Enhancing Dynamics 365 with Copilot Studio

Copilot represents an exciting opportunity for businesses to enhance their operations and customer interactions. While chatbots and other AI assistants are nothing new, their use is limited to the task they were created to do. However, powerful, customisable, AIs like Copilot can enhance business processes and the customer experience.

Copilot can offer staff deeper insights and enable faster, more informed decision-making, enhancing efficiency and engagement. When paired with Copilot Studio, this technology becomes a powerful tool for customising AI to meet the unique needs of your business.

With Copilot Studio, organisations can build smarter workflows, create advanced customer interactions, and tailor solutions to their goals, all within the familiar environment of Dynamics 365. It’s not just about adopting AI; it’s about empowering your teams to work smarter and engage more meaningfully with customers.

However, without knowledge of Copilot Studio or its capabilities, organisations are missing out on insight and opportunity, both in terms of improving internal processes and missed revenue.

Internal Benefits: Enhancing Employee Productivity and Collaboration

Internal processes often involve repetitive tasks that few employees enjoy but do so because it’s what’s required. And, more often than not, because that’s the way it’s always been done. This kind of thinking is dangerous in any business trying to grow. Maintaining the status quo because improving a process is too hard, too uncomfortable or there’s a fear of redundancy harms the entire organisation.

Using AI to carry out mundane, competitive tasks such as data entry, updating CRM records, and generating reports eliminates inefficiencies and frees up staff for other tasks. Copilot Studio can be programmed to automate workflows, it’s simply just a case of identifying where it can be of most use and putting Copilot to work.

How it can Help:

• Automatically logs customer interactions into Dynamics 365 after calls or emails.
• Sends follow-up reminders to team members based on pre-set triggers like an unresolved service request.
• Generates custom reports from Dynamics 365 data without manual intervention.

Configuration Insight:

• Triggers and Actions: Use Power Automate alongside Copilot Studio to create workflows. For example, a trigger like a completed customer survey can prompt an automated action, such as logging feedback and notifying the account manager.
• Custom Workflows: Configure specific actions based on business needs, such as automatically assigning leads to the right sales rep by training Copilot to recognise keywords in customer queries.

1. Empowering Teams with Real-Time Assistance

Employees often need immediate access to insights during customer interactions, particularly in a customer service setting. Copilot Studio can provide this support by analysing live data and delivering actionable recommendations directly within Dynamics 365.

This augments the training team members receive and helps to onboard new employees getting them up to speed faster. By having a Copilot feeding information to team members they can provide a more responsive and relevant service to customers.

In a service-focused business, Copilot can make recommendations based on the requirements recorded in Dynamics, providing prospects and clients with a solution that more accurately meets their needs.

How It Helps:

• Provides real-time product recommendations during customer calls.
• Highlights cross-selling or upselling opportunities by analysing purchase history.

Configuration Insight:

• Knowledge Base Integration: Link Copilot Studio to Dynamics 365 Sales records to ensure employees have access to the latest customer information.
• AI Training: Configure Copilot to process live sentiment analysis, offering sales reps real-time cues to guide conversations.

2. Knowledge Management

Accessing internal knowledge efficiently is a challenge for many organisations purely because of the size of the business and, therefore, the amount of data housed. Add in disparate systems, across multiple departments or even subsidiaries and data retrieval and knowledge management is a big job.

A CRM, like Dynamics 365, allows you to consolidate those data sources into a single location. Or at the very least, allows you to access it via a single-entry point. However, the amount of information is still vast. Copilot Studio can serve as an AI-powered assistant, enabling employees to retrieve documents, policies, or training materials with natural language queries.

How It Helps:

• Copilot can find relevant policies or guides instantly when employees input questions.
• It provides updates from internal knowledge repositories without manual searching.

Configuration Insight:

• Document Integration: Connect SharePoint, OneDrive, or Teams to Copilot Studio. Use indexing and tagging to ensure AI prioritises relevant results.
• Intent Modelling: Train Copilot to understand specific terminology used within the organisation, ensuring employees receive accurate responses tailored to their roles.

3.?Data Accuracy and Governance

Maintaining accurate and clean data in your Dynamics 365 CRM is essential. Without reliable data, the CRM ceases to function as a viable business tool. Customer data can’t be trusted, reports can be littered with errors and customers receive the wrong email communication. Data accuracy is everything.

Copilot Studio can support your efforts in this area by automating validation, flagging errors, and preventing duplication. When you can trust your data, you can do more and go faster.

How It Helps:

• Alerts users to duplicate records when entering new customer data.
• Validate required fields before allowing records to be saved.

Configuration Insight:

• Validation Rules: Set up custom validation rules in Dynamics 365, such as requiring email addresses for new leads. Copilot can be configured to enforce these rules.
• Cross-Referencing: Link external databases or APIs to ensure data consistency and verify information in real time.

External Benefits: Transforming Customer Engagement

Copilot Studio can also be put to use in improving communication and interaction with your customers. Increasing engagement increases the influx of data into your business, which further underscores the importance of being able to trust the data and, therefore, put it to good use.

1.?Personalised Chatbots for Customer Support

Chatbots built with Copilot Studio go beyond standard FAQs by integrating with Dynamics 365 to deliver highly personalised customer interactions. Chatbots built in Copilot Studio are powerful because not only can you provide it with programmed responses to specific questions, but you can also govern where it goes looking for information.

