So much has changed so quickly with AI-powered customer service tools that you can be forgiven for not keeping up. But we can help: In February 2024, Microsoft announced general availability for Microsoft Copilot for Service (alongside Microsoft Copilot for Sales).

This follows on general availability for Copilot features in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, which was announced late 2023 — and Enterprise users can now access copilot features at no additional charge. But it can get complicated, affected by existing Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 licenses for example. Navigating the real costs is just one reason why you might need help!

And you don’t even need Dynamics 365 Customer Service to get started. Copilot for Service comes with pre-built integrations for accessing knowledge bases in Salesforce, ServiceNow and Zendesk, and you can embed a copilot where agents work in desktops from Salesforce and other channels.

How can copilots help deliver better service?
Business leaders responsible for service delivery have likely already seen the possibilities of AI copilots. Gartner found that almost half of service reps say they’re overwhelmed by the number of tools they need to use, and copilots are a natural fit to address this pain — by quickly surfacing and summarizing info and insights from across disparate CRM and contact center systems.

The possibilities are nearly endless: By quickly presenting information in context, copilots can help agents avoid long investigations into service issues that your organization has already solved and documented. Copilots can instantly draft emails that combine the context of an interaction along with your organization’s knowledge, giving agents the ability to follow up faster with pre-defined prompts. Service copilots can help after case resolution, too, summarizing and recording key information from complex customer cases, so agents don’t have to spend time reviewing notes and updating systems manually.

Copilots clearly have great potential to improve efficiency and reduce time spent on labor-intensive service tasks. That can translate into better customer experiences and higher customer satisfaction, at scale — along with increasing your ability to build on those gains with more data-driven optimization and decision-making. Copilots can help create better experiences for employees, too, with easier onboarding and reduced turnover.

How do you get started?
For most organizations, realizing the potential of copilots won’t simply be a matter of purchasing licenses, plugging in existing systems and “turning on” copilot, then expecting instant change. Just as we observed with Microsoft Copilot for Sales, you should take a considered approach if you want to get the most out of this new and fast-changing technology and ultimately drive growth.

We’ve learned from working with clients that these three steps will help ensure success:
1. Prepare: Assess your current service solution setup, data architecture, and team capabilities. With GenAI-powered tools, it’s particularly important to evaluate current data and content to reduce hallucinations.
2. Identify value: Pinpoint high-impact areas for copilot integration across all your existing processes and SOPs.
3. Train and drive adoption: Maker sure your staff has the skills to use copilots effectively and confidently.

Avanade: Your copilot for Copilot
If you’re a business leader imagining what’s possible now — and what will be possible six months or a year from now — the rapid evolution of copilots has been inspiring and exciting. But like the service reps and their many tools, it can also feel a little overwhelming. Copilots are very flexible and extensible by nature, and that can make them different from other deployments.

We can offer informed guidance on this path. Avanade is the only company on both the partner and customer private preview for many of Microsoft’s copilots. We use it ourselves and we bake it into what we bring to our clients. Here are three things that we’ve learned about integrating copilots:

• Be intentional about structure
  • Group participants with similar roles into pilot groups to build community and share learnings with one another
  • Identify key user groups first, then leverage them to define use cases
  • Assess risk by user group
• Be agile and realize this will be an evolution
  • Use sprints to understand technical dependencies and structure IT support aligned to technical needs
  • Stay on top of product evolution
  • Leverage existing application onboarding processes coupled with evolving responsible AI and legal and technology management principles for GenAI solutions
• Prioritize adoption and focus on learning over product maturity
  • Participants need capacity for learning and trials
  • Foundational knowledge of GenAI concepts for end users can accelerate value realization

Looking for insights into the art of the possible? Or are you ready right now to harness the power of copilots to drive efficiency and growth? Let us know. And if you’ve already had your own experiences with copilots, share them in the comments below.

To discover how we can help your business to create value from Copilot for Service or Copilot in Dynamics 365, find out more about our services today.