Tag: Viva Sales

Microsoft Dynamics Copilot

Copilot summarizes Teams meeting notes.

Microsoft announced Microsoft Dynamics Copilot, an interactive, AI-powered assistance tool for sales, marketing, customer service, operations, and supply-chain management.  Microsoft is positioning Copilot as an AI that helps businesspeople “create ideas and content faster, complete time-consuming tasks, and get insights and next best actions.”

CEO Satya Nadella promised that Copilot will “transform every business process and function with interactive, AI-powered collaboration.”

In the short run, Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s Cloud & AI EVP, believes that “the fastest way to get some of this AI value” will be via “finished app” integrations like Copilot.  Microsoft can tailor integrations into apps that “people are already trained on.”  This augmentation strategy lets Microsoft “move faster,” so there is a “huge opportunity.”

Few people outside of the AI community had heard of ChatGPT, much less experimented with it, until a few months ago, but now it is being widely tested by end users, noted Guthrie.  “People are looking for solutions that integrate with their workflows that they already have and help them kind of accelerate even more.”

“And then, I think, we’re also going to see the next generation of apps that are going to be built on the raw APIs and the services around it that are going to re-envision pretty much every experience that we see,” continued Guthrie.

Copilot operates within Dynamics CRM and ERPs to reduce mundane tasks such as manual data entry, content generation, and note-taking.

And such tools are welcome by front-line workers.  According to a recent Microsoft survey, nearly ninety percent of workers hope AI will reduce repetitive tasks.

Dynamics 365 Copilot offers generative AI to automate tedious tasks and “accelerate their pace of innovation and improve business outcomes.”

Copilot is natively built into Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Viva Sales.  AI helps sales reps respond to customers and includes email summaries of Teams meetings along with action items, follow-up dates, and voiced concerns.  Additionally, summaries are available for different meeting types, including multi-participant and internal calls.

“The meeting summary pulls in details from the seller’s CRM such as product and pricing information, as well as insights from the recorded Teams call,” wrote Charles Lamanna, CVP Business Applications and Platform.  “With sellers spending as much as 66% of their day checking and responding to emails, this presents a significant business upside to give the seller more time with their customers.”

Email replies are generally available in Viva Sales, and customizable emails will be added on March 15.  “For example, a seller can generate an email that proposes a meeting time with a customer, complete with a proposed meeting date and time based on availability on the seller’s Outlook calendar,” blogged Emily He, CVP Business Applications Marketing.

Sellers will also be able to rate generated content with a thumbs up or thumbs down to help refine replies.  And if the response needs to be tweaked, sales reps can provide a follow-on prompt that updates the response based on the additional context.

Generating marketing text with an emphasized feature.

Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 Marketing simplifies data exploration, audience segmentation, and content creation.

Marketers can curate “highly personalized and targeted customer segments by having a dialogue with their customer data platform using natural language,” wrote Lamanna.   Marketers do not need to be SQL experts or wait for an operations specialist to build the query.  Instead, they can build segments in near real-time using Copilot’s Query Assist feature.

“With a few clicks, Copilot produces the results, along with information such as the customers’ average age, product preferences, or average purchase price,” wrote He.  “These insights can then be configured into a segment to support a campaign.”

Copilot also suggests additional segments.

Using Copilot in Dynamics 365 Marketing, marketers can describe their customer segment to a query assist feature and look for inspiration for fresh email campaign content based.  “Copilot makes suggestions based on key topics entered by the marketer, the organization’s existing marketing emails, as well as from a range of internet sources to increase the relevance of generated ideas,” blogged Lamanna.

Marketers can enter up to five bullet points in Content Ideas, which generates an email via Azure OpenAI Service.

“Unique content can be used as a starting point when composing marketing emails,” explained He.  “It can analyze the organization’s existing emails, in addition to a range of internet sources, to increase the relevance of generated ideas.  With Copilot, marketers can save hours of time brainstorming and editing while keeping content fresh and engaging.”

Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service drafts contextual answers to queries in both chat and email.  It also supports an “interactive chat experience over knowledge bases and case history, so this AI-powered expertise is always available to answer questions.”

Copilot for customer service drafts emails and chats for customer service agents.

Other generative AI tools support product descriptions and supply chain disruption forecasts based on weather, financial, and geopolitical news.

Copilot is in preview across Dynamics 365 and Viva Sales.

Resources:

Seismic Recommendations in Microsoft Viva Sales

Seismic content and training recommendations are presented during calls.

Seismic and Microsoft announced an integration partnership that will embed Seismic’s sales enablement workflows within Microsoft Viva Sales.  Seismic will provide “content production, collaboration, task automation, and engagement intelligence for Viva Sales users across the meeting experience to help drive deals and relationships forward.”  The goal is to “streamline” buyer engagement at relationship-based sales teams.

Microsoft Viva Sales became generally available on October 3.  Viva Sales is “a new seller experience application that brings together any customer relationship management technology (CRM), Microsoft 365, and Teams to provide a more streamlined and AI-powered selling experience.”  The new solution is designed for the hybrid work environment where reps leverage video conferences, chats, emails, and documents to close deals.

The partnership supports AI-powered virtual meetings.  The Seismic Enablement Cloud will initially recommend content and training for post-meeting call summaries.  Future functionality includes content and training recommendations, pre-built digital sales rooms, and meeting analysis powered by Seismic.

