Microsoft today unveiled a generative AI chatbot for business users composes email responses to clients, creates text summaries of Teams meetings, and generates marketing and sales email campaigns.
Based on OpenAI’s GPT-3, Microsoft’s new Dynamics 365 Copilot is an extension of its existing CRM and ERP software, working alongside those applications to help answer questions, create content, and summarize conversations and notes. The announcement furthers Microsoft’s continued AI push in its business-facing apps.
“Today’s announcement builds on the recent AI momentum in Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform,” said Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s vice president of business applications and platform, in a blog post.
The bot extensions contain AI capabilities in Microsoft Teams, Viva saleAnd Power appsenabling citizen developers to write code in natural language.
Microsoft first announced the GPT-3 powered code builder at the Build developer conference in May 2021; that was based on a GitHub pilot service. The new Power Apps feature is now included in Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 suite.
Power Platform has partnered with OpenAI’s GPT technologies since 2021, enabling ordinary employees to develop their own apps and tools. In May 2021, Microsoft launched the first-ever use of GPT in a commercially available product in Power Apps, creating a new AI-driven era for low-code development,” said a Microsoft spokesperson.
Power Platform features are available in preview in the US starting today. Dynamics 365 Copilot features are also in preview, and their regional availability and language varies.
Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, said chatbot technology will help enhance Dynamic 365’s ability to analyze the growing amount of information that many sales reps and customer support agents are dealing with “and often can’t process because of too much dispersion.” information or time constraints, for example quickly obtaining information about the customer before speaking to them.
“So in that regard, being able to ask questions in natural language and get suggestions and analysis is a great value,” Gold said. “On the other hand, if you ask the wrong questions, you’ll get information that might be skewed or biased to your question and might not be that helpful. So this doesn’t mean you can assume that the AI aid will create a situation where you don’t need expertise in the human using the tool.”
The Copilot bot, which keeps running Azure OpenAI service, can be used with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Viva Sales applications to write email replies to customers and create an email summary of a Teams meeting in Outlook. The meeting summary pulls details from the seller’s CRM, such as product and pricing information, as well as insights from the recorded Teams call.
MicrosoftMicrosoft’s Copilot summarizes a Teams conversation.
“Salespeople often spend hours a day talking to prospects and customers, and almost as much time summarizing action points for follow-up. To help with that, conversation intelligence provides automated summaries of the top topics, issues and concerns discussed during the meeting,” said Emily He, Microsoft’s vice president of business application marketing. a separate blog.
Last month, Microsoft has announced that the AI-based chat feature has limited availability for Viva Sales, which can generate content suggestions based on customer emails, such as an answer to a question or a request for a proposal.
The automated email reply feature is now generally available; on March 15, Microsoft will add improvements to create customizable emails. For example, a salesperson can generate an email proposing a meeting time with a customer, complete with a suggested meeting date and time based on availability in the salesperson’s Outlook calendar.
MicrosoftCopilot suggests email responses.
Viva Sales with Copilot can also remind salespeople when it’s time to reach out to a prospect or customer, then automatically generate a pre-formatted email response with personalized text and next best actions, along with details such as product descriptions, proposals and deadlines.
Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service can help agents build contextual answers to questions in both chat and email, in addition to providing an interactive chat experience and case history. Marketers can also ask Copilot for suggestions on customer segments they might not have considered before.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 Marketing can build targeted customer segments by engaging in a dialogue with their natural language customer data platform.
“The new capability can handle complex calculations and match customers who fit a select profile,” Microsoft said in a blog post. “Marketers can describe their customer segment in their own words to create a target segment with the query help feature. Marketers can also use Dynamics 365 Copilot to get inspiration for new email campaign content based on demand.”
MicrosoftDynamics 365 Copilot creates email response suggestions Outlook.
Copilot can also be used in Dynamics 365 Business Central to create product listings for online commerce and display product attributes such as color, material, and size to create product descriptions for online storefronts in seconds. The descriptions can be further customized by choosing the tone of voice, format and length. For example, Business Central customers using Shopify can seamlessly publish the products with descriptions to their Shopify store with just a few clicks.
“Like any AI-enhanced capability, this should be viewed as a tool, not an answer to relieve people of the expertise required,” Gold warned. “The biggest challenge with all these tools is that people rely too much on their capabilities. Anything we can do to help people better understand data, and in this case about customers, is very helpful and potentially makes us more efficient and effective. ” in our jobs.
“But that doesn’t mean a seller or any other person shouldn’t make sure to use their own judgment on any recommendations,” he said.
Copyright © 2023 IDG Communications, Inc.
