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June 30, 2023

Microsoft reaches out to new markets with Microsoft Sales Copilot

As Microsoft works to build tech awareness and availability worldwide, the company’s business-to-business (B2B) sales team, the Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions Group (MCAPS), uses the Dynamics 365 Sales platform to build relationships with clients and guide them to the best possible products and optimal usage. Looking to simplify workflows, improve the employee experience, and provide critical user insight, MCAPS started using Microsoft Sales Copilot ahead of its release to customers. Using Sales Copilot, MCAPS has seamlessly connected Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft 365 productivity tools while reducing the number of applications employees have to use at once. This is helping MCAPS speed up time to action and support the Sales Copilot product team, validating the ways the product can address workflow and data-flow problems for both internal employees and customers.

Microsoft Corporation

“Sales Copilot delivers a valuable overview of a sales meeting including a transcript, flagging mentions of people and products, and tracking points of interest determined by participant. It’s super helpful.”

Nick Fratello, EY Innovation Lead/Sales Director, Microsoft

New tools with new technologies

Microsoft seeks to empower every person on the planet to achieve more with technology—including its own employees. The business-to-business (B2B) sales department, the Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions Group (MCAPS), uses Microsoft tools such as Dynamics 365 Sales, Outlook, and Teams to build customer relationships and help businesses buy the right products that meet their needs. MCAPS sellers rely on these tools to efficiently do their jobs but felt frustration at spending too much time switching apps and performing manual tasks.

This gave the Microsoft Sales Copilot product team a unique two-part opportunity. First, the MCAPS team could provide crucial user feedback to the developers before releasing the product so that customers are directly benefiting from the MCAPS team’s learnings. Second, MCAPS members getting early access to Microsoft Sales Copilot could help them simplify and streamline workflows. With a “Customer Zero” mindset—creating the best experience for employees to accelerate innovation and improvements for customers—MCAPS began using Sales Copilot.

A smoother sales experience

Sales Copilot acts as a bridge between Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft 365 products, helping MCAPS employees connect customer data and consolidate workflows. It also uses next-generation AI capabilities to streamline and automate processes by capturing relevant client data and entering it into CRM systems automatically. “Our ability to assess, deploy, question, and evolve our own technology is a demonstration of our trust and investment in our own solutions,” explains Kerry Barrass, Director of Business Programs at Microsoft. 

Sales Copilot provides the MCAPS team with automated actions such as entering and maintaining customer information as contacts that are mastered directly in Dynamics 365. It reduces time-to-action by automating, searching, and obtaining information, and reduces the number of clicks and steps necessary for processes. Viewing a meeting summary with Sales Copilot requires just four clicks without leaving Outlook, compared to 14 clicks and swapping to two other applications before Sales Copilot. Further, using Sales Copilot to identify if a customer is already a contact record requires just one click and can be done from within Outlook, whereas nine clicks and two other applications were needed beforehand.

“I love that Sales Copilot knows who is already in my contact list,” says Nick Fratello, Sales Director at Microsoft. “I add all of my contacts through Outlook 365, but instead of having to page through everything, Microsoft Sales Copilot simply marks automatically and avoids duplicate entries.”

Fratello also appreciates how the tool makes transcription and reviewing a meeting straightforward. “Sales Copilot delivers a valuable overview of a sales meeting including a transcript, flagging mentions of people and products, and tracking points of interest determined by participant. It’s super helpful.” The result is a smoother flow and more efficient work for the sales team. An internal survey saw users of the tool agreeing that tasks were faster with Sales Copilot, with 84 percent of respondents citing it as speeding up the process of summarizing a long email thread, 81 percent noting it as speeding up remote meeting summaries, and 65 percent agreeing that it sped up adding contacts. The same survey saw 69 percent of those surveyed agreeing that it was an improvement over the prior workflow and helped them stay in the flow of work, with 68 percent seeing it as making sales a better experience and 67 percent claiming it reduced administrative work.

Better sales through better understanding

Not only does Sales Copilot make the information immediately accessible, its generative AI capabilities offer team members suggestions on the next steps for the sales process. This streamlined process efficiently centralizes and shares information with the team without taking away from the expertise of the people building relationships and providing personal attention to clients.

Sales Copilot capabilities have enhanced since initial deployment in Microsoft. Using data sourced according to the principles of responsible AI development, employees now save time by reading an AI generated summarized view of email threads and can scan key sales record summaries while scheduling meetings with clients. Sales Copilot is also being rolled out to other internal teams who can enhance their workflow and offer more attention to customer needs.

Authentic human connections still drive the heart of the MCAPS team. Using Sales Copilot, the team can focus on building and maintaining those connections with less time spent on performing administrative tasks. “We are a demonstration of what Sales Copilot can offer our customers by showing what it’s empowering us to do—supporting our employees to provide customers with more individual care and responsiveness,” says Kerry Barrass, director of business programs at Microsoft. “Our aim with Sales Copilot for Microsoft and for our customers is to be able to provide personalized, distinctive experiences that will only improve over time, and we’re so confident in our products that they make up the backbone of our own operations here at Microsoft.”

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“I love that Sales Copilot knows who is already in my contact list; I add all of my contacts through Outlook 365, but instead of having to page through everything, Microsoft Sales Copilot simply marks automatically and avoids duplicate entries.”

Nick Fratello, EY Innovation Lead/Sales Director, Microsoft

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