Microsoft Introduces Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service

Now available to the public, Microsoft Copilot for Sales and Microsoft Copilot for Service combine the strength of Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 with role-specific insights and actions, simplifying business operations, automating repetitive tasks, and unleashing creativity. Both solutions offer the flexibility to integrate seamlessly with existing contact center and CRM systems, including Salesforce and ServiceNow, to enhance productivity with minimal effort. 

Microsoft is committed to assisting organizations in revolutionizing their work processes through secure, enterprise-grade AI capabilities, regardless of the business applications they rely on. Today marks the launch of role-specific Copilot capabilities, seamlessly integrated into Microsoft 365 applications, as well as popular customer relationship management (CRM) and contact center systems designed for sales and customer service professionals. 

Empowering Sales Teams with Copilot for Sales

Sales professionals today encounter more challenges than ever before. A recent survey revealed that 79% of salespeople are supporting a larger customer base compared to the previous year. To drive greater sales impact, Gartner® research recommends giving AI-powered technology a more significant role in executing core selling activities. This allows salespeople to focus on their strengths, such as engaging buyers on a personal level, understanding their needs, motivations, and objections, and ensuring the right purchase decision. 

Microsoft unveiled the vision for Copilot for Sales last fall and now Copilot for Sales is generally available. Copilot for Sales builds upon Copilot for Microsoft 365, enhancing connectivity with CRM platforms like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Salesforce Sales Cloud. It brings sales-specific insights and recommendations to apps like Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and Word. 

Today, Copilot for Sales empowers sales representatives and managers to: 

• Generate sales meeting preparation briefs in Word. 
• Summarize emails and highlight relevant buying intent and BANT analysis (budget, authority, need, timing) in Outlook. 
• Generate emails in Outlook containing pertinent product, account, relationship, and opportunity information sourced from their CRM system and Microsoft Graph. 
• Add leads and update CRM records directly from Outlook. 
• Access meeting preparation notes and real-time sales insights during Teams calls. 
• Review sales meeting summaries in Teams with conversation analysis, sales keywords, KPIs, and recommended tasks. 
• Create collaborative deal rooms in Teams synchronized with CRM data. 

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is integrated into Copilot for Sales, providing additional productivity enhancements such as generating presentations in PowerPoint, creating plans, and organizing team information in OneNote. Additionally, users can engage in natural language conversations to catch up on customer interactions using the Microsoft Copilot chat experience. 

Later this month, Copilot for Sales will introduce CRM connectivity within the chat experience, allowing sales personnel to quickly access insights on conversion rates, sales cycles, and pipelines. Later this year, Microsoft plans to further enhance Copilot experiences in Microsoft PowerPoint and OneNote to cater to specific seller needs with CRM connectivity. 

Early adopters of Copilot for Sales have already experienced positive impacts on their sales organizations. People who have tested Copilot for Sales capabilities, including updating Dynamics 365 Sales records from Outlook, summarizing email threads, drafting emails, and summarizing meetings using conversation intelligence, have found these AI capabilities invaluable. They report that Copilot minimizes the need to switch between different interfaces and saves them 30 to 60 minutes per week. Importantly, Copilot for Sales is also improving the quality of interactions between sellers and their customers. 

Copilot for Service

In December 2023, Microsoft introduced Copilot for Service as the next step in their mission to help organizations harness the potential of generative AI by extending their existing investments in CRM and contact center solutions. As of February 1, Copilot for Service is now widely available. 

Frequently, an organization’s knowledge is spread across various systems, including customer records, case histories, knowledge base articles, public websites, offline files, and more. This situation often requires agents to navigate multiple applications to access critical insights, manage customer interactions, collaborate with internal teams, and take action. According to Gartner, “43 percent of (customer service) reps reported they were overwhelmed by the number of systems and tools needed to complete work.” 

Copilot for Service unlocks an organization’s valuable knowledge to accelerate onboarding, streamline case resolution, improve efficiency, and automate agent tasks. Without the need for extensive development, organizations can swiftly enable generative AI-powered conversations across their knowledge bases. Agents can access this knowledge via a copilot integrated directly into their desktop software of choice, such as Salesforce, as well as other daily tools like Outlook and Teams. 

Today, Copilot for Service offers organizations the ability to: 

• Conduct generative AI-powered conversations across all data sources, with easy access to public websites, SharePoint, knowledge base articles, and offline files. 
• Access knowledge sources via pre-built integrations for Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk. 
• Embed a copilot into agent desktops, including Salesforce and other channels, to support agents where they work. 

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is also a part of Copilot for Service. In the coming months, Microsoft will introduce additional features in Microsoft 365 apps, integrating data from CRM systems like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Salesforce Service Cloud. These features include: 

• In Outlook, utilizing Copilot to summarize and draft emails, access case summaries, browse and update CRM records, and schedule meetings informed by case summaries and CRM data. 
• In Teams, utilizing Copilot to browse and update CRM records during meetings, recap meetings, suggest follow-up actions, and create tasks that can be saved directly to CRM systems from Teams. 
• In the Microsoft Copilot chat experience, using Copilot to ask questions about cases and contacts and summarize cases, all based on CRM data. 

Take the Next Step 

Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service are now available for $50 per user per month, which includes the Copilot for Microsoft 365 license. If you already have Copilot for Microsoft 365, you can purchase Copilot for Sales or Copilot for Service for an additional $20 per user per month. 

Everyone loves an assistant. Contact us to learn how Copilot can be your personalized AI assistant to boost productivity, spark ideas, and transform your business with the power of AI.

Information provided by Microsoft. Check out their website for more information on Copilot.