large language models to orchestrate, develop and scale agent-powered apps to streamline and automate complex workflows like order processing and customer data synchronization. It provides a software development kit with tools for developing agents, allowing you to efficiently integrate agent capabilities using Visual Studio Code and GitHub.

One type of model, OpenAI’s recently announced o1 series, can bring more advanced reasoning capabilities to agents, allowing them to take on more complicated tasks by breaking them down into steps — like getting the information someone on an IT help desk would need to solve a problem, factoring in solutions they’ve tried and coming up with a plan.

You can also use the power of agents in LinkedIn; the platform’s first agent can help recruiters with hiring.

Line drawing of a padlock with key.

Assessing risk for autonomous action

There are extra safety considerations with agents that can act autonomously, and Microsoft is focused on making sure agents only access what you want them to, says Sarah Bird, the company’s chief product officer of Responsible AI.

“Agents certainly up the stakes from a responsible AI point of view,” Bird says. “So we have to have much, much lower error rates. And there’s many more nuanced ways in which something could be an error. This is the big challenge with agents.”

But the same responsible AI foundational playbook for other AI applications can be used to assess and mitigate risk with agents, she says.

The new Copilot Control System helps IT departments manage Copilot and agents with data access and governance, management and security controls, as well as measurement reports and tools to track adoption and business value.

Many agents, like those created for Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365, include “human in the loop” approvals, where people are required to take the final step of reviewing and sending an email the Sales Order Agent wrote, for example. And for agents developed in Copilot Studio, authors can review the records to see which actions the agent took and why.

The key is to focus on testing and moderating to ensure accuracy, Bird says, and for organizations to choose the right starting point for their needs.

“We will of course make progress by building on the foundation we already have, so we’re starting the journey from a strong place,” Bird says.

Line drawing of an illuminated light bulb

Looking back — and into the future

Technologists have long been excited by the idea of autonomous systems working side-by-side with people to help them, says Kamar, who has been working on AI agents since 2005 and even wrote her Ph.D. thesis on the topic in 2010. The hurdle was that “we lacked that general problem-solving power” on the back end, she says.

With LLMs, “we finally have this missing component,” she says. “Now we can bring back a lot of the ideas from our decades of research.”

Going forward, Kamar envisions a new ecosystem or marketplace of agents, sort of like how apps empower people to do more with their smartphones.

Agents already have “the basic building blocks of what it takes to complete a task,” she says. “Like observing, ‘I can see your meeting is taking longer; I should delay the next meeting.’”

They’re getting more helpful as they gain autonomy through the innovations in memory and entitlements. They’re relieving pain points for employees by helping with things like expense reporting, project management and meeting facilitation. And they’re driving exponential impact for businesses by taking on duties like alerting supply chain managers to low inventory and then automatically reordering to help drive sales and keep customers satisfied.

Agents matter because they “open up a whole set of opportunities for working with people for getting tasks done, and that’s what we expect from AI systems,” Kamar says. “AI agents are not only a way to get more value for people but are going to be a paradigm shift in terms of how work gets done.”

And this is just the beginning. Copilot is set to evolve with new capabilities like Copilot Actions, designed to handle routine tasks that can bog down employees like summarizing emails missed during time off, compiling agenda items and generating monthly reports. More capabilities like these are coming over the next year to lift the weight of work for employees and teams.

“Copilot will empower every employee to do their best work in less time, and focus on more meaningful tasks,” Spataro says. “And agents created in Copilot Studio will transform every business process, helping companies streamline operations, enhance collaboration and drive innovation at scale.”

Illustrations by Michał Bednarski / Makeshift Studios

The post AI agents — what they are, and how they’ll change the way we work appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

]]>
https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/ai/ai-agents-what-they-are-and-how-theyll-change-the-way-we-work/feed/ 0
How real-world businesses are transforming with AI https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/11/26/how-real-world-businesses-are-transforming-with-ai/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/11/26/how-real-world-businesses-are-transforming-with-ai/#respond Tue, 12 Nov 2024 17:05:00 +0000 We’ve collected more than 200 real-life examples of how organizations are partnering with Microsoft and leveraging our proven AI capabilities to achieve their strategic ambitions and solve real business challenges.

The post How real-world businesses are transforming with AI appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

]]>

One of the highlights of my career has always been connecting with customers and partners across industries to learn how they are using technology to drive their businesses forward. In the past 30 years, we’ve seen four major platform shifts, from client server to internet and the web to mobile and cloud to now—the next major platform shift to AI.

As today’s platform shift to AI continues to gain momentum, Microsoft is working to understand just how organizations can drive lasting business value. We recently commissioned a study with IDC, The Business Opportunity of AI, to uncover new insights around business value and help guide organizations on their journey of AI transformation. The study found that for every $1 organizations invest in generative AI, they’re realizing an average of 3.7x return—and uncovered insights about the future potential of AI to reshape business processes and drive change across industries. 

Today, more than 85% of the Fortune 500 are using Microsoft AI solutions to shape their future. In working with organizations large and small, across every industry and geography, we’ve seen that most transformation initiatives are designed to achieve one of four business outcomes:

  1. Enriching employee experiences: Using AI to streamline or automate repetitive, mundane tasks can allow your employees to dive into more complex, creative, and ultimately more valuable work.
  2. Reinventing customer engagement: AI can create more personalized, tailored customer experiences, delighting your target audiences while lightening the load for employees.
  3. Reshaping business processes: Virtually any business process can be reimagined with AI, from marketing to supply chain operations to finance, and AI is even allowing organizations to go beyond process optimization and discover exciting new growth opportunities.
  4. Bending the curve on innovation: AI is revolutionizing innovation by speeding up creative processes and product development, reducing the time to market and allowing companies to differentiate in an often crowded field.

In this blog, we’ve collected more than 200 of our favorite real-life examples of how organizations are embracing Microsoft’s proven AI capabilities to drive impact and shape today’s platform shift to AI. We hope you find an example or two that can inspire your own transformation journey.

IDC InfoBrief: sponsored by Microsoft, 2024 Business Opportunity of AI, IDC# US52699124, November 2024 

Enriching employee experiences

Generative AI is truly transforming employee productivity and well-being. Our customers tell us that by automating repetitive, mundane tasks, employees are freed up to dive into more complex and creative work. This shift not only makes the work environment more stimulating but also boosts job satisfaction. It sparks innovation, provides actionable insights for better decision-making, and supports personalized training and development opportunities, all contributing to a better work-life balance. Customers around the world have reported significant improvements in employee productivity with these AI solutions:

