Microsoft unveils AI “copilots” for sales, CRM and customer support

Microsoft today unveiled Dynamics 365 Copilot, which it says is “the world’s first AI copilot natively built-in to both CRM and ERP applications.” The system is being rolled out as part of several of the company’s software packages, including CRM, sales and customer service.

“Copilot brings the power of next-generation AI capabilities and natural language processing to Dynamics 365, working alongside business professionals to help them create ideas and content faster, complete time-consuming tasks, and get insights and next best actions — just by describing what’s needed,” Emily He, corporate vice president for business applications marketing, wrote in a blog post.

CRM. In Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 Marketing marketers can use natural language to ask questions to explore, analyze and understand customer segment sizes and preferences.

Dig deeper: ChatGPT: A marketer’s guide

“For example, a marketer might want to identify customers that reside in San Francisco, California, with a high customer lifetime value, who have also made a purchase in the last 90 days,” He wrote. “With a few clicks, Copilot produces the results, along with information such as the customers’ average age, product preferences, or average purchase price. These insights can then be configured into a segment to support a campaign. With Copilot, marketers can now get a deeper understanding of their customers in near real-time.”

Sales. Copilot adds capabilities to the AI enhancements announced last month for Dynamics 365 Sales and Viva Sales. Those included generating content suggestions based on customer emails with data specifically relevant to the recipient, such as pricing, promotions, and deadlines. 

New capabilities include putting email replies into general availability and integrations for customizable emails. For example, it can generate an email proposing a meeting time based on availability on the seller’s Outlook calendar. There’s also a feedback mechanism that allows sellers to rate the AI-generated content with a thumbs up or thumbs down, refining and improving future replies. 

The copilot also provides AI-generated meeting and call summaries of key topics, issues and concerns. It can then draft a recap of the discussion with action items and follow-up dates, based on CRM and meeting data. “Summaries can be generated for a range of meeting types in Teams, including multi-participant and internal calls, helping sellers stay organized and on top of critical, content-heavy sales meetings,” according to the company’s blog.

The copilot is included in Viva Sales and can be purchased separately for other CRM systems, including Salesforce.

Customer service. In Dynamics 365 Customer Service, the copilot has access to the case history of a customer and is able to help support personnel with customer inquiries.

“With Copilot, agents can quickly craft a draft email or chat response to customers with a single click. Copilot understands the context based on the current live conversation; identifies relevant information from trusted websites and internal documents, including knowledgebase articles and previously resolved cases; and crafts a response that the agent can review and send to the customer.”

It can also help diagnose more complex customer issues, discover resolutions and summarize draft responses across all communication channels.

Other products with AI. 

• Copilot in Microsoft Supply Chain Center can flag issues like weather, financials and geography that might impact supply chain processes. Planners can then choose to have Copilot automatically draft an email to alert any impacted partners.
• Copilot in Dynamics 365 Business Central will now be able to help organizations rapidly create product listings.

Why we care. All of these copilots look to make life easier for marketers, salesfolk and customer support people. That’s a good thing. They automate tedious, repetitious tasks and enhance them with data and integrations with other Microsoft products. Never mind the hype about what AI may do in the future. In the here and now it is already providing tangible benefits to businesses and workers.