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April 26, 2024

First National Bank enhances customer communications with Microsoft Copilot for Sales

First National Bank (FNB) is a division of FirstRand Bank Limited, the largest listed financial institution by market capitalization in Africa. Founded in 1838, FNB offers personal, private, business, commercial, and corporate banking services to 10 million consumers, commercial enterprises, and public sector customers in South Africa and across the continent. Its 50,178 employees embrace the philosophy of “better business; better world.”

First National Bank

“South African organizations cannot afford to ignore the revolutionary changes that will be driven by AI in the years ahead.”

Christoph Nieuwoudt, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, FirstRand

Deeply rooted, forward-looking

First National Bank has been in business longer than any other banking institution in South Africa, but it’s known for innovation—especially when it comes to serving customers. The successful rollout of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service in August 2022 helped the company build bridges between siloed locations and processes. The new system is already improving customer experiences and streamlining sales. Nearly 100% of the company’s more than 3,500 bankers are enjoying the time savings, improved visibility, robust reporting, and modern features available in the new, easy-to-use dashboards. But this was just the first step in the bank’s shift to managing data and business operations in the cloud.

For phase two of the project, the firm rolled out Microsoft Copilot for Sales in December 2023 to further streamline interactions between bankers, analysts, and their commercial customers. The AI assistance in Copilot for Sales is designed to help salespeople work more efficiently, generate fresh ideas, and close deals faster, and those were all desired outcomes. But FNB leadership was most excited about the AI-powered drafting capabilities in Copilot for Sales. Three-quarters of customer exchanges are through email in Outlook, so this was an area ripe for improvement with AI. As Christoph Nieuwoudt, FirstRand Chief Data and Analytics Officer, explains, “South African organizations cannot afford to ignore the revolutionary changes that will be driven by AI in the years ahead.”

Copilot email drafts save busy bankers time and effort

Although business in South Africa is conducted in English, the diverse populations there speak 13 different languages in their daily lives. This makes for a rich culture, but for busy bankers, fluent in spoken English but often less confident with nuanced written communications, drafting professional, thoughtful emails can be challenging and time-consuming. As Chris Prinsloo, Capability Lead at FNB, explains, “Sometimes we’re so busy that email responses can have a transactional tone, lacking a human touch and connection.”

Adoption of other Dynamics 365 tools was high, so leadership was excited to roll out Copilot for Sales. However, employee feedback indicated some trepidation related to the email draft feature. Bankers worried that the AI would write in an unnatural, robotic style, exacerbating the problem leadership hoped to solve. To pacify these concerns, the firm created a robust training program with step-by-step modules for each type of task the tool could be used for—including drafting detailed, thorough, and human-sounding responses to complex customer issues.

In the training, bankers learned that when they receive an email from a customer explaining a problem or asking a complex series of questions, they can open the Copilot for Sales pane in Outlook and select a response type. In seconds, Copilot generates a grammatically correct reply that addresses each point in the customer’s message with relevant context, appropriate empathy, and suggestions to resolve the issue. The banker can review the draft, edit it, or accept it as is, and send the reply to the customer—ready to take on the next challenge in seconds instead of minutes. Chris Prinsloo sums up their experience: “Because Copilot consistently responds with these human characteristics, it’s becoming ingrained, and we’re starting to write this way more naturally. And customers are noticing the improvement as well. It’s strange, we were afraid the machines are taking our jobs, but this AI tool is actually teaching us to be more empathetic.”

By the end of the training sessions, FNB’s bankers were happy with both the time-saving support and the high-quality writing assistance available from Copilot for Sales. More than 94% of commercial bankers now use Copilot to help them craft richer communications with their customers. Bankers also appreciate the guided user experience workflow; feedback is universally positive.

Bank leadership continues to explore ways that AI-driven tools can support and streamline client care as they strive to fulfill the company’s philosophy, “better business; better world.”

“Because Copilot consistently responds with these human characteristics, it’s becoming ingrained, and we’re starting to write this way more naturally. And customers are noticing the improvement as well. It’s strange, we were afraid the machines are taking our jobs, but this AI tool is actually teaching us to be more empathetic.”

Chris Prinsloo, Capability Lead, FNB

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