  1. Access Holdings Plc adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot, integrating generative AI into daily tools and, as a result, writing code now takes two hours instead of eight, chatbots launch in 10 days instead of three months, and presentations are prepared in 45 minutes instead of six hours.
  2. Adobe is connecting Adobe Experience Cloud workflows and insights with Microsoft 365 Copilot to deliver generative AI-powered capabilities that enable marketers to increase collaboration, efficiency, and creativity.
  3. Amadeus empowers its teams to focus their time and skills on value-added tasks with Microsoft 365 Copilot by summarizing email threads, chat, or transcripts, and summing up information from diverse sources.
  4. ANZ has invested in Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Copilot in Microsoft Edge to boost productivity and innovation across its workforce. 
  5. Asahi Europe & International (AEI) has adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot, saving employees potentially 15% of time previously spent on administrative tasks.
  6. AXA developed AXA Secure GPT, a platform powered by Azure OpenAI Service that empowers employees to leverage the power of generative AI while targeting the highest level of data safety and responsible use of the tool.
  7. Axon Enterprise developed a new AI tool with Azure OpenAI Service called Draft One, resulting in an 82% decrease in time spent on reports, which freed up officers to engage more with their community.
  8. Aztec Group enhanced productivity and client experience by trialing Microsoft 365 Copilot with 300 staff, uncovering “unlimited” use cases and plans for a wider rollout.
  9. Bader Sultan & Bros. Co. W.L.L implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to enhance employee productivity and speed up customer response times.
  10. Bancolombia is using GitHub Copilot to empower its technical team, achieving a 30% increase in code generation, boosting automated application changes to an average of 18,000 per year, with a rate of 42 productive daily deployments. 
  11. BaptistCare Community Services is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to save employees time as they navigate workforce shortage challenges allowing them to focus more on the people they care for.
  12. Barnsley Council was recognized as “Double Council of the Year in 2023” for its implementation of Microsoft 365 Copilot, which modernized operations and reduced administrative tasks, leading to improved job satisfaction and increased creativity.
  13. BlackRock purchased more than 24,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses spanning all employees, functions, and locations, helping improve the Copilot experience, including co-developing new features and functions.
  14. British Heart Foundation is testing Microsoft 365 Copilot and in its initial test, users estimate that Microsoft 365 Copilot could save them up to 30 minutes per day.
  15. Buckinghamshire Council deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot with staff reporting productivity improvements, quality enhancements, and time savings which are enabling the different teams to do more with less. 
  16. Campari Group adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot to help employees integrate it into their workflow, resulting in time savings of about two hours a week from the support of routine activities such as email management, meeting preparation, content creation, and skill acquisition.
  17. Capita is using GitHub Copilot for productivity improvements as well as improvements in developer satisfaction, recruitment, and retention.
  18. CDW used Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve work quality for 88% of users, enabling 77% to complete tasks faster, and increasing productivity for 85% of users.
  19. Chi Mei Medical Center is lightening workloads for doctors, nurses, and pharmacists with a generative AI assistant built on Azure OpenAI Service. 
  20. E.ON is focused on Germany’s energy transition, leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot to manage the complex grid in real-time, increasing productivity and efficiency for its workforce.
  21. Enerijisa Üretim has adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline meeting summaries, reformat documents, and compile reports, enabling employees to concentrate on more strategic and fulfilling activities instead of spending six hours in meetings.
  22. EPAM is deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot to consolidate information and generate content and documents. 
  23. Farm Credit Canada implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot which resulted in time savings on routine tasks for 78% of users, with 30% saving 30 to 60 minutes per week and 35% saving over an hour per week, allowing employees to focus on more value-added tasks.
  24. Finastra used Microsoft 365 Copilot to automate tasks, enhance content creation, improve analytics, and personalize customer interactions, with employees citing a 20% to 50% time savings.
  25. Four Agency Worldwide increased employee productivity using Microsoft 365 Copilot to generate ideas for creative work and support administrative-heavy processes, data analysis, and report generation, allowing staff to focus on outreach and less time doing paperwork.
  26. Goodwill of Orange County developed an AI-powered app using Azure AI capabilities to help more people, including those with developmental, intellectual, and physical disabilities, work in unfilled e-commerce positions.
  27. Honeywell employees are saving 92 minutes per week—that’s 74 hours a year! Disclaimer: Statistics are from an internal Honeywell survey of 5,000 employees where 611 employees responded.
  28. Insight employees using Copilot are seeing four hours of productivity gained per week from data summarization and content creation.
  29. Joos uses Microsoft 365 Copilot to grow its brand with worldwide collaboration by streamlining meetings, optimizing presentations, and improving communications.
  30. Kantar is harnessing the power of Microsoft 365 Copilot by reducing costly, time-consuming IT processes and boosting productivity for employees.
  31. KPMG Australia is using Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Search, and Microsoft 365 Copilot to perform advanced text analysis of dozens of client source documents to identify full or partial compliance, or noncompliance, in a fraction of the time required for manual assessments.
  32. LGT is launching Microsoft Copilot LGT to improve efficiency, showing users save an average of an hour a week even in the pilot phase. 
  33. Lotte Hotels & Resorts has been creating a new work culture that allows employees to work more efficiently and focus on the nature of the work by adopting Microsoft Power Platform for automation.
  34. MAIRE is leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot to automate routine tasks, saving more than 800 working hours per month, freeing up engineers and professionals for strategic activities while supporting MAIRE’s green energy transition by reducing their carbon footprint.
  35. McDonald’s China chose Microsoft Azure AI, GitHub Copilot, and Azure AI Search to transform its operations, resulting in a significant increase in AI adoption, consumption, and retention from 2,000 to 30,000 employee transactions monthly.
  36. McKnight Foundation adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot for all staff, saving time, increasing productivity, and freeing space to focus on strategic priorities.
  37. Morula Health is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to enhance productivity, streamline medical writing tasks, and ensure data security, ultimately improving efficiency and client satisfaction. 
  38. Motor Oil Group is achieving remarkable efficiency gains by integrating Microsoft 365 Copilot into its workflows, with staff spending minutes on tasks that used to take weeks. 
  39. Nagel-Group uses Azure OpenAI Service to help employees quickly access information which saves time, creates efficiency and transparency, and leads to higher-quality answers overall.
  40. National Australia Bank is leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot for daily productivity and data analysis and insights and Microsoft Security Copilot to quickly analyze millions of security event logs and allow engineers to focus on more important areas.
  41. NFL Players Association integrated Azure AI Services and Azure App Service into their video review process, reducing review time by up to 73%, significantly increasing efficiency and enhancing player safety through consistent rule enforcement.
  42. O2 Czech Republic boosts productivity and streamlines meetings with Microsoft 365 Copilot, revolutionizing how information is shared and making automation a part of daily work.
  43. Onepoint developed a secure conversational agent based on Azure OpenAI Service, which delivers productivity gains of between 10% and 15% across all business lines.
  44. Orange Group has more than 40 use cases with Azure OpenAI Service and GitHub Copilot across business functions to support employees in their day-to-day tasks, enabling them to concentrate on higher value-added activities.
  45. Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve staff report productivity by saving one to two hours a week, or simple formatting tasks down to a matter of seconds, enabling more resources to deliver frontline services.
  46. PA Consulting transformed its sales operations with Microsoft 365 Copilot, so its people can invest more time on the activities that have the biggest impact for clients and maximize the strategic value they provide. 
  47. Petrobras used Azure OpenAI Service to create ChatPetrobras, which is streamlining workflows, reducing manual tasks, and summarizing reports for its 110,000 employees.
  48. Petrochemical Industries Company automates work processes to save time with Microsoft 365 Copilot from weeks to days, hours to seconds.
  49. PKSHA Technology is optimizing their time on critical work by increasing efficiency in meeting preparations, data analytics, and ideation with the help of Microsoft 365 Copilot.
  50. Providence has collaborated with Nuance and Microsoft to accelerate development and adoption of generative AI-powered applications, helping improve care quality and access, and reduce physician’s administrative workloads. 
  51. RTI International adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot to gain productivity wherever possible, allowing staff to focus on their areas of expertise, delivering even better science-backed solutions for clients.
  52. Sandvik Coromant is using Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales to drive efficiency and accuracy, shaving at least one minute off each transaction, allowing sellers and account managers to focus their expertise on responding to customers’ needs with analysis, creativity, and adaptability.
  53. Sasfin Bank built a solution on Microsoft Azure that centralized 20,000 documents to analyze contract clauses and provide real-time snapshots, moving guesswork into data-driven decision-making.
  54. Scottish Water implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot reducing mundane tasks to a minimum, and thus freeing up time for employees to work on the more meaningful tasks.
  55. Shriners Children’s developed an AI platform allowing clinicians to easily and securely navigate patient data in a singular location, enhancing patient care, and improving the efficiency of their healthcare services. 
  56. Siemens is leveraging Azure OpenAI Service to improve efficiency, cut downtime, and address labor shortages.
  57. Softchoice employees are experiencing firsthand how Microsoft 365 Copilot can transform daily workflows, realizing productivity gains of 97% reduction in time spent summarizing technical meetings and up to 70% less time spent on content creation.
  58. Syensqo utilized Azure OpenAI Service to develop a custom AI chatbot in three months, which improved their internal data management, decision-making, and overall efficiency.
  59. Teladoc Health uses Microsoft 365 Copilot to revolutionize its telehealth operations, automating routine tasks, boosting efficiency, and increasing productivity.
  60. Telstra developed two cutting-edge generative AI tools based on Azure OpenAI Service: 90% of employees are using the One Sentence Summary tool which resulted in 20% less follow-up customer contact and 84% of customer service agents using the Ask Telstra solution.
  61. Topsoe achieved 85% AI adoption among office employees in seven months, significantly enhancing productivity and business processes.
  62. Torfaen County Borough Council utilized Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline back-office processes, resulting in significant time savings and enhanced productivity for both business and children’s services teams, with further rollouts planned.
  63. Trace3 leveraged Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline and enhance processes across the business and with clients, such as reducing the time it takes human resources (HR) recruiting managers to respond to applicants within a couple of days instead of several weeks.
  64. Unilever is reinventing their marketing process with Copilot, saving time on briefing tasks, automatically pulling in relevant market data, content and insights to accelerate campaign launches. 
  65. Uniper SE implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to reduce time spent on manual and repetitive tasks, and help workers focus on more pressing work, such as developing enhanced solutions to speed up the energy transition.
  66. Unum Group built a custom AI application to search 1.3 terabytes of data with 95% accuracy using Azure OpenAI Service. 
  67. Virgin Atlantic adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot and is seeing real business benefits, including productivity improvements, enabling new ways of working.
  68. Visier built a generative AI assistant that leverages Azure AI and Azure OpenAI Services to deliver workforce analytics and actionable insights for more than 50,000 customers.
  69. Virtual Dental Care developed an AI application Smart Scan that leverages Azure to reduce paperwork for mobile dental clinics in schools by 75% and frees dentists to devote more time to patient care.
  70. Zakladni Skola As Hlavkova adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot and saw a 60% improvement in handling administrative documents, decreased lesson preparation from hours to few minutes, increased inclusivity, and enhanced communication with students and parents.

Reinventing customer engagement

We’ve seen great examples of how generative AI can automate content creation, ensuring there’s fresh and engaging materials ready to go. It personalizes customer experiences by crunching the numbers and boosting conversion rates. It makes operations smoother, helping teams launch campaigns faster. Plus, it drives innovation, crafting experiences that delight customers while lightening the load for staff. Embracing generative AI is key for organizations wanting to reinvent customer engagements, stay ahead of the game, and drive both innovation and efficiency.

