How Microsoft customer service and support agents become super agents with Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Dedicated to customer support

Microsoft is a worldwide leader in technology with millions of customers—including itself. The company’s customer service and support operation, one of the largest in the world, is also one of the largest users of Dynamics 365 Customer Service. This gives Microsoft the unique opportunity to act as “customer zero,” using and improving the product for itself and its customers. 

In 2019, Microsoft used 16 different case management tools, which made collaboration across various lines of business difficult. In 2020, the company started to shift its customer care platform to Dynamics 365 Customer Service as part of a larger commitment to support customer service and support agents. In 2021, Microsoft deepened the integration of Teams into the overall Dynamics product experience for better collaboration with subject matter experts around complex technical cases. And in 2022, it expanded the use of AI, including an intelligent, unified routing system to match customers with the right agent and the use of virtual chatbots to increase customer self-service.  

Last year, support agents started using Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. Statistics alone don’t capture the full picture of how the AI’s assistance has improved workflows. The support agents themselves are the best ambassadors for showing the true value of Copilot. Here are three of their stories.  

Learning new technology at the start

Josiah Roebuck, who has been with Microsoft for just over a year, is a support agent recruited as part of the Microsoft Aspire program. That means he was considered one of the best recruits fresh out of college. And as a recent grad, he’s just getting his start in the industry. “The most challenging part of my job is just the vast amount of technology that I need to learn,” says Josiah. “And now that I’ve been here for a while, I’m starting to get cases that are more complex.”

Josiah’s cases most frequently involve authentication and authorization. He explains that Dynamics 365 Customer Service provides good case organization and tracking of relevant information, and Copilot has streamlined the process of getting caught up on new cases that get assigned to him. Josiah often uses the ‘Ask a question’ function of Copilot to get case information quickly so he can expedite finding a solution for the customer. He explains, “I use Ask a question to ask technical questions about a case I’m working on. It gives me straightforward facts, detailed information, and even troubleshooting steps aimed at solving the case as quickly as possible. Copilot has changed my work process and shortened the time by at least 50%.” 

Communicating the right information—in the right tone—is also a crucial part of Josiah’s job. He uses the ‘Write an email’ feature to make sure he’s communicating empathetically with customers. “Whenever you communicate with a customer, you want to be sure you’re picking the right words,” Josiah says. “Copilot can draft an email for me using empathetic language, which is different from my normal communication style. And honestly, the emails are so human and non-robotic that it really helps me foster more personalized and considerate interactions with customers.“  

Solving complex customer problems

Copilot isn’t just useful for agents at the start of their careers. Mayte Cubino Gonzalez has been with Microsoft for three years, has multiple engineering degrees, and is a director of engineering support. She leads a team of over 100 people who are responsible for providing the best support experience to customers using Office, the Project/Planner suite of products, and now for Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. A mother of three, Mayte is a supporter of women in technology and has spent years promoting greater inclusion in the engineering field.

Mayte most frequently deals with escalated calls after prior attempts at resolution have gone awry. It’s here she finds Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service to be most helpful to her case work, as it gives her a quick and accurate summary of the case she’s stepping into. “When a call reaches me,” Mayte says, “the customer needs reassurance and understanding immediately. I need to absorb a lot of information quickly, and Copilot lets me grasp the details right away.”

Mayte likes that Copilot in Outlook can summarize long email threads and that the ‘Coach’ feature acts as a “second set of eyes” that can help her understand if her message would be perceived as intended and provide suggestions as needed. She also likes that Copilot helps her emails and communications with clients feel natural in a multilingual environment while still allowing her personality to shine through. “It helps me express myself better, even when I’m not a native speaker,” she explains. In a role that requires not just technical knowledge but also empathy and care, Mayte can do far more and do it faster with the functionality of Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

Saving administrative time

Working at Microsoft is a point of pride for Michael Simons, a support escalation engineer for large commercial Azure customers and their virtual machines and storage. Michael is a 10-year veteran of the company. “When I travel, I love to tell people that I work for Microsoft,” he says. “My dream has always been to work at this company and to have an influence on the technology that we all use in our day-to-day lives.” Michael is proud to bring his passion for problem solving to help customers every single day, and he strives to tackle difficult challenges quickly.

But not all his time is occupied by solving problems. After a call, he needs to summarize the case he just worked on and add it to the case notes for future agents. He also needs to summarize the next steps in an email to customers. By weaving Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service into his recap process, Michael has been able to decrease the manual-yet-necessary summarization steps, empowering him to wrap up cases faster and help more customers throughout the day.  

“What Copilot helps me do is get through the administrative tasks faster so I can move on to the next call. Now the whole process is taking 15 minutes or less, where it used to take 30 or 40,” explains Michael. “It doesn’t take over my ability to solve problems, but it improves my ability to summarize and document what I solved and take on the next challenge. What we're seeing is how much quicker I'm getting to another case or how much easier it's making my life and creating a better work life balance so that I'm not staying at work super late finishing case notes. I can actually finish a job very quickly and just get to the next case.”

Michael is particularly excited to see where Copilot goes next in terms of direct engagement with customers. He notes that originally the tool was given to the support agents without much direction, and he sees that as a positive. It has encouraged him and others to find the best ways to use this tool in real situations, rather than forcing everyone to insert it uniformly into their workflow. “What I look forward to the most is working with Copilot. Not having Copilot do my job, but being able to do it together,” he says.

A flexible tool

While all three support agents focus on different types of calls and in different environments, all three also see Copilot as a benefit. It doesn't replace their knowledge or training; instead, it enhances their capacity to support and care for themselves and their customers by enabling them to complete tasks efficiently, digest information as quickly as possible, and accomplish a range of other tasks. And it’s a technology that they are helping to build.

As these agents prove, AI can empower people to be more productive, efficient, insightful, and empathetic—especially when that AI is built with responsibility and privacy in mind. Microsoft believes in three fundamental promises when it comes to data and AI: customer data belongs to the customer, personal customer data is not used to train AI models, and customer data and AI models are protected with comprehensive enterprise compliance and security controls. All part of a commitment to give support agents and customers the peace of mind they need to focus on their goals. “In any conversation about AI, there are fears about what it can do,” says Michael. “I’m proud to be working with Microsoft, a company that’s responsible about how it’s used, and show how it can improve our work in an innovative way.”