For executives, understanding the role of conversational AI within the broader low-code strategy is critical to staying competitive. This technology is not just about keeping pace—it’s about setting the pace and meeting human beings, customers, and employees alike, where they are. And human beings are becoming harder to please. In a recent article, McKinsey & Company observes that two-thirds of millennials expect real-time customer service, and “three-quarters of all customers expect consistent cross-channel service experience.”¹ AI-enabled customer service tools can help deliver those experiences for both customers and employees.  

In this blog post, we’ll walk through how conversational AI can improve both customer and employee experiences. We’ll also examine how Microsoft Copilot Studio enables organizations to build, deploy, and scale custom copilots, which are pivotal for driving efficiencies and tackling unique business challenges, thereby allowing the creation of solutions that are precisely tailored to organizational needs. 

Improving customer satisfaction and engagement 

 According to the 2023 Gartner^® report How Generative AI Can Help Meet Customer Experience Expectations, “Customer retention and growth feature heavily in the plans of executives interested in generative AI. Thirty-eight percent of leaders see improving customer experience and retention as the primary purpose of initiatives to deploy applications trained on large language models, while 26% highlight revenue growth. Only 17% cite cost optimization”.² 

One example of a company using conversational AI and low-code to improve customer experiences is Nsure.com, a medium-sized organization of 900 employees. The company, which matches customers with insurance carriers, has been using Copilot Studio to create copilots—custom AI assistants that can take on mundane and repetitive tasks so employees can concentrate on higher-value responsibilities.  

Copilot Studio provides thousands of pre-built data connectors, which make it easy for organizations like Nsure.com to point their custom copilots to multiple first- and third-party data sources, tailor them for different applications, and extend capabilities from basic knowledge-based responses to complex task automation. 

Nsure.com builds its copilots to support sales activities (including up-selling and cross-selling) and streamline interactions with customers, with a goal of having as much as 90% of incoming customer requests handled automatically. With copilots processing insurance quotes, payments, renewals, and discounts, Nsure.com agents can focus on what they do best: providing high levels of attentive customer service. 

Improving the employee experience 

Copilots automate everyday business processes, which empowers employees to spend more time on complex tasks, strategic initiatives, innovation, and higher-value responsibilities, leading to more satisfying employee experiences and an overall increase in staff productivity. 

One company with an especially ambitious automation goal is Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), one of the largest combined natural gas and electric energy companies in the United States. In just four years, the company has used low-code and conversational AI to empower more than 4,300 makers, including advanced digital creators and new citizen developers, to realize more than 315 low-code/no-code solutions that save nearly 527,000 hours (almost $75 million in savings) each year.  

We felt there was a ton of value to be had throughout our organization in terms of streamlining and automating a lot of low-value work and re-dedicating people in the organization to doing high-value work.

Mark Seveska, Executive Sponsor, IT Products and Enterprise Solutions, PG&E

Thanks to a powerful new AI assistant built with Copilot Studio that now meets 25% to 40% of PG&E’s help desk demand, the company has optimized the workloads of its busy agents and provided sizeable labor savings and service-level improvements. In fact, the amount of time saved on just one process—automating end-to-end SAP account unlock requests—adds up to 840 saved hours per year. 

Low-code development can facilitate collaboration and communication among teams by providing real-time access to information, coordinating workflows, and fostering collaboration between different departments or team members, like business users and pro developers. 

According to Gartner Webinar, “By 2026, code written by developers/humans will be reduced by 50% due to generative AI code generation models.” ³

Further underlining the transformative power of AI, research presented in a Gartner webinar on generative AI’s practical applications suggests a significant shift in the development landscape. By 2026, human-written code could be reduced by up to 50% due to the advent of generative AI code generation models, reshaping the future role of developers and accelerating the pace of innovation.³ 

For instance, Africa’s largest bank—Standard Bank of South Africa—has adopted a low-code approach to automate processes, conduct analyses, and develop solutions for various business requirements. They have established a Center of Excellence (CoE) to support more than 1,500 citizen developers who utilize Microsoft Power Platform across the bank’s global network.   

Employees who had never dreamed of being developers were surprised at how easily they could build solutions with Power Platform to solve their business challenges.

Richard Blackwell, Standard Bank Infrastructure Management, Employee Experience, Head – Engineering Team, Standard Bank of South Africa

With strong governance, thanks to its CoE, the bank has been able to grow from productivity solutions for smaller teams to enterprise solutions, like an IT help desk bot built in Copilot Studio that now resolves 99% of all employee queries.

Discover how Microsoft Copilot Studio can help improve customer and employee experiences in your organization.

Get started with Copilot Studio today

As we wrap up our discussion, it’s clear that the transformative power of AI lies in its capacity to elevate both the customer and employee experience. By integrating conversational AI and crafting your own copilots with Copilot Studio, organizations can unlock unprecedented levels of efficiency, gain deeper customer insights, and chart new pathways for growth, truly embodying AI as a strategic asset.  