  1. Absa has adopted Microsoft Copilot to streamline various business processes, saving several hours on administrative tasks each day.
  2. Adobe leverages Azure to streamline the customer experience, harnessing the power of the connected cloud services and creating a synergy that drives AI transformation across industries.
  3. Acentra Health developed Medscribe, a web application that uses Azure OpenAI Service to generate draft letters in a secure, HIPAA-compliant enclave that responds to customer appeals for healthcare services within 24 hours, reducing the time spent on each appeal letter by 50%.
  4. Alaska Airlines is using Azure, Microsoft Defender, and GitHub to ensure its passengers have a seamless journey from ticket purchase to baggage pickup and started leveraging Azure OpenAI Service to unlock more business value for its customer care and contact centers.
  5. Ally Financial is using Azure OpenAI Service to reduce manual tasks for its customer service associates, freeing up time for them to engage with customers. 
  6. BMW Group optimizes the customer experience connecting 13 million active users to their vehicles with the MyBMW app on Azure, which supports 450 million daily requests and 3.2 terabyte (TB) data processing.
  7. Boyner has tripled its e-commerce performance using Azure, seeing a rise in customer satisfaction, engagement, conversion rate, and revenue.
  8. Bradesco Bank integrated Azure to its virtual assistant, BIA, resulting in reduced response time from days to hours, improving operational efficiency and client satisfaction.
  9. Capgemini Mexico integrated GitHub Copilot to support scalable AI implementations which has led to improved customer experiences and increased efficiency.
  10. Capitec Bank uses Azure OpenAI Service and Microsoft 365 Copilot, enabling their AI-powered chatbot to assist customer service consultants in accessing product information more efficiently, saving significant time for employees each week.
  11. Cdiscount is leveraging GitHub Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service to enhance developer efficiency, optimize product sheet categorization, and improve customer satisfaction.
  12. Cemex used Azure OpenAI Service to launch Technical Xpert, an AI tool used by sales agents to provide instant access to comprehensive product and customer solution information, significantly reducing search time by 80%. 
  13. Chanel elevated their client experience and improved employee efficiency by leveraging Microsoft Fabric and Azure OpenAI Service for real-time translations and quality monitoring.
  14. City of Burlington created two AI-powered solutions: MyFiles system using Microsoft Power Platform for building permits, and CoBy, an around-the-clock customer support assistant using Microsoft Copilot Studio.
  15. City of Madrid created an AI virtual assistant with Azure OpenAI Service offering tourists accurate, real-time information and personalized responses in more than 95 languages.
  16. Cognizant is making performance management more effective and meaningful with Azure Machine Learning to help clients across industries envision, build, and run innovative digital enterprises.
  17. Coles Group has leveraged Azure to enhance its digital presence and improve customer engagement, rolling out new applications to its stores six times faster without disrupting workloads.
  18. Commercial Bank of Dubai used Azure to upgrade its application infrastructure, improving transaction security and speed so individual customers can now open an account and start banking in about two minutes.
  19. Dubai Electricity and Water Authority has significantly improved productivity and customer satisfaction by integrating multiple Microsoft AI solutions, reducing task completion time from days to hours and achieving a 98% customer happiness rate.
  20. Elcome uses Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve the customer experience, reducing response times from 24 hours to eight hours.
  21. elunic developed shopfloor.GPT based on Azure OpenAI Service, leading to increased productivity for customers, saving 15 minutes per request.
  22. Estée Lauder Companies is leveraging Azure OpenAI Service to create closer consumer connections and increase speed to market with local relevancy.
  23. First National Bank (FNB) is using Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales to help bankers create professional, thoughtful emails in 13 native South African languages to enhance customer interactions, streamline communications, and reinforce its commitment to innovation and customer service. 
  24. Flora Food Group migrated to Microsoft Fabric to offer more detailed and timely insights to its customers, enhancing service delivery and customer satisfaction.
  25. Groupama deployed a virtual assistant using Azure OpenAI Service that delivers reliable, verified and verifiable information, and boasts an 80% success rate.
  26. International University of Applied Sciences (IU) adopted Azure OpenAI Service to revolutionize learning with a personalized study assistant that can interact with each student just like a human would.
  27. Investec is using Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales to enhance the bank’s client relationships, estimating saving approximately 200 hours annually ultimately boosting sales productivity and delivering personalized, seamless customer experience. 
  28. Linum is using Azure to train their text-to-video models faster and more efficiently without losing performance or wasting resources.
  29. Lumen Technologies is redefining customer success and sales processes through the strategic use of Microsoft 365 Copilot, enhancing productivity, sales, and customer service in the global communications sector.
  30. McKinsey & Companyis creating an agent to reduce client onboarding process by reducing lead time by 90% and administrative work by 30%.
  31. Meesho leveraged Azure OpenAI Service and GitHub Copilot to enhance customer service and software development, resulting in a 25% increase in customer satisfaction scores and 40% more traffic on customer service queries.
  32. Milpark Education integrated Microsoft Copilot and Copilot Studio and in just four months, improved efficiency and accuracy of student support, decreasing the average resolution time by 50% and escalations by more than 30%.
  33. NC Fusion chose a comprehensive Microsoft solution to make marketing engagement activities easier and accurately target the best audience segments.
  34. Medgate, a telehealth subsidiary of Otto Group, developed a medical Copilot powered by Azure OpenAI Service that summarizes consultations, supports triage, and provides real-time translations. 
  35. Pacific Gas & Electric built a chatbot using Microsoft Copilot Studio that saves $1.1 million annually on helpdesk support. 
  36. Pockyt is using GitHub Copilot and anticipates a 500% increase in productivity in the medium to long term as they continue adapting AI and fine-tuning their software development life cycle.
  37. South Australia Department for Education launched an AI-powered educational chatbot to help safeguard students from harmful content while introducing responsible AI to the classrooms.
  38. Sync Labs is using Azure to create AI-powered solutions that have led to a remarkable 30x increase in revenue and a 100x expansion of their customer base.
  39. Syndigo is using Azure to accelerate digital commerce for its customers by more than 40% and expand its customer base.
  40. Telkomsel created a virtual assistant with Azure OpenAI Service, resulting in a leap in customer self-service interactions from 19% to 45%, and call volume dropped from 8,000 calls to 1,000 calls a day.
  41. Torrens University chose to use Azure OpenAI to uplift its online learning experience, saving 20,000 hours and $2.4 million in time and resources.
  42. Trusting Social integrated Azure services to launch AI-driven agents that are changing how banks function and transforming their customer’s banking experience.
  43. University of California, Berkeley used Azure OpenAI Service to deploy a custom AI chatbot that supports student learning and help students with complex coursework.
  44. University of Sydney created a self-serve AI platform powered by Azure OpenAI Service, to enable faculty to build custom chatbots for enhancing student onboarding, feedback, career simulation, and more.
  45. Van Lanschot Kempen is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to reduce the time needed for daily tasks, freeing up time to invest in that crucial personal connection.
  46. Virgin Money built an award-winning virtual assistant using Copilot Studio to help build customers’ confidence in their digital products and services.
  47. VOCALLS automates over 50 million interactions per year, resulting in a 78% reduction in average handling time aside from a 120% increase in answered calls.
  48. Vodafone Group is leveraging Microsoft’s AI solutions, including Azure AI Studio, OpenAI Service, Copilot, and AI Search, to achieve a 70% resolution rate for customer inquiries through digital channels and reduce call times by at least one minute.
  49. Walmart is using Azure OpenAI Service to deliver a helpful and intuitive browsing experience for customers designed to serve up a curated list of the personalized items a shopper is looking for.
  50. Weights & Biases created a platform which runs on Azure that allows developers to keep records, log successes and failures, and automate manual tasks.
  51. World2Meet is providing better customer service and operations with a new virtual assistant powered by Azure.
  52. Xavier College is modernizing its student information systems on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Azure to unlock powerful insights, fostering innovation and data-driven decision making.
  53. Zavarovalnica Triglav implemented Dynamics 365 and Azure OpenAI Service to streamline its operations with automated responses and smart rerouting of customer enquiries.

Reshaping business processes

Transforming operations is another way generative AI is encouraging innovation and improving efficiency across various business functions. In marketing, it can create personalized content to truly engage different audiences. For supply chain management, it can predict market trends so companies can optimize their inventory levels. Human resources departments can speed up the hiring process, while financial services can use it for fraud detection and risk assessments. With generative AI, companies are not just refining their current processes, they’re also discovering exciting new growth opportunities.