You can target specific websites or even just web pages. Or the whole of the internet. Naturally, the broader the knowledge base the greater the chance for errors simply because it won’t be able to determine if one source can be trusted over another.

The sources you choose will directly impact on the success of your chatbot.

How It Helps:

• Resolves customer queries by pulling up order histories or account details.
• Escalates complex issues to human agents with all relevant contexts included.

Configuration Insight:

• Custom Conversation Paths: Use Copilot Studio’s dialogue builder to design paths based on specific customer needs, like refund requests or order tracking.
• Integration with Dynamics 365: Connect chatbots directly to customer data fields, ensuring real-time responses are accurate and contextually relevant.

2.?Sales Enablement

AI-powered bots and assistants can simplify the sales journey by guiding prospects through product information or assisting with appointment scheduling. AI-powered chatbots now have the potential to manage purchases with the user never having to leave the page they were on. Combined this with personalised product recommendations based on order and search history and you have an immensely powerful customer engagement tool at your disposal.

On the professional services side of things, Copilot can interact with prospects on your website and schedule a meeting with a member of your sales team. It speeds up the sales process and doesn’t require prospects to pick up the phone. Copilot can create a new record in the Dynamics 365 CRM, populate the relevant person’s calendar and send an alert email.

How It Helps:

• Provides tailored product suggestions based on browsing behaviour.
• Automates appointment scheduling for prospective clients.

Configuration Insight:

• Recommendation Models: Train Copilot on historical sales data and customer preferences. Integrate with third-party recommendation engines for added precision.
• Calendar Integration: Sync Copilot with Dynamics 365 and Outlook calendars to enable seamless scheduling directly from chatbot interactions.

3.?Customer Insights and Journey Mapping

Understanding customer journeys is an integral part of any customer engagement strategy but insights aren’t always apparent and mapping every journey every customer made is impractical, despite its value. Copilot Studio offers tools to map interactions and highlight opportunities for improvement and can do so in moments.

This level of insight and the time saved is incredibly powerful when utilised correctly.

How It Helps:

• Identifies patterns in customer drop-off points.
• Maps multi-channel customer journeys for targeted interventions.

Configuration Insight:

• Data Analysis: Use Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to feed customer data into Copilot Studio. Train the AI to spot specific patterns, such as frequently abandoned carts.
• Predictive Analytics: Configure machine learning models to forecast customer behaviour and suggest corrective actions.

4.?Self-Service Portals

Self-service portals powered by AI give customers control over routine tasks like tracking orders or updating account details. This frees up staff from answering routine queries, allowing them to tackle in-depth or complicated tasks. Equally, it provides a more satisfying experience for customers who don’t want their emails sitting in an inbox that a team member will get to…at some point.

Copilot Studio will help you to deliver a higher level of customer service without increasing the burden on your team.

How It Helps:

• Allows customers to update their profiles or check order statuses without human intervention.
• Reduces the volume of low-complexity support queries.

Configuration Insight:

• Portal Integration: Build portals with Dynamics 365 and integrate Copilot to handle queries dynamically.
• Real-Time Access: Configure Copilot to interact with live data, ensuring customers always have up-to-date information.

Copilot Studio in Digital Transformation

Microsoft Copilot Studio allows organisations to build, customise, and deploy AI-powered Copilots and chatbots. As a low-code platform, it democratises access to AI, enabling non-technical users to design intelligent solutions that streamline workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and enhance productivity.

Working with Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, Copilot Studio ensures consistent, reliable outcomes across teams, empowering the user and driving operational efficiency.

Furthermore, Copilot Studio provides scalability, flexibility, and robust security through its foundation on Microsoft Azure, ensuring enterprise-grade compliance and protection of sensitive data.

By breaking down technical barriers, the platform fosters collaboration between teams, reduces reliance on IT resources, and empowers organisations to innovate faster. In essence, Copilot Studio serves as a strategic enabler for businesses looking to harness AI, optimise their processes, and adapt to the evolving demands of a digital-first world.

1.?Agility and Scalability

As your business evolves, Copilot Studio’s customisation ensures it can scale with your needs, whether expanding chatbot functionality or introducing advanced AI-driven analytics.

Configuration Insight:

• Data Unification: Use Dataverse to centralise all data, enabling AI to scale efficiently across departments.

2.?Alignment with Business Goals

AI tools must align with broader business objectives to deliver tangible ROI. Copilot Studio offers unparalleled customisation for specific use cases.

Configuration Insight:

• Custom Workflows: Regularly review AI workflows and adjust them to meet KPIs, such as response times or conversion rates.

3. Building Customer Trust

Transparent AI builds trust. With Copilot Studio, businesses can monitor AI responses and ensure compliance with data privacy standards.

Configuration Insight:

• Audit Trails: Configure Copilot to log all interactions, allowing you to refine its accuracy and meet regulatory requirements.

Everyone Needs a Copilot

Copilot Studio offers businesses a scalable, adaptable, low-code solution to many challenges that limit operational efficiency and waste time.

Copilot Studio offers a viable and versatile tool to organisations using Dynamics 365. Whether streamlining workflows, enabling real-time customer support, or driving digital transformation, its adaptability and scalability make it a versatile tool for businesses of all sizes.

Integrating AI into your Dynamics 365 environment can enhance productivity, improve customer engagement, and achieve long-term growth.

Get in touch with QGate for more information about utilising Copilot and Copilot Studio with your Dynamics 365 CRM.

First published on the QGate website - 24th December 2024