News

Microsoft Commercially Releases Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service

• By Kurt Mackie
• 02/02/2024

Microsoft this week announced that its Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service "role-specific" generative artificial intelligence (AI) products are now at the "general availability" commercial-release stage.

Both Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service include the licensing to use Copilot for Microsoft 365, which reached general availability last year, bringing generative AI to various Microsoft 365 apps. Microsoft is selling both the Sales and Service Copilots for $50 per user per month each, inclusive of Copilot for Microsoft 365 licensing. If an organization already has Copilot for Microsoft 365 licensing, then the two products are offered at $20 per user per month each.

Copilot for Sales
Microsoft described Copilot in Sales as building on "Copilot for Microsoft 365, enhancing it with connectivity to CRM platforms like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Salesforce Sales Cloud to bring sales-specific insights and recommendations to apps like Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and Word."

Copilot for Sales can create Word docs for sales briefings, and it can populate sales information notes for Microsoft Teams calls. Users can create "deal rooms" in Teams that will "sync with CRM data."

Copilot for Sales additionally can summarize e-mails and surface "buying intent and budget, authority, need, timing (BANT)" in Outlook. It can also generate Outlook e-mails, pulling information from an organization's "CRM system and Microsoft Graph." Users can also update CRM records directly from Outlook.

Microsoft is planning to bolster Copilot for Sales by connecting chat with an organization's CRM, which is expected to arrive "late this month." Also, coming "later this year," Microsoft expects to enable PowerPoint and OneNote to "address seller-specific needs with CRM connectivity."

It might seem that Copilot for Sales reached general availability back in July, but that was actually the Microsoft Sales Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales product, which had been earlier known as "Viva Sales."

Copilot for Service
Copilot for Service is for organizations with customer service operations, such as call centers. Microsoft described Copilot for Service as helping organizations extend "their existing investments in CRM and contact center solutions," which may be scattered across various tools, via generative AI.

Copilot for Service specifically has integration with "Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk" solutions, and works with Microsoft 365 apps such as Outlook and Teams. Users get access to generative AI help across all data, including "public websites, SharePoint, knowledge base articles, and offline files."

Microsoft is planning to add additional features to Copilot for Service "later this month." One coming capability will be integration with "CRM systems like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Salesforce Service Cloud." Another coming feature will let users summarize Outlook e-mails using Copilot. Users also will be able to browse and update CRM records from Outlook and Teams. More generally, users will be able to question Copilot about cases and contacts, and create summaries, based on CRM data, with a future update.

Copilot in OneDrive
Microsoft's release plans for Copilot in OneDrive  were briefly disclosed this week in Microsoft 365 Roadmap item 381450. Copilot in OneDrive is expected to roll out at general availability in "May 2024."

The Microsoft 365 Roadmap item post wasn't clear on which OneDrive was meant, as Microsoft has a "classic" OneDrive and a "new" OneDrive, which was described last year. Copilot in the new OneDrive was supposed to have arrived in December 2023. It likely slipped that schedule.