  1. Accelleron used Microsoft Power Platform to support numerous business applications and simplify processes for service agents and employees, resulting in the onboard of new agents in 30 minutes, compared to two days for other solutions.
  2. Accenture developed an AI-powered financial advisor that leverages RISE with SAP on Azure to enhance their infrastructure and integrate financial data.
  3. Atomicwork leverages Azure OpenAI to bring together three power capabilities: a conversational assistant, a modern service management system, and a workflow automation platform.
  4. Blink Ops fully embraced generative AI to build the world’s first Security Automation Copilot with more than 8,000 automated workflows to help any Security/IT task through prompts.
  5. Chalhoub Group is using Microsoft Fabric to modernize its data analytics and streamline its data sources into one platform, increasing agility, enhancing analytics, and accelerating processes.
  6. Cineplex is developing innovative automation solutions for finance, guest services, and other departments, saving the company more than 30,000 hours a year in manual processing time.
  7. ClearBank moved its services to Azure to gain scalability and efficiency, pushing out 183% more monthly system releases, gaining both scalability and efficiency.
  8. Danske Statsbaner increases productivity up to 30% with help from Microsoft AI solutions.
  9. Eastman implemented Microsoft Security Copilot realizing the benefits of accelerated upskilling, step-by-step guidance for response, and faster threat remediation.
  10. Fast Shop migrated to Azure creating a self-service culture of access to data, eliminating delays, reducing costs, and increasing leadership satisfaction with data while providing more agility in reporting.
  11. Florida Crystals adopted a value-added solution across Microsoft products including Microsoft 365 Copilot to reduce telecom expenses and automate industrial process controls.
  12. GHD is reinventing the request for proposal (RFP) process in construction and engineering with Microsoft 365 Copilot.
  13. GovDash is a software as a service (SaaS) platform that leverages AI to streamline the entire business development lifecycle for government contracting companies using Azure OpenAI Service.
  14. Grupo Bimbo is deploying Microsoft’s industrial AI technologies to modernize its manufacturing processes, optimizing production and reducing downtime, driving significant cost savings, and empowering global innovation.
  15. Insight Canada implemented Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline business operations, realizing a 93% productivity gains in functions including sales, finance, and human resources.
  16. Intesa Sanpaolo Group enhanced its cybersecurity with AI-enabled Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Security Copilot, resulting in faster threat detection, increased productivity, and reduced storage costs.
  17. Kaya deployed a custom implementation of Dynamics 365 and Power BI to modernize its supply chain, leading to enhanced visibility, improved planning, and streamlined inter-department operations.
  18. Lionbridge Technologies, LLC is using Azure and Azure OpenAI Service to accelerate its delivery times and improve quality, reducing project turnaround times by up to 30%.
  19. LTIMindtree integrated Microsoft Security Copilot, offering automated incident response, integrated threat intelligence, and advanced threat analysis.
  20. Mania de Churrasco used Azure, Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft 365 to achieve high efficiency, security, and scalability in its operations, in addition to improving its data intelligence, which indirectly participated in a 20% increase in sales year on year.
  21. National Bank of Greece built an Azure-powered Document AI solution to transform its document processing, improving the bank’s accuracy to 90%. 
  22. Nest Bank has revolutionized its operations by integrating Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service, resulting in doubled sales and increased daily transactions from 60,000 to 80,000 showcasing the transformative impact of generative AI in the financial sector.
  23. Network Rail modernized their data analytics solution with Azure, helping engineers understand data 50% faster than before and improve efficiency, passenger experiences, and safety—all while saving costs.
  24. Nsure developed an AI-powered agent that uses Copilot Studio and Power Automate to reduce manual processing time by 60% while also reducing associated costs by 50%.
  25. Oncoclínicas implemented Azure to transform its entire data ecosystem with a web portal and mobile application that performs all image processing and storage.
  26. Pacífico Seguros has adopted Microsoft Security Copilot to optimize its security operations and anticipate and neutralize threats more efficiently and effectively.
  27. Parexel adopted Azure Databricks and Power BI, achieving an 85% reduction in data engineering tooling costs, a 30% increase in staff efficiency, and a 70% reduction in time to market for data product delivery.
  28. Paysafe used Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline meetings, information management, and document creation, addressing language barriers, eliminating time-consuming tasks, and boosting creativity along the way.
  29. Planted is integrating Azure OpenAI Service to manage everyday tasks more efficiently and facilitate the search for information for innovative process development.
  30. Presidio realized dramatic productivity gains saving 1,200 hours per month on average for the employees using Microsoft 365 Copilot and created 70 new business opportunities.
  31. Qatar Charity used Copilot Studio to increase its call center efficiency, reducing average handle time by 30%, increased customer satisfaction by 25%, and achieved a 40% reduction in IT maintenance costs.
  32. Saphyre uses Azure and AI to provide an intelligent cloud-based solution that automates and streamlines financial trading workflows around client and counterparty life cycle management, reducing manual efforts by 75%. 
  33. Swiss International Air Lines migrated and modernized with Azure, achieving up to 30% cost savings, a remarkable boost in platform stability along with enhanced security visibility.
  34. ZEISS Group uses Microsoft Fabric to create a secure and trusted data supply chain that can be shared effortlessly across a range of business units.
  35. ZF Group builds manufacturing efficiency with more than 25,000 apps and 37,000 unique active users on Microsoft Power Platform.

Bending the curve on innovation

Generative AI is revolutionizing innovation by speeding up creative processes and product development. It’s helping companies come up with new ideas, design prototypes, and iterate quickly, cutting down the time it takes to get to market. In the automotive industry, it’s designing more efficient vehicles, while in pharmaceuticals, it’s crafting new drug molecules, slashing years off research and development (R&D) times. In education, it transforms how students learn and achieve their goals. Here are more examples of how companies are embracing generative AI to shape the future of innovation.

  1. Air India has incorporated Microsoft 365 Copilot into multiple departments, unlocking a new realm of operational insights that not only provides critical data on flight punctuality and operational hurdles, but also empowers proactive, collaborative decision making.
  2. Agnostic Intelligence deployed Azure OpenAI Service to eliminate time-consuming tasks, saving users up to 80% of their time, and enabling IT managers to focus on innovation and quality assurance.
  3. Albert Heijn is using Azure OpenAI Service for everything from customer personalization to demand forecast and food waste projects, making it easier for its customers to change their lifestyle.
  4. Amgen is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to boost productivity and has the potential to speed up drug development and support advancements in their business processes.
  5. APEC leverages Azure and deep neural network algorithms to develop an app that enables healthcare providers to capture retinal images, increasing the accuracy to identify Retinopathy of Prematurity (RoP) to 90%.
  6. ASOS is using Azure AI Studio to help customers discover new looks with genuine shopping insights, personalized conversations, naturalism, and even humor to enliven the shopping journey.
  7. Auburn University is incorporating Microsoft Copilot to promote AI literacy, accessibility, and collaboration, with the aim to expand educational and economic opportunities for its entire academic community with AI-centric tools.
  8. B3 launched an AI assistant using Azure OpenAI Service that aids 10,000 users a day to answer Brazilians’ questions about how to start investing.
  9. Basecamp Research aims to build the world’s largest database of national biodiversity and apply AI and machine learning to advance bioscience.
  10. Bayer is using Microsoft Copilot to contribute to feeding a growing global population and helping people lead healthier, disease-free lives.
  11. Brembo leveraged Azure OpenAI Service to develop ALCHEMIX, a solution to generate innovative compounds for its brake pads, drastically reducing the development time of new compounds from days to mere minutes.
  12. Canary Speech can now train new vocal models in as little as two months and handle millions of transactions per month with Azure. 
  13. CapitaLand simplified internal processes increasing efficiency to more than 10,000 man-days saved per year and deployed Azure OpenAI Service to build the first AI hospitality chatbot for its lodging business.
  14. Cassidy is using Azure OpenAI Service to enhance efficiency across various industries, supporting more than 10,000 companies.
  15. Coca-Cola is implementing Azure OpenAI Service to develop innovative generative AI use cases across various business functions, including testing how Microsoft 365 Copilot could help improve workplace productivity.
  16. Denso is developing “human-like” robots using Azure OpenAI Service as the brain to help robots and humans work together through dialogue.
  17. eFishery is using Azure OpenAI for farmers to get the data and insights on fish and shrimp farming, including more precise feeding and water quality monitoring.
  18. EY developed an application that automatically matches and clears incoming payments in SAP, resulting in an increase from 30% to 80% in automatically cleared payments and 95% matched payments, with estimated annual time savings of 230,000 hours globally.
  19. FIDO is using Azure OpenAI Service to develop an AI tool that uses sound to pinpoint leaky pipes, saving precious drinking water. 
  20. Georgia Tech is using Azure OpenAI Service to enhance the electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure, achieving rapid data classification and predictive modeling, highlighting the reliability of networked chargers over non-networked ones.
  21. GigXR developed a solution to create the intelligence for specific AI patients using Azure OpenAI Service and other Azure services.
  22. GoTo Group is significantly enhancing productivity and code quality across its engineering teams by adopting GitHub Copilot, saving over seven hours per week and achieved a 30% code acceptance rate.
  23. GovTech used Azure OpenAI Service to create LaunchPad, sparking more than 400 ideas and 20 prototypes, laying the foundation for the government to harness the power of generative AI.
  24. H&R Block is using Azure AI Studio and Azure OpenAI Service to build a new solution that provides real-time, reliable tax filing assistance.
  25. Haut.AI provides skin care companies and retailers with customizable, AI-based skin diagnostic tools developed with the help of Microsoft AI.
  26. Helfie is building a solution that caters to healthcare providers who can arm their patients with an application to more quickly and accurately access the care they need.
  27. Hitachi will implement Azure Open AI Service, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and GitHub Copilot to create innovative solutions for the energy, mobility, and other industries.
  28. Icertis is providing AI-based tools that will recognize contract language and then build algorithms to automatically choose the right approach based on the content of the contract.
  29. ITOCHU is using Azure OpenAI Service and Azure AI Studio to evolve its data analytics dashboard into a service that provides immediate recommendations by automatically creating evidence-based product proposals.
  30. IU International University of Applied Sciences (IU) is using the power of Azure OpenAI Service to develop Syntea, an AI avatar integrated into Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot, making learning more personalized, autonomous, and flexible.
  31. Khan Academy has partnered with Microsoft to bring time-saving and lesson-enhancing AI tools to millions of educators.
  32. Lufthansa Group developed an animated 3D avatar called Digital Hangar to help guide passengers from initial travel inspiration to flight booking through an exchange with an avatar in natural language.
  33. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is using Azure OpenAI Service to help accelerate digital innovation in power plants.
  34. Molslinjen has created an AI analytics toolbox that has reduced fuel emissions, improved customer satisfaction, and brought in millions of additional revenue.
  35. Novo Nordisk recently published initial results with predictive AI models for advanced risk detection in cardiovascular diseases, including an algorithm that can predict patients’ cardiovascular risk better than the best clinical standards. 
  36. Paige.AI is using AI and Azure to accelerate cancer diagnoses with data from millions of images.
  37. Pets at Home created an agent to help its retail fraud detection team investigate suspicious transactions.  
  38. Plan Heal is using Microsoft AI to create solutions that enable patients to monitor and report health metrics so care providers can better serve them.
  39. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is testing a new battery material that was found in a matter of weeks, not years, as part of a collaboration with Microsoft.
  40. Rijksmuseum is harnessing the power of Copilot to make art accessible at scale by joining forces with Microsoft to improve and expand the art experience for blind and low-vision community members.
  41. Royal National Institute of Blind People is using Azure AI Services to develop an AI-based solution that quickly and accurately converts letters to braille, audio, and large print formats.
  42. Schneider Electric provides productivity-enhancing and energy efficiency solutions and is using a whole suite of AI tools to hasten its own innovation and that of its customers.
  43. SPAR ICS created an award-winning, AI-enabled demand forecasting system achieving 90% inventory prediction accuracy.
  44. Suzuki Motor Corporation is adopting Azure OpenAI Service for data security, driving company-wide use with five multipurpose apps.
  45. Tecnológico de Monterrey created a generative AI-powered ecosystem built on Azure OpenAI Service with the goal to personalize education based on the students’ needs, improve the learning process, boost teachers’ creativity and save time on tedious tasks.
  46. TomTom is using Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Kubernetes Service to revolutionize the driver experience.
  47. Unilever is partnering with Microsoft to identify new digital capabilities to drive product innovation forward, from unlocking the secrets of our skin’s microbiome to reducing the carbon footprint of a multibillion-dollar business.
  48. Unity used Azure OpenAI Service to build Muse Chat, an AI assistant that can guide creators through common questions and help troubleshoot issues to make game development easier.
  49. University of South Florida is using Microsoft 365 Copilot to alleviate the burden of repetitive, time-consuming tasks so faculty and staff can spend this time creatively solving problems, conducting critical research, establishing stronger relationships with peers and students, and using their expertise to forge new, innovative paths. 
  50. Visma has developed new code with GitHub Copilot, Azure DevOps, and Microsoft Visual Studio, as much as 50% faster, contributing to increased customer retention, faster time to market, and increased revenue.
  51. Wallenius Wilhelmsen is implementing Microsoft 365 Copilot and using Microsoft Viva to drive sustainable adoption, streamlining processes, empowering better decision making, and cultivating a culture of innovation and inclusion.
  52. Wipro is committed to delivering value to customers faster and improving the outcomes across the business by investing $1 billion in AI and training 200,000 employees on generative AI principles with Microsoft Copilot.

