Microsoft is Now My Copilot

In 1967, Beachcomber Books published what would become a blockbuster release called “God is my Copilot.” It chronicled the exploits of Colonel Robert L. Scott, a heroic and celebrated WWII Airforce fighter pilot who retired as a general and was universally adored by all his contemporaries. All this was evidently not lost on Microsoft when it came to naming their new generative AI tool for business, which was originally built around ChatGPT. 

There is, of course, a free, bare-bones version of Copilot for consumers, but that is not where Microsoft is investing billions in building a more functional and integrated version of the product into seemingly everything that they do. Microsoft Partners, including knkMedia, are taking note and planning accordingly for the future. 

Microsoft Copilot for MS 365

Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 is an AI tool that integrates content in both large language models (LLMs) and the Microsoft 365 apps that businesses use every day. These are apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and others. Copilot provides real-time intelligent assistance, enabling users to enhance their productivity – and creativity. Such is the universality of their vision for AI and the Copilot product, that Microsoft is even planning to build a “Copilot” key into Windows 11 keyboards. 

So what does the business version (Copilot Pro) do and is it worth the $20 a month per user license fee? The difference between the free consumer version and the heavyweight Copilot version is a function of enhanced performance, priority access (it is available on the Azure public cloud), and the real carrot, integration to MS Office 365 products. From there, the future integration by Microsoft Partner apps like knkMedia is likely. 

Copilot Pro 

An early version of Copilot Pro has been in use at a large number of customer sites and reports from them are positive. User companies can build their own Copilot workflows, of course, however, Microsoft has already built and is licensing several of their own including Copilot for Sales, for Customer Service, for Security, and Copilot for Finance among others, and has been testing in over 40 countries in the world in multiple industries.  

Copilot for Sales is a good example of the productivity that the tool can provide. Among other capabilities, Copilot for Sales will summarize the key points in an incoming email, suggest actions required based on current and past activities with the client, and will create a draft response with options that work in the users’ calendar. It can even adjust the tone of the response in response to user prompts. At the same time, it recognizes the security level of the specific user involved and prohibits access to data to which that user is not authorized. (The CRM systems from which it currently accesses customer data may be either Dynamics 365 CRM or Salesforce). 

Survey Results of Early Users 

Microsoft concluded these early tests with large-scale anonymous surveys of users, and in each survey compared reports from a control group that did not have access to Copilot, to results from a group that did. The details of responses are published here: What Can Copilot’s Earliest Users Teach Us About Generative AI at Work? (microsoft.com).  

Microsoft studied activities such as conducting and summarizing meetings, drafting documents, email effectiveness, searching for documents and files, and drafting reports and content. Fully 77% of users surveyed said they did not want to go back to working without it. Here are some other data from the surveys: 

  • Copilot users summarized meetings nearly 4 times faster (in 11 minutes and 13 seconds, compared to 42 minutes and 34 seconds without Copilot in one example given) 
  • Emails written with Copilot were rated 18% clearer and 19% more concise. 
  • In tests to measure how easy it was to find company information from their own files, Copilot users were 27% faster – finishing in 17 minutes and 54 seconds, compared to 24 minutes and 18 seconds for users not using Copilot in another example. 

 

In the Copilot for Sales application, 83% of salespeople said Copilot for Sales makes them more productive, and 67% said they are able to spend more time with their customers. 

 

Impact on Dynamics 365 Customer Service Team

In a study on how Dynamics 365 Customer Service impacted agent productivity in Microsoft’s own Customer Service and Support (CSS) team, (one of the largest customer service organizations in the world), Microsoft studied two groups: 6,500 agents who used Copilot and a control group of 5,000 agents who did not use Copilot. Agents with Copilot had an overall 12% reduction in time spent resolving a case. 10% of cases that normally required collaboration with peers were resolved independently when agents had access to Copilot—meaning fewer customers had to be put on hold. 

Given these early but impressive numbers, it is reasonable to expect that over time, the use of Copilot will result in more deals closed, more customer service cases resolved, and with happier customers. These are the hard metrics that ultimately drive the bottom line. Microsoft’s own conclusion was that those who treat Copilot not as a search engine but as a highly capable, infinitely patient, always available assistant will gain the most. 

To create this article, we picked from an increasing body of knowledge on AI in general and Copilot in particular. A good source for those wishing to justify a Copilot Pro can be found in a Forrester paper Build Your Business Case For Microsoft 365 Copilot (forrester.com). Microsoft’s summary of Copilot for Microsoft 365 can be found at  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/microsoft-365-copilot-overview, and a summary of Copilot for Sales, is at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-sales-copilot/introduction. 

 

 

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