Attract, engage, and retain customers with AI for business growth

In today’s highly competitive business world, organizations of all sizes are constantly looking for new ways to increase revenue, optimize costs, and help employees thrive. Improving some of the most important business functions—sales, service, and marketing—lays the foundation for achieving these goals by driving growth, building stronger customer relationships, and creating more efficient processes.

Generative AI tools have begun transforming business operations beyond individual productivity. By supporting end-to-end workflows across core functions, these tools help build deeper organizational impact. For example, organizations can use AI to analyze customer behavior to uncover trends, automate routine service inquiries for faster resolutions, and offer sales teams actionable insights to close deals more effectively.

When applied strategically, AI solutions empower businesses to optimize operations, achieve long-term growth, and drive transformation at scale—amplifying teams’ potential to create meaningful change organization-wide.

Understanding the full potential of AI

The rise in the use of AI isn’t just about new technology and products. It’s about fundamentally evolving how organizations operate and people work. Generative AI helps organizations rethink how they approach work by moving past repetitive tasks and instead focusing on strategic priorities that create lasting value. When processes are enhanced through AI for sales, service, and marketing, the result is deeper insights, improved decision-making, and more impactful customer experiences.

This shift isn’t only about doing things faster but about doing them smarter—aligning resources with business goals, encouraging innovation, and creating meaningful outcomes. With AI as a partner, organizations can transform their workflows and their ability to deliver long-term success and competitive advantage.

Let’s take a closer look at how a generative AI assistant, Microsoft 365 Copilot, transforms those core functions of sales, service, and marketing.

AI for sales efficiency

Streamlining sales processes is key to driving efficiency and transformation. Sales teams are the backbone of revenue growth, but too often, their time is taken up by tasks like updating CRM systems, drafting proposals, and responding to emails. Copilot changes that by automating these time-consuming tasks and enhancing the sales process with AI insights.

Examples of how Copilot transforms sales

• Automated CRM systems updates. With Copilot, sales reps don’t need to manually enter data into CRM systems. AI automatically captures relevant information from emails, meetings, and calls to update the system in real time. This not only saves time but also maintains more accurate and up-to-date customer records.
• Proposal generation. Copilot can draft proposals, sales presentations, and contracts based on templates and customer information. This speeds up the process, allowing reps to spend more time with clients.
• Predictive insights. AI analyzes customer data to identify key opportunities and suggest next steps. It can even highlight potential upsell and cross-sell instances to help reps identify where they can have the greatest impact.

By simplifying these tasks, sales teams will be freed up to focus on what they do best—nurture customer relationships, negotiate deals, and close sales.

Want to see Microsoft 365 Copilot in action for sales? Take a look:

AI for streamlined customer service

Good customer service is at the heart of forming long-term customer relationships. But service teams can easily become overwhelmed by repetitive tasks like answering common questions, logging tickets, and manually tracking issues, especially during busy periods. With Copilot, service teams can reengineer how work gets done so more complex customer needs become the priority, which can lead to higher customer satisfaction and reduced operational costs.

Examples of how Copilot transforms customer service

• Automated ticket resolution. Copilot can automatically handle simple customer questions by sharing accurate, preapproved responses. This reduces the volume of tickets that need to be handled by human agents, so they can focus on more difficult cases.
• Knowledge base suggestions. When agents do need to step in, Copilot can quickly pull relevant information from your organization’s knowledge base, giving them the background they need to resolve issues faster.
• Sentiment analysis. Copilot analyzes customer interactions to gauge their mood and satisfaction. Based on that information, service teams can better prioritize and personalize their responses.

This combination of AI-powered automation and insights allows service teams to resolve issues more productively.

Want to see Microsoft 365 Copilot in action for customer service? Take a look:

AI for marketing strategies

Copilot enhances marketing functions by analyzing customer data in real time, identifying audience insights, and optimizing ad spend. This allows teams to deliver personalized campaigns at scale, improve resource allocation, and quickly adapt to evolving consumer trends.

Examples of how Copilot transforms marketing

• Content creation. Quickly create first drafts of emails, social media posts, and blog posts. Ask for ideas based on customer data and recent trends to get more personalized, engaging content. The AI output won’t be perfect, but it’s not supposed to be—think of it as a shortcut to help get people started. Once they’ve added their own creativity and expert touch, it’ll truly pop.
• Data analysis. Automate the process of pulling data from multiple sources and creating reports. Copilot can even highlight key insights and trends to strengthen marketing teams’ abilities to make data-driven decisions.
• Campaign optimization. After analyzing past campaign performance, Copilot can suggest improvements for future campaigns. It can also recommend the best times to send emails, the most effective messaging, and the ideal target audience.

By automating these processes, marketing teams will stay productive and have more time to directly contribute to brand growth and customer engagement.

Want to see Microsoft 365 Copilot in action for marketing? Take a look:

The potential ROI of Copilot

Copilot influences the bottom line in big ways. A 2024 commissioned Total Economic Impact? study conducted by Forrester Consulting on the potential economic benefits of Copilot over three years includes:

• A projected ROI of 112% to 457%.
• A three-year increase in net income due to increased revenues and decreased costs of 2.9% up to 7.6%.
• A projected net present value of $19.1 million to $77.4 million.

Whether teams are increasing sales, enhancing customer service, or coming up with innovative marketing strategies, Copilot has already become an indispensable AI assistant for business growth.

Learn how to transform your business with Copilot by exploring best practices and insights inspired by companies leading the way. And take the power of AI on the go with the Copilot app. Download the Microsoft 365 Copilot app here.