Next steps for AI transformation

Business Opportunity of AI

The post How real-world businesses are transforming with AI appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

]]>
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/11/26/how-real-world-businesses-are-transforming-with-ai/feed/ 0
New autonomous agents scale your team like never before https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/10/21/new-autonomous-agents-scale-your-team-like-never-before/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/10/21/new-autonomous-agents-scale-your-team-like-never-before/#respond Mon, 21 Oct 2024 09:35:00 +0000 Today, we’re announcing new agentic capabilities that will accelerate these gains and bring AI-first business process to every organization. 

The post New autonomous agents scale your team like never before appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

]]>
Already, 60 percent of the Fortune 500 are using Microsoft 365 Copilot to accelerate business results and empower their teams. With Copilot supporting sales associates, Lumen Technologies projects $50 million dollars in savings annually. Honeywell(1) equates productivity gains to adding 187 full-time employees and Finastra is reducing creative production time from seven months to seven weeks.  

Today, we’re announcing new agentic capabilities that will accelerate these gains and bring AI-first business process to every organization. 

  • First, the ability to create autonomous agents with Copilot Studio will be in public preview next month.  
  • Second, we’re introducing ten new autonomous agents in Dynamics 365 to build capacity for every sales, service, finance and supply chain team. 

Copilot is your AI assistant — it works for you — and Copilot Studio enables you to easily create, manage and connect agents to Copilot. Think of agents as the new apps for an AI-powered world. Every organization will have a constellation of agents — ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous. They will work on behalf of an individual, team or function to execute and orchestrate businesses process. Copilot is how you’ll interact with these agents, and they’ll do everything from accelerating lead generation and processing sales orders to automating your supply chain.  

Empowering more customers to build autonomous agents in Copilot Studio 

Earlier this year, we announced a host of powerful new capabilities in Copilot Studio, including the ability to create autonomous agents. Next month, these capabilities are shifting from private to public preview, allowing more customers to reimagine critical business processes with AI. Agents draw on the context of your work data in Microsoft 365 Graph, systems of record, Dataverse and Fabric, and can support everything from your IT help desk to employee onboarding and act as a personal concierge for sales and service.  

Organizations like Clifford Chance, McKinsey & Company, Pets at Home and Thomson Reuters are already creating autonomous agents to increase revenue, reduce costs and scale impact. Pets at Home, the U.K.’s leading pet care business, created an agent for its profit protection team to more efficiently compile cases for skilled human review, which could have the potential to drive a seven-figure annual savings. McKinsey & Company is creating an agent that will speed up the client onboarding process. The pilot showed lead time could be reduced by 90% and administrative work reduced by 30%. Thomson Reuters built a professional-grade agent to speed up the legal due diligence workflow, with initial testing showing some tasks could be done in half the time. This agent can help Thomson Reuters increase the efficiency of work for clients and boost its new business pipeline.  

Scaling your teams with 10 new autonomous agents in Dynamics 365  

New autonomous agents enable customers to move from legacy lines of business applications to AI-first business process. AI is today’s ROI and tomorrow’s competitive edge. These new agents are designed to help every sales, service, finance and supply chain team drive business value — and are just the start. We will create many more agents in the coming year that will give customers the competitive advantage they need to future-proof their organization. Today, we’re introducing ten of these autonomous agents. Here are a few examples: 

  • Sales Qualification Agent: In a profession where time literally equals money, this agent enables sellers to focus their time on the highest priority sales opportunities while the agent researches leads, helps prioritize opportunities and guides customer outreach with personalized emails and responses. 
  • Supplier Communications Agent: This agent enables customers to optimize their supply chain and minimize costly disruptions by autonomously tracking supplier performance, detecting delays and responding accordingly — freeing procurement teams from time consuming manual monitoring and firefighting. 
  • Customer Intent and Customer Knowledge Management Agents: A business gets one chance to make a first impression, and these two agents are game changers for customer care teams facing high call volumes, talent shortages and heightened customer expectations. These agents work hand in hand with a customer service representative by learning how to resolve customer issues and autonomously adding knowledge-based articles to scale best practices across the care team. 

As agents become more prevalent in the enterprise, customers want to be confident that they have robust data governance and security. The agents coming to Dynamics 365 follow our core security, privacy and responsible AI commitments. Agents built in Copilot Studio include guardrails and controls established by maker-defined instructions, knowledge and actions. The data sources linked to the agent adhere to stringent security measures and controls — all managed in Copilot Studio. These include data loss prevention, robust authentication protocols and more. Once these agents are created, IT administrators can apply a comprehensive set of features to govern their use. 

Microsoft’s own transformation  

At Microsoft, we’re using Copilot and agents to reimagine business process across every function while empowering employees to scale their impact. Using Copilot, one sales team has achieved 9.4% higher revenue per seller and closed 20% more deals(2). And thanks to Copilot, one team is resolving customer cases nearly 12% faster(3). Our Marketing team is seeing a 21.5% increase in conversion rate on Azure.com with a custom agent designed to assist buyers(4). And in Human Resources, our employee self-service agent is helping answer questions with 42% greater accuracy(5).  

With Copilot and agents, the possibilities are endless — we can’t wait to see what you create. Start building agents in Copilot Studio today. Read more about autonomous agent capabilities on the Copilot Studio and Dynamics 365 blogs. Head to WorkLab for more insights on Microsoft’s own AI transformation.