Whether you’re at the inception of your AI adoption journey or looking to scale existing capabilities, Copilot Studio offers a robust, low-code platform that simplifies the design, enhancement, and management of AI copilots, making it accessible for users of all expertise levels to deploy solutions across various channels swiftly. Begin your transformative journey with Copilot Studio today and extend the capabilities of copilots or create ones uniquely on your own.

Start a free trial of Copilot Studio.

Sources:

¹ The next frontier of customer engagement: AI-enabled customer service, McKinsey & Company, 2023.

2 Gartner, How Generative AI Can Help Meet Customer Experience Expectations, By Gene Alvarez, Uma Challa, Leah Leachman, 3 August 2023.

3 Gartner Webinar, Beyond the Hype: The Practical Applications & Use Cases of Generative AI, 2023.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

The post Improving customer and employee experiences with Microsoft Copilot Studio   appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.

We’re grateful to our early customers who have already adopted Copilot Studio and are building amazing solutions for their end-users. Here are just a few highlights:

“Copilot Studio enables us to build and make quick updates to an employee facing copilot that can reason over multiple knowledge sources and provide consistent and relevant answers. Copilot Studio has helped us reduce the workload and costs of our support team, while increasing the engagement and loyalty of our employees.”

— Ramesh Murugan, Director, Employee Technology & Experiences

The City of Kelowna in British Columbia, Canada is building a copilot as part of a solution that makes it easier to apply for building permits. The copilot asks citizens what they want to build, and Power Automate feeds these responses to Power Apps, which then populates the official building permit forms on behalf of the user. The first phase of the solution is focused on swimming pool permits and is set to launch in March 2024. The city plans to extend the capabilities of the app to eventually cover all permit types.

“City of Kelowna has built copilots using Microsoft Copilot Studio, specifically to support our building application process, revolutionizing the way we serve both the citizens and also builders. These copilots have enabled us to create a streamlined and user-friendly interface where applicants can easily submit and track their building permit.”

— Jazz Pabla, Director of Information Services

Copilot Studio and Microsoft Copilot Service enables the team at RSM, a Microsoft Partner, to provide unified conversational experiences without changing applications. By providing actions, surfacing insights, and automating actions, team members are able to reduce onboarding time while dramatically improving client experiences and reducing mean time to resolution.

“At RSM, we use a range of Microsoft AI technologies, including Microsoft Copilot Studio, to create copilot experiences that deliver compelling outcomes for our clients and team members. The easy-to-use and extensible features of Copilot Studio allow us to adapt to a range of different and changing needs and help us identify new opportunities to serve our customers and teams.”

— Mike Gillis, Owner/Principal

Holland America will use Generative AI in Microsoft Copilot Studio to power an online concierge to support bookings. Available at any time on HollandAmerica.com, the Concierge agent will be available to answer any questions customers have and will be available throughout the digital journey.

“Booking a cruise can be tough due to room options, packages, and entry requirements. We think generative AI can guide customers effortlessly, matching the perfect vacation from booking to cruise for each guest.”

— Scot Pettit, Sr Director E-commerce

An Post, the provider of postal services in Ireland, chose Microsoft Copilot Studio to create an easy way for customers to get answers to their questions about postal products and services. The copilot can also be used to track packages, improving efficiency for both An Post and its customers.

“Copilot Studio has enabled An Post to deliver a valuable self-service automated digital solution. The use of Generative AI technology will allow us to elevate the customer experience and increase our speed-to-market delivering on our Digital Strategy to support more customers online.”

— Des Morley, Chief Digital & Technology Officer

HP will use Copilot Studio to provide product recommendations. For example, small business customers can identify which products are the best fit for their specific software and business needs. Customers can use natural language to accomplish tasks in far fewer clicks than a decision tree or filter-based design. HP will take advantage of Copilot Studio’s ability to reason over the content already on its website to quickly create this experience. With instant access to a wealth of product information surfaced through the Generative AI capabilities of Copilot Studio, HP provides a richer experience for its customers.

“We are using Microsoft Copilot Studio to build a copilot for HP’s customer-facing website to engage customers at scale and educate them on the right products for their needs, and more. Copilot Studio enables real-time responses to customer queries using Generative AI. The better we communicate about our products, the more trust and business opportunities we can create.”

— Mohamed Zohny, Global Head of Social Media & Digital Innovations

Read the full story here.

“With Power Platform, we’re not only saving money, we’re helping drive a renewed joy of innovation across the company.”  

— Alla Gogerman: IT Leader, Intelligent Process Automation and Digital Productivity COE

Share your story with us!

Do you have a similar story or experience to share? We are excited to learn more about how organizations like yours are using Copilot Studio and other AI capabilities in Power Platform! Submit your story at https://aka.ms/ShareAIStory

In the meantime, you can learn more about Microsoft CoPilot Studio through these resources:

• Copilot Studio website
• Product documentation

The post How early adopters are transforming their organizations with copilots appeared first on Microsoft Copilot Blog.