Power Virtual Agents in Microsoft 365

Transformer kundeservice med AI og maskinlæring

In the digital age, customer service often plays a crucial role in customer satisfaction and loyalty, which are building blocks of a successful business. With advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, Microsoft has introduced an innovative solution called Power Virtual Agents in Microsoft 365, which allows your company to transform its customer service.

Power Virtual Agents in Microsoft 365 are intelligent virtual agents that leverage AI and machine learning to interact with customers and provide them with personalized assistance. These agents can be easily and elegantly set up according to your preferences, and they are powered by Microsoft’s robust cloud platform, Azure, seamlessly integrating with the sales and support solutions in various Microsoft 365 services such as Teams, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform.

An example of setting up a Power Virtual Agent in Dynamics 365. It does not require any knowledge of coding, and everything can be done through this simple user interface.

Automation and streamlining

One of the major advantages of Power Virtual Agents is their ability to automate and streamline routine customer interactions. These agents can handle a wide range of tasks, including answering questions, resolving issues, providing technical support, and even performing transactions. By leveraging a variety of data sources, including CRM systems, support databases, and knowledge bases, Power Virtual Agents can quickly find relevant information and provide accurate responses to customers. They can also automatically escalate cases and conversations to a human employee if needed.

Another significant benefit of Power Virtual Agents is their ability to learn and improve over time. Through machine learning techniques, the agents can analyze customer interactions and identify patterns and trends. This provides companies with valuable insights into customer needs and preferences, as well as the opportunity to optimize their support processes. By collecting feedback from customers, Power Virtual Agents can constantly adjust and enhance their performance to ensure the best possible service experience.

Integrations

Power Virtual Agents in Microsoft 365 can also integrate with chatbots and voice recognition to further enhance the customer experience. By providing a streamlined and intuitive interaction, customers can get answers to their questions or resolve their issues quickly and easily without having to wait for a human agent. This saves time and resources for both the company and the customers.

Example of a chatbot delivering information to an employee.

By Dennis Rasmussen
Office 365 & Dynamics 365 Consultant
Micropartner

Create your own virtual agents without any coding.

It doesn’t require any knowledge of coding or other highly technical skills to set up your own custom virtual agents. An in-depth understanding of your company’s products, workflows, and support capabilities is essential when configuring the setup. Here’s a brief example of how the setup can be done.

Start by creating the chatbot and giving it a suitable name. Then, choose the language the bot will communicate in. Finally, select the environment in which the bot will operate, and we’re ready to proceed.

Now, the bot is ready to be configured. Create your own topic, forming a dialogue tree with descriptions of how the bot should respond to customer questions. This involves creating “trigger phrases” as examples of the type of user questions that help the bot respond in this dialogue.

Next, build response options and other actions, such as moving on to other questions, escalating to a human agent, or ending the conversation. This is where we truly assemble the virtual agent, and it can be a bit time-consuming