Transforming sales at Microsoft with AI-infused recommendations and customer insights

Peter Schlegel’s job is to build trust with Microsoft customers, and he’s using AI to do it.

“Specialists are solution sellers,” says Schlegel, a data and AI specialist for Microsoft Digital Sales. “We help customers solve problems with an eye toward helping them move down the path of digital transformation. To do this, we also must develop high-quality relationships with them.”

Schlegel introduces customers to Microsoft technologies that can help them efficiently address their business needs. He says that he and other solution seller specialists can identify opportunities for sales based on customer purchase history, Microsoft Azure consumption levels, and workload usage.

However, it can be challenging for Microsoft sellers to holistically understand their customers because of the company’s scale and the broad set of rich products it offers to customers.

“I could do this manually, but it would consume most of my time,” Schlegel says. “If a tool gives me recommendations, I could spend more time with the customer.”

Enter Daily Recommender, an internal AI solution that uses Microsoft Dynamics 365, Azure, and an AI interface to provide data-driven recommendations to sellers based on over 1,000 data points per customer, including past purchases, marketing engagement, and digital and local event attendance.

“A lot of companies invest in AI solutions,” says Praveen Kumar, a principal program manager in Microsoft Digital. “The primary differentiator is that Daily Recommender presents specialists and account executives with meaningful data, insights, and artifacts so they can make the right decisions.”

[Learn more about how Microsoft Digital developed Daily Recommender. Learn how Microsoft Digital modernized the toolset Microsoft sellers use.]

Scoping customer conversations based on past engagements

Daily Recommender uses internal and external data points such as current consumption levels, licenses, customer interactions with marketing material, and machine learning techniques such as collaborative filtering and natural language processing to identify the next logical product recommendation for the customer.

“We help customers achieve the solutions they intend to build in the most efficient way using Microsoft technologies,” says Siddharth Kumar, a principal machine learning scientist manager who works on the team that provides machine learning solutions to Daily Recommender. “With these curated recommendations, sellers can spend less time creating sales pitches and focus on having meaningful and useful discussions with customers.”

These recommendations and insights are presented in a curated dashboard, which is available to the entire Digital Sales team.

“Let’s say a Microsoft account team is responsible for over 100 customers,” says Salman Mukhtar, the director of business programs for the Digital Sales team. “Daily Recommender gives you access to product recommendations for the accounts across your solution areas. The app also provides a rationale for the recommendation, what material you can use, and a suggested action date. It takes the AI to the last mile.”

Using Daily Recommender, account executives and specialists work together to understand what may be top of mind for the customer, review product recommendations, identify the right customer contacts, and provide customer-centric recommendations based on the customer’s needs and interests.

For example, say a customer downloaded a piece of Microsoft content showcasing how to move legacy SQL servers to the cloud. Daily Recommender could prompt a specialist to provide that customer with resources for cloud migration and suggest that they unlock the advanced capabilities of the cloud by investing in a business intelligence tool like Microsoft Power BI.

“Within minutes, I have a clear picture of what’s currently driving the customer and how I can structure my conversations based on their current consumption and interest in Microsoft products,” says Alexander Mildner, an account executive for Microsoft Digital Sales. “If I had this two and a half years ago, my life would have been easier.”

Equipped with this data, sellers and account executives can collaborate and connect customers with Microsoft resources, products, and specialists to achieve their projects’ goals. Specialists can work with customers to create execution plans or discuss the technical details of implementation, often within their area of expertise.

“Collaboration is an essential part of an account team,” Mildner says. “The more insights you can use as a specialist or account executive, the better.”

Committing to continuous improvement over time

With Daily Recommender, one out of every three recommendations qualifies as a sales opportunity. This is almost four times higher than the industry average of 6 to 10 percent. The app becomes more intelligent over time as it continues to learn from seller actions and sales outcomes. The team also takes a hands-on approach to improving Daily Recommender by analyzing clickthrough and seller action data and soliciting feedback through in-person roadshows, emails, and community calls.

“I think we will look back in a year or two, and we won’t be able to imagine a time before this tool,” Mildner says. “I’ve already seen the progress that the tool has made in the past two years, which tells you how strong its AI is.”

Daily Recommender was built for the Microsoft Sales team by Microsoft Digital as part of an ongoing effort to transform the tools and processes that the company provides for its sales force.

“For a sales model that requires sellers to do active prospecting at scale, we needed a robust and AI enabled solution that would help sellers quickly identify and actively engage with the customers to make faster buying decisions,” says Hyma Davuluri, a principal program manager in Microsoft Digital. “This led to the development of Daily Recommender, which enabled sellers to identify and act on sales opportunities.”

The journey to create and improve Daily Recommender has been educational for Mukhtar and the team. They have learned that the best way to improve the experience is to create synergy across business groups, sellers, and AI experts.

The result?

The Digital Sales team was able to transform the sales process with AI.

Mukhtar says that supporting this collaboration took time, but it started with bringing people together to invest in changing the way the Microsoft sales teams organized and approached their customers for prospecting new business.

“Changing people’s behavior isn’t easy,” Mukhtar says. “We focused on bringing together different stakeholders to invest in changing our processes. We found that value is really unlocked by how well you bring together AI and the sales process, seller behavior, and customer needs and integrate into a modern app.”