​​“We’re united with Seismic in our commitment to empowering sellers through relevant content and an improved seller experience.  Our plan to integrate Seismic with Viva Sales will help sellers have more personalized customer engagements whether they are in the office or on the road, with a helpful assist from the AI-driven insights and content,” said Lori Lamkin, CVP, Dynamics 365 Customer Experience Applications.

Viva Sales customers include Adobe, Crayon, and PwC.

Resources: Seismic | Viva Sales Profile

Microsoft Viva Sales

Microsoft announced Viva Sales, “a new seller experience application that brings together any customer relationship management technology (CRM), Microsoft 365, and Teams to provide a more streamlined and AI-powered selling experience.”  The new solution is designed for the hybrid work environment where reps leverage video conferences, chats, emails, and documents to close deals.  Viva Sales will also support Salesforce at launch.

Viva Sales “represents a new way of working by breaking down silos of data and breaking down silos of experience,” explained Microsoft Corporate VP for Business Applications Emily He.  Sales reps “really want a more simplified experience.  So, Viva Sales enables a seller to use the tools they already love and use every day, including your email system like Outlook, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, as well as Teams,” she said.

Unfortunately, reps manage these disparate communications channels and their CRM to organize administrative tasks, collaborate on sales, and attend virtual sales meetings.  “Yet, all sellers really want is to spend more time with their customers,” stated Microsoft Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff.

Continued Althoff, “What if everything a salesperson needed to do their job was brought together in one place – where they already spend most of their day – in calls, meetings, and chats?  What if their customer records, data, and tasks were intelligently organized and accessible in the tools they use every day?  What if the collaboration environment sellers use to talk to customers automatically provides the next best action and sentiment analysis?”

Viva Sales is a “new modern way of selling” that operates as a “smart CRM companion” that simplifies the seller’s workflows and enriches the CRM.  Viva Sales captures AI-driven insights from Outlook, Teams, and Microsoft Office and feeds this information to the CRM.

“Viva Sales empowers sellers to be more connected with their customers, resulting in more personalized customer engagements and closed deals faster,” stated Althoff.  “This happens through a simple customer tagging feature, which automates the data capture, saves the seller time, and provides their organization with a more complete picture of deal and customer status.  With AI embedded throughout, Viva Sales is like a sales coach to move deals along with recommendations and reminders.  This intelligence layer provides sellers the information they need to help them be more productive.”

Viva was launched last year as an employee portal, but Sales is the first functionally-specific edition of the service.  Viva Sales will be in public preview in July and generally available this fall.  Microsoft Dynamics Sales is inclusive of Viva Sales and “addresses both sellers’ and sales leaders’ needs by automatically enriching Dynamics 365 Sales with customer engagement data captured in Office 365 and Teams.”

Once an email is tagged to an account, Viva Sales presents a sidebar with CRM intelligence. Customer interactions are then logged to the CRM.

Sales reps tag customers or prospects in a Microsoft application.  This “tag to capture” functionality alerts Viva to begin capturing account intelligence and offering insights to the sales rep.  Viva Sales employs Microsoft’s recently announced Context IQ for capturing relevant content across Microsoft apps and services.  This data can then be synced with any CRM.

“What we are focused on is removing the drudgery of manually entering the data into a CRM and then providing the AI capabilities for the sellers,” explained Product Marketing Senior Director Neha Bajwa.  “There’s a virtual personal assistant that is sitting and helping them out doing all the busywork that we would normally have to do.”

The objective is to solve the problem of manual data entry without destroying the CRM.  Viva runs alongside the CRM, capturing intelligence from other enterprise sales apps commonly deployed across sales teams.  The data capture and CRM syncing improve rep productivity while the AI suggestions improve sales effectiveness through better recommendations, reminders, and Next Best actions.

“As you work with a customer, you can not only see your own interactions, [but] you can also see across your company and find all the people that are interacting with your client as well,” said Microsoft VP for Modern Work Jared Spataro.  “We’re trying to apply AI not only to remove the boring stuff, but also to provide real value add so that you can cope with the volume and the expectations associated with you doing your job.”

The service recommends next steps, displays complete interaction histories, and pushes reminders to reps.  It is also connected to LinkedIn, providing the names of colleagues with strong connections to a contact or account, allowing sales reps to conduct research before a Teams chat.

Viva Sales recommends colleagues with pre-existing relationships for pre-meeting briefings via Teams Chat.

During a Teams call, reps can view the relevant customer information in a sidebar and access meeting prep notes.  After the call is recorded and transcribed, Viva Sales summarizes the call and captures action items.  Conversation KPIs and talk tracks are also generated.

Another feature is the generation of customer lists with recent activity, sentiment graphs, and engagement within Excel.

Customer lists within Excel are enriched by Viva Sales. A sidebar provides contact-specific insights, including colleague connections and meeting summaries.

“The future of selling isn’t a new system.  It’s bringing the information sellers need at the right time, the right context, into the tools they know, so their work experience can be streamlined,” said Althoff.  “Empowering sellers to spend more time with their customers has been our goal — and we’ve done that by reimagining the selling experience with Viva Sales.”

One of the core issues at the heart of CRM implementations is the reliance on manual data entry, argued Paul Greenberg, Managing Principal at The 56 Group.  What is necessary is ongoing automation to remove this busy work.

“Sellers rely on digital collaboration and productivity tools to connect with customers and close deals, but a lot of the insights they uncover with these tools don’t make it into the CRM,” Greenberg.  “Microsoft is taking on this challenge by offering a solution that complements the CRM.  Viva Sales automates the busy work, captures critical information about the customer, and helps sellers get the job done.”