The post New autonomous agents scale your team like never before appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

]]>
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/10/21/new-autonomous-agents-scale-your-team-like-never-before/feed/ 0
Build, buy, or both? How to choose the right approach for your AI transformation http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/2024/03/06/build-buy-or-both-how-to-choose-the-right-approach-for-your-ai-transformation/ http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/2024/03/06/build-buy-or-both-how-to-choose-the-right-approach-for-your-ai-transformation/#respond Wed, 06 Mar 2024 16:00:00 +0000 There are a few common pathways for how to apply AI to reach your goals.

The post Build, buy, or both? How to choose the right approach for your AI transformation appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

]]>
After more than a year of AI innovation and excitement, leaders are now getting down to business—determining exactly how they’ll take advantage of this new wave of AI solutions to achieve their business goals.

We’re already seeing how Microsoft Copilot can help turn “I can’t” into “watch me” for people around the world in their everyday lives. But for business leaders, Microsoft Copilot is just the start—there are so many additional ways you can bring this transformative technology into your organization. Understanding your options—and the business scenarios best suited for each—is critical. Read on to learn how you can approach making these decisions for your organization.

Power your AI transformation

Adopt, extend and build Copilot experiences across the Microsoft Cloud

logo

Establish your business objectives

Before you think about how you’ll deploy AI solutions, you have to start with why. Aligning your AI investments with a clear business strategy is imperative, as my colleague Susan Etlinger explores in this blog post.

With specific goals in mind, you can prioritize use cases based on their potential for impact and scope your solution based on data and infrastructure requirements. This will help you make decisions aligned with your business objectives and drive your company forward.

Once you’ve identified your why, there are a few common pathways we’re seeing for how to apply AI to reach those goals—from buying off-the-shelf software as a service (SaaS) solutions to building a custom solution that meets your specific needs. Let’s explore the options.

Use Microsoft Copilot to boost employee productivity

If your priority is employee productivity across your business, Microsoft Copilot should be one of the first solutions you consider. If you’re already using Microsoft Entra for identity management, your employees can sign in using their work or school account and get commercial data protection for free—which means chat data isn’t saved, Microsoft has no eyes-on access, and your data isn’t used to train the models.

Microsoft copilot

Download the app

Copilot helps your people to get the answers and time-saving assistance they need from powerful AI models without putting your company data at risk. But that’s just the start.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is our best Copilot experience for organizations. It gives you priority access to the very latest models—starting with OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo. You get Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and Microsoft Teams—combined with your universe of data in the Microsoft Graph, including data you bring in from external sources through Microsoft Graph connectors. Copilot for Microsoft 365 has enterprise-grade data protection, which means it inherits your existing Microsoft 365 security, privacy, identity, and compliance policies. It also includes Copilot Studio to customize Copilot for Microsoft 365 and build standalone copilots—more on this in a minute.

Copilot for Microsoft 365

Learn more

Built on Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to security, compliance, privacy, and responsible AI, Copilot for Microsoft 365 is designed to be enterprise-ready, helping employees in every part of your business unlock productivity and unleash creativity.

And with Copilot for Sales, Copilot for Service, and Copilot for Finance, we’ve added role-specific workflow automation, guided actions, and content generation to the applications professionals use the most. With built-in integration across business systems—whether Dynamics 365 or a third-party customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), or contact center applications—sellers, service agents, and financial professionals can be more effective and efficient as they work, guided by Copilot. 

When you’re thinking about boosting employee productivity in common business scenarios, an out-of-the-box solution like these can deliver incredible impact. But a solution like this may not be the right fit—so let’s look at the next pathway.

Customize Microsoft Copilot to serve the unique needs of your business

No two organizations are alike, and neither are the apps, data, and workflows that drive your business. Microsoft Copilot can help boost employee productivity in the usual functions of every business, but you may also need solutions customized for your own business processes. With Microsoft Copilot Studio, a low-code tool, you can tailor and extend Copilot for Microsoft 365 or build standalone copilots specific to your needs.

For example, within Copilot for Microsoft 365, you may be looking to add specific plugins to address nuanced topics like legal, finance, or human resources (HR). You may want to create and call new workflows within Copilot or connect Copilot with data that lives outside the Microsoft Graph. These customization capabilities are included with Copilot for Microsoft 365.

Microsoft copilot studio

Learn more

Create your own copilots to deliver transformational experiences

Now let’s take this a step further. Instead of building on the foundation of Microsoft Copilot, you may be looking to bring copilot experiences into your own applications with other data sources. The new copilot category is not limited to internal productivity and employee-facing applications, but can extend into external, customer-facing experiences that differentiate your business and drive growth.

Empowering transformation with copilots

Explore solutions

With your customized copilot solution, you can bring generative AI to your own unique business processes like supply chain management, manufacturing line operations, or quality control. You can engage customers and users with more personalized experiences and recommendations. The potential for new innovation is limited only by your imagination—and with Microsoft’s range of development tools, you can build generative AI-powered experiences exactly where you want them.

To quickly and securely build your own copilots, you can start in a low-code environment with Copilot Studio, going beyond the extensibility capabilities we already covered. With Azure OpenAI Service behind the scenes, Copilot Studio is a fully managed, hosted SaaS service, with built-in analytics as well as security and governance controls. You also maintain control over dialog management and conversational orchestration, and you can deploy custom copilots built with Copilot Studio to many channels across web, apps, social channels, and Microsoft Teams.

You can also take your custom copilot a step further with a pro-code approach giving developers full control in an end-to-end application development platform—Azure AI Studio.

Azure AI Studio is a generative AI environment for developing intelligent applications from end-to-end, including custom copilots. For skilled development teams that need to benchmark models, mix and match models, fine tune, evaluate, and continuously monitor their solutions, this is the place. Azure AI Studio enables developers to build new AI applications or augment existing apps with AI capabilities. Developers can identify the best models for a custom copilot, create multimodal capabilities beyond text alone, design and evaluate prompts, build extensions with custom AI search, mitigate risk with robust content safety tools, deploy at scale, and continue to monitor applications in production.

Use the right tool—or tools—for the job

Though we’ve outlined a few different options for how you can use AI to help reach your business goals, these pathways are by no means mutually exclusive—you can and should use more than one approach to meet your needs. And with the Microsoft Cloud, you can easily work across approaches, and shift gears as your needs change.

timeline

You can start with Copilot for Microsoft 365 and use Copilot Studio to quickly build a workflow that serves a specific business function, then as you uncover more advanced applications for that workflow, Copilot Studio also works with Azure AI Studio and additional Azure services. This connected, end-to-end AI toolchain allows your developers to use the right tool for the job at hand, spanning low-code and pro-code capabilities as their needs change.

And keep in mind that AI safety and responsibility should be top of mind from the very beginning. Make sure you’re considering the principles, corporate standards, tools, and governance that you’ll need to ensure your AI experiences are built on trust. The Responsible AI Standard is a great place to start.

Next steps

I hope you take the time to explore the breadth of Microsoft’s AI innovation, and dig deeper into the various AI approaches I’ve outlined here. Remember—no matter what your business priorities, or where you’re starting from, Microsoft is ready to help empower your AI transformation.

The post Build, buy, or both? How to choose the right approach for your AI transformation appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

]]>
http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/2024/03/06/build-buy-or-both-how-to-choose-the-right-approach-for-your-ai-transformation/feed/ 0
Introducing new Copilot experiences to boost productivity and elevate customer experiences across the organization https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/bdm/2023/11/15/introducing-new-copilot-experiences-to-boost-productivity-and-elevate-customer-experiences-across-the-organization/ https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/bdm/2023/11/15/introducing-new-copilot-experiences-to-boost-productivity-and-elevate-customer-experiences-across-the-organization/#respond Wed, 15 Nov 2023 16:07:47 +0000 Microsoft Copilot presents an opportunity to reimagine the way we work—turning natural language into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet.

The post Introducing new Copilot experiences to boost productivity and elevate customer experiences across the organization appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

]]>
Microsoft Copilot presents an opportunity to reimagine the way we work—turning natural language into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet. With AI, organizations can unearth value in the mountain of data across productivity tools like Microsoft 365 and business applications.

To this end, earlier this year, we introduced Microsoft Copilot for Dynamics 365, the world’s first AI copilot natively built for CRM and ERP. Since then, more than 130,000 organizations have experienced copilot capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform firsthand. In fact, a survey revealed that 70 percent of the Copilot users were more productive, 73 percent could complete tasks faster, and 68 percent of users improved the quality of their work.

Organizations, however, depend on a range of business applications across roles and functions, from customer relationship management (CRM) systems for marketing, sales, and service roles to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems for finance, supply chain, and operations departments. At Microsoft Ignite, we are announcing new Microsoft Copilot experiences that empower organizations to unlock value from a multitude of systems of record. In conjunction with these copilot experiences, we are announcing new and updated copilot capabilities in Dynamics 365 applications.

Colorful abstract image

Microsoft Ignite 2023

Access recordings of keynotes and sessions, including opportunities to learn about the copilot capabilities announced.

