Marketing, Customer Service, And Work Apps Benefit From Microsoft's Latest AI Assistant‍

AI's "copilot" will assist with customer service, recording sales conversations, and creating marketing materials.

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After using artificial intelligence to compete with Google in the search business, Microsoft Corp. is now using the newest AI technology to catch up to competitors in the corporate applications industry like Oracle Corp., Salesforce Inc., and SAP SE.

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The industry leader in software is launching Dynamics 365 Copilot, an AI assistant, for programs that perform duties like sales, marketing, and customer service. The software can create contextual chat and email responses to customer support inquiries using technology from OpenAI. It can assist marketers in creating customer segments to target and in creating product descriptions for e-commerce. On Monday, the new features will be made available in preview form, and hundreds of early consumers will test them out. For instance, Campari, an Italian producer of aperitifs, is experimenting with the marketing tools to create customized advertising for occasions centered around the Negroni cocktail.

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Microsoft also stated that its upcoming batch of AI announcements will focus on "workplace productivity," a term the software giant typically uses to refer to Office software, and that they are scheduled for March 16.

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Since the beginning of the year, Microsoft has added language-generation tools and chatbots to everything from its Bing internet search engine to the Teams business conferencing software. Business apps are the most recent Microsoft programs to receive this AI upgrade. The approach comes after GitHub Copilot, an AI programming tool, made a successful debut last year, and Microsoft increased its investment in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, in January. The organization intends to rebuild its whole product lineup using AI and tools from OpenAI, according Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella.

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Nadella's goal is to use artificial intelligence to break down silos between previously separate programs, such as ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management), which have their own workflows and acronyms, in the business applications category where Microsoft has been operating for over two decades but has lagged behind rivals. Instead,  he said, AI and robotics should be combined and there should be one AI copilot to retrieve information, help workers with tasks, and communicate with each other. While Nadella noted Microsoft's Dynamics tool will also make mistakes, he noted they will be less significant than those made by Bing. 

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ERP, CRM, marketing, customer service, and supply chain are all made-up terms, right? Those are all junk categories created by vendors, according to Nadella, whose first senior position at Microsoft was managing bCentral, an early internet-based business application platform. What if there was only one Biz App workflow, we asked? ”

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Businesses are trying to decide how and whether to use the corporate parts of new generative AI systems like ChatGPT and DALL-E that have garnered significant consumer interest in the past year. As programs make mistakes and go wrong, the AI gold rush is also creating concern. Several banks have prohibited the use of ChatGPT, while other businesses are instructing staff members not to divulge sensitive information to the systems or expressing concern about how current AI technologies would handle private company data.

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Nonetheless, the majority of businesses appear unable to resist mentioning AI and how the technology has the potential to revolutionize their industry.

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Microsoft claims that its copilot will search through a company's materials and a customer's case history and can provide replies based on that information for customer care professionals. Nadella added that his business won't use client information for Microsoft's personal gain.

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In order to respond to a customer's request, a customer care worker must consult 18 separate internal databases, according to Nadella. Now that you have this copilot, you can query the 18 databases and formulate a response without taking your attention away from the customer, he said.

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Marketing professionals can communicate in simple English with their customer data software to create focused client groups and receive advice for other segments they may not have considered. According to Charles Lamanna, Microsoft's vice president for business apps and platform, the bot will also assist customers in becoming creative by offering suggestions for email campaigns based on topics and chosen tones; users can select from categories like formal, opulent, or adventurous.

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The software firm also debuted AI email writing technology last month for time-constrained salesmen. A new sales capability is now being added, which creates email summaries of Teams conferences and extracts the particular activities attendees agreed to carrying out. Microsoft will eventually integrate those with calendars. The software will plan a meeting, for instance, if the callers agree to hold another one in a few weeks, according to Lamanna.

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Moreover, the software behemoth debuted AI email writing technology for salesmen last month. It is now including a sales function that creates emails summarizing Teams conferences and extracts the exact activities attendees committed to carrying out. Microsoft is going to integrate those with calendars in the future. According to Lamanna, the software will plan a meeting if call participants consider holding one more in a few weeks.

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According to Nadella, humans employing the technology must double-check the information since it will err.

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So that we might be reminded of both the social norms and obligations we as humans have, as well as the power of this tech and the error limits of this technology, Nadella remarked that he cares a lot about not just the use case but also the design of the goods.

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