Get on-demand access 

Announcements include:

  • Updates to Copilot for Dynamics 365 to drive efficiency across the organization, featuring capabilities that help marketing, sales, and field service professionals provide exceptional customer experiences.
  • Introduction of Microsoft Copilot for Service and Microsoft Copilot for Sales, the evolution of Sales Copilot, bringing together the power of Copilot for Microsoft 365 with role-specific insights and actions. Both provide flexibility to integrate with an organization’s existing contact center and CRM systems respectively. 

Together, these capabilities empower organizations to harness secure and enterprise-ready, generative AI experiences, helping employees to perform at their highest potential across every role and function. 

Reimagine ways to drive efficiency across the organization with Copilot for Dynamics 365

We’re introducing new and enhanced copilot capabilities for Dynamics 365 that help marketers, sellers, and field service professionals elevate customer experiences.

The following Copilot updates are in addition to recently-announced copilot and demand planning capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, as well as the 2023 release wave 2 for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, a six-month rollout of new and enhanced capabilities scheduled for release between October 2023 and March 2024.

Copilot delivers answers and information to field service workers in a chat-based conversation

Field service workers depend on quick access to a variety of customer and technical information precisely at the moment it is needed. A recent survey by Microsoft highlighted that not being able to easily find the information they need ranks in the top five disruptive issues faced by frontline workers in their current day-to-day role.1 This can significantly affect key performance indicators such as first-time fix rates, customer satisfaction, and retention.

We’re introducing AI-powered experiences for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service, available for preview in December, that enable frontline workers to quickly access information on a job site by asking questions in conversational language, directly within Teams.

A GIF depicting asking questions about work orders using Microsoft 365 Chat in Microsoft Teams.

We’re also announcing the general availability of AI-assisted work order creation and technician scheduling, and the public preview of financial and inventory data flow between Dynamics 365 Field Service and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. Additionally, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist are available at no additional cost.

Explore the full set of updates to Dynamics 365 Field Service.

Reimagining CRM systems with natural language experiences

The innovation and scale of Copilot have established Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales as an innovative leader in sales technology, as recognized by Gartner and Forrester. Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales enhances seller productivity and effectiveness in their flow of work, enabling them to automate the sales processes and make informed decisions with AI-powered insights and actions. Copilot features help sellers save time, boost productivity, and eliminate mundane workloads to maintain focus on connecting with customers and closing deals.

We’re announcing new copilot experiences in Dynamics 365 Sales that allow sellers to interact with their data using natural language.  

Now in preview, sellers can use their own words to get contextual insights and recommendations for leads and opportunities.

In addition, Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales has a new full-screen view where sellers can use natural language or prebuilt prompts to gain a quick understanding of customers, deals, meetings, forecasts, and more. The feature is now available in Asia and Europe and will be available in North America in December.

graphical user interface, application

Deliver more personalized customer experiences with Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

New capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights provide a deeper understanding of target customers and segments, helping to hyper-personalize campaign content and improve engagement.

Available for preview in December, sellers can use Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to instantly generate a customer profile summary—including demographic, transactional, behavioral, and analytics data—to uncover key insights on customers. The capability is available for organizations that have both Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise or Premium subscriptions.  

graphical user interface, application

We continue to build capabilities that enable a seamless handoff from marketing to sellers. Now in preview, marketers can qualify their leads using metrics such as engagement scores, ensuring marketing and sales teams maximize the opportunity pipeline and improve win rates.  

Adding to our growing ecosystem, we’re announcing a unique partnership with Optimizely. In preview this December, organizations can use the segments and journeys built in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights directly within Optimizely. This enables Optimizely users to build personalized campaigns in real time without writing any code. Through bi-directional integrations, organizations can deliver hyper-personalized omnichannel experiences across web, social, email, and offline channels.

GIF depicting that Optimizely users can build personalized campaigns that can be personalized in real time without writing any code.

Bring together the power of Copilot for Microsoft 365 and business insights and actions

Most organizations depend on a range of applications to manage the business, including CRM, ERP, and supply chain management systems. Integrating innovative technology, like generative AI, into these systems can be challenging—especially when security, privacy, and compliance are a top priority.

Responding to this need, we’re introducing a new category of Microsoft Copilot solutions that tap into data from various applications—including Microsoft 365 and third-party systems of record—to bring a new level of efficiency and automation to business functions across the organization. 

Modernize the contact center with Microsoft Copilot for Service

In a recent Microsoft survey, it was revealed that three out of four customer service agents feel less inspired and motivated by their work. With insufficient focus time, over half of them are struggling to deliver exceptional customer service and efficiently address customer issues.1 The surveyed agents express confidence that AI can positively impact their performance, as well as provide, analytical insights, including trend and sentiment analysis. 

We’re meeting the needs of service agents with a Microsoft Copilot solution that integrates generative AI capabilities into the tools and processes that they depend on every day. Microsoft Copilot for Service integrates an organization’s trusted knowledge with the power of Copilot for Microsoft 365 to boost agent productivity in the tools they already use every day, such as Outlook and Teams; providing AI-guided answers and resources personalized for each customer issue and conversation. 

Microsoft Copilot for Service provides the flexibility to integrate with an organization’s existing CRM and contact center systems. Organizations can train Microsoft Copilot for Service using trusted websites, knowledgebase articles, files, and other critical data sources from their existing contact center to unlock generative AI-powered guidance across all of their data. Microsoft Copilot for Service provides out-of-the-box integrations with Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk, and can be extended to other systems through a vast array of more than 1,100 prebuilt and custom connectors.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/0X9Dc6NbrmM?feature=oembed

MICROSOFT COPILOT STUDIOLearn more 

Copilot for Service can be further customized with Microsoft Copilot Studio, also announced at Microsoft Ignite 2023. With Copilot Studio, service teams can fine-tune copilot experiences by incorporating their own data, logic, and actions tailored for specific scenarios, frequent conversations, or other unique use cases.

Copilot for Service will be available in public preview in early December and generally available in early 2024. Pricing is USD50 per user per month. Learn more about Microsoft Copilot for Service.

Unlock sales productivity in the flow of work

Microsoft Copilot for Sales is the evolution of Sales Copilot, used by leading brands including 10,000 sellers within the Microsoft sales team. A recent survey revealed that 83 percent of Microsoft sellers claim that Microsoft Copilot for Sales helps them improve productivity, with sellers saving an average of 90 minutes per week.1 Read our ebook on the AI advantage for sellers for details. 

Copilot for Sales brings together the power of Copilot for Microsoft 365 in seller workflows, using customer data within the CRM system they already use, along with information in documents, email, and chats from Microsoft 365 applications.

The innovations enabled in Copilot for Sales include a newly integrated experience with Microsoft Word and Teams. Sellers can prompt Copilot to create a meeting preparation brief in Word, automatically populated with customer information such as an account and opportunity summary, names and titles of meeting participants, pending tasks, and highlights from recent meetings and email threads. In addition, meeting recaps in Microsoft Teams can surface action items and tasks, key performance indicators (KPIs), and sales keywords mentioned. These experiences help sellers save time and energy, generate innovative ideas, build stronger customer relationships, and ultimately close more deals.

GIF depicting prompting Copilot to create a meeting preparation brief in Microsoft Word.

Like Copilot for Service, sellers can customize AI-assisted sales processes with Copilot Studio, bringing tailored experiences informed by their own data, logic, and actions for specific scenarios.

Copilot for Sales2 will be available in the first quarter of 2024 for USD50 per user per month.

Learn more at Microsoft Ignite

Register for Microsoft Ignite to access on-demand recordings of keynotes and sessions, including opportunities to learn about the copilot capabilities announced. You have the opportunity to engage with the global community online, regardless of your location, and participate in live discussions at no cost. To get started, we recommend the following sessions: 

In addition, learn more about what’s possible with Copilot for Dynamics 365 and get started on your journey today. 


1 Microsoft 2023 Work Trend Index survey

Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Premium customers will retain rights to capabilities in Sales Copilot. As today’s news demonstrates, copilot capabilities in Dynamics 365 Sales will continue to innovate. To get the full value of the new Copilot for Sales, including access to Copilot for Microsoft 365, customers will work with their Microsoft account representative to upgrade.

The post Introducing new Copilot experiences to boost productivity and elevate customer experiences across the organization appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

]]>
https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/bdm/2023/11/15/introducing-new-copilot-experiences-to-boost-productivity-and-elevate-customer-experiences-across-the-organization/feed/ 0
From Microsoft to global brands, Dynamics 365 Copilot is helping transform customer experiences across service, sales, and marketing https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/bdm/2023/09/07/from-microsoft-to-global-brands-dynamics-365-copilot-is-helping-transform-customer-experiences-across-service-sales-and-marketing/ https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/bdm/2023/09/07/from-microsoft-to-global-brands-dynamics-365-copilot-is-helping-transform-customer-experiences-across-service-sales-and-marketing/#respond Thu, 07 Sep 2023 15:00:00 +0000 Six months ago, we introduced Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot, the world’s first AI Copilot natively built for customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications.

The post From Microsoft to global brands, Dynamics 365 Copilot is helping transform customer experiences across service, sales, and marketing appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

]]>
Six months ago, we introduced Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot, the world’s first AI Copilot natively built for customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications. Since then, more than 63,000 organizations have experienced Copilot features in Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform first-hand, empowering marketing, sales, and customer service teams in new ways to improve experiences across the customer journey.

Copilot is designed to help people do their very best work—and we’re seeing real value to support this vision. Today, I’m excited to share the most widely used scenarios and performance metrics from employees at Microsoft and leading organizations using Copilot capabilities across the customer journey. These stories and insights showcase what’s possible when employees are assisted by AI in the flow of work—helping them to boost productivity, perform tasks more efficiently, and focus on what matters most.

Transforming customer experience in the age of AI

Sellers, service agents, and marketers share a common goal: developing exceptional customer experiences that ultimately impact the bottom line. In July, we introduced the next wave of Copilot and AI capabilities to deliver connected customer experiences—from within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, all the way through to the customer interactions in Outlook and Microsoft Teams powered by Microsoft Sales Copilot. With Dynamics 365 Copilot and Microsoft Sales Copilot, marketers can use everyday language to create relevant and targeted campaigns and brainstorm creative copy; sellers can move from one customer call and email to the next with relevant context on the opportunity at their fingertips; and service agents can become super agents with the help of AI to serve up relevant information to close customer cases more quickly.

Assisted by Dynamics 365 Copilot, Microsoft Support team resolves more cases faster, with less effort

At Microsoft, we’re also leading our own AI-first transformation and, since April, have been using Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service within our Customer Service and Support (CSS) team—one of the largest customer service organizations in the world. Today, we can share how Copilot has impacted the way agents work to resolve support cases, and the impact on their efficiency and productivity.

Microsoft’s Office of the Chief Economist, in partnership with the Dynamics 365 product group, evaluated how Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service has impacted agent productivity since April. The initial results shared here reflect those of 11.5K agents, with 6.5K agents who used Copilot and the control group of 5K agents who did not use Copilot.

The findings demonstrate how Copilot can support agents of all experience levels in their workflows to increase efficiency and quality of customer engagements. Key results included:

  • Expedited agent onboarding. High turnover rates are common for service teams across industries, placing a burden on organizations to onboard new agents to be productive quickly. Copilot has been particularly effective in helping newer agents who don’t have years of experience or institutional experience get up to speed and find relevant information more quickly, the study found. Specifically, for low-severity chat cases in one area of our commercial support business, we observed a 12 percent reduction in average handle time—the time actively spent on resolving a customer case.
  • More cases resolved faster—without peer assistance. In the most productive scenario, the study found that in one support business, 10 percent of cases that normally require collaboration with peers were resolved independently. This means fewer customers had to experience being put on hold.

Direct feedback from Microsoft Support agents reveals how Copilot improves interactions with customers:

  • “Just wanted to share my gratitude to Copilot as a person who always struggles to wrap up wording before sharing with the customer—amazing time and pain saver for me!”
  • “[A] customer switched language mid-chat from English to Spanish. Copilot enabled me to continue to solve the problem regardless of the language shift.”
  • “I used Copilot to help a customer and got CSAT [customer satisfaction score] 5 out of 5. Their feedback was, ‘Very informative and to the point.’”

While the study captures just the first few months of AI-assisted service within the Microsoft Support organization, the results should encourage other organizations looking to optimize service operations with AI. The findings offer a glimpse of efficiencies and productivity gains that other organizations might experience when using Copilot. Read more details about the Microsoft Support team’s experience with Copilot on Microsoft Source. For the full story and video testimonial about the team’s transformation journey, check out the case study.  

In addition to performance metrics, Microsoft employees provide feedback to the development team, helping to ensure every new capability provides the best possible benefit for users. This step is crucial as we roll out new features across Dynamics 365 Copilot—including a feature available today. Copilot summarization, now generally available, helps agents to quickly review the details of a case without sifting through notes, chat transcripts, and emails. This feature generates automatic conversation summaries, helping service agents to quickly understand highlights of a case—such as key customer problems and steps that agents took to resolve the case.

The Copilot summarization feature joins a host of upcoming Copilot capabilities for service teams, from the call center to field service professionals. View the release plans for Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service for details. 

Service organizations expect Copilot to help deliver new levels of agent productivity and customer experiences

In addition to the early results from the Microsoft Support team, we’re hearing directly from leading organizations getting an early start with Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

Prada Group, a global leader in luxury brands, is using Copilot to improve experiences for its discerning customers. “We’re excited to be one of the early adopters of the new Dynamics 365 Copilot AI tool,” shared Francesco De Giampaulis, Global Client Service & e-Commerce Payment Gateways and Anti-Fraud Manager, Prada Group. “By integrating it with our Knowledge Base and other internal sources, Copilot will assist our Client Service Advisors speeding up the onboarding process, offering a fast and smooth assistance to our customers, saving time searching for answers and focusing on providing a great experience, including suggestions for the right product or look.”

One of the leading investment management and advisory services, Vanguard Group, shared its initial experiences with Copilot. “Vanguard is utilizing Dynamics 365 Customer Service to support its agents in client service and knowledge management scenarios, as well as a custom bot to manage customer inquiries via its website,” explained Grant Pharez, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Specialist at Vanguard. “We are seeing promising results in testing the generative AI capabilities in these applications to help our customer care teams and self-service customer applications deliver exceptional service.”

Sellers reach new levels of productivity with Microsoft Sales Copilot

Concurrent to the Microsoft Support team’s experience, Microsoft deployed Microsoft Sales Copilot (previously Viva Sales) to 10,000 sellers within its sales organization. Early results show that 85 percent of surveyed sellers report completing one or more tasks faster, and 70 percent claim that Microsoft Sales Copilot helps them improve productivity.

Organizations like Securitas, a leading provider of custom security and guarding solutions, are noting the ability for sellers to focus time on what matters most. “Opportunity summary in Microsoft Sales Copilot is a huge and important leap in our direction to save more time for our sales personnel,” said Philip Eklund, Vice President, Client Engagement Services, Securitas. “With this capability in the hands of our sellers, they can spend more time equipping organizations with best-in-class security solutions to help make our world a safer place.”

Sellers using Microsoft Sales Copilot benefit from AI capabilities that help streamline the workday. Features slated for general availability in September and October include AI-generated preparation notes for customer conversations and opportunity and lead summaries. In addition, Microsoft Sales Copilot improves teamwork and knowledge sharing, providing sellers with collaboration spaces in Teams that integrate with CRM data and contact cards that surface CRM records directly in Microsoft 365 apps. View the release notes for Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Sales Copilot for details. Get the e-book, “The AI Advantage: Driving Sales Performance with Next-Generation Tools”, which details how AI supports sales teams throughout the day. 

Marketers surface deeper insights, optimize customer journeys with Copilot

Like sales and service professionals, marketing teams using Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights report tangible business benefits. TTEC Digital, a global customer experience (CX) technology and services company and Microsoft Gold Partner, shared how Copilot democratizes marketing tasks. According to Karl Phenix, VP at TTEC Digital, “Copilot in Customer Insights makes marketing employees more comfortable in doing complex tasks such as segmentation, which previously required specialists such as data scientists.” Karl added that “Copilot frees up time by generating emails in minutes, so marketing employees can do more to drive sales activities and accelerate the pipeline.”

Copilot features now generally available help marketers to deliver a consistent brand narrative and customer experience. Marketers can craft email content by prompting Copilot to curate content, change the tone and voice, or adjust the length of the copy. Available in preview, marketers can also create customer journeys simply by describing actions at each step, such as: “When a contact registers for an event, send a thank you email.” In fact, 59 percent of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights customers* have used Copilot when creating segments and 36 percent of customers used Copilot to ask questions to uncover customer and business insights. View the release notes for more details.

Start transforming customer experiences with Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 is a complete suite of CRM and ERP applications that helps you manage your businesses across sales, marketing, service, finance, and supply chain.

Dynamics 365 Copilot is the world’s first AI copilot integrated into CRM and ERP applications in the cloud. Unlike other solutions, generative AI features are included in Dynamics 365 subscriptions for enterprise customers at no additional charge.

Take a guided tour of Dynamics 365 applications and get started today with a free 30-day trial.

View the Dynamics 365 licensing guide to choose options that suit your business, and contact your Microsoft representative to learn more about the value and return on investments, as well as the latest offers—including a limited-time 26 percent savings on subscription pricing for Dynamics 365 Sales Premium.

If you are a Dynamics 365 customer, use Copilot capabilities today. Visit the Dynamics 365 release planner to view features coming soon and available to try now.

Copilot in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform

Copilot features are empowering marketing, sales, and customer service teams in new ways.

*Dynamics 365 Customer Insights customers that have access to copilot capabilities, US only, based on telemetry data.


The post From Microsoft to global brands, Dynamics 365 Copilot is helping transform customer experiences across service, sales, and marketing appeared first on The Microsoft Cloud Blog.

]]>
https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/bdm/2023/09/07/from-microsoft-to-global-brands-dynamics-365-copilot-is-helping-transform-customer-experiences-across-service-sales-and-marketing/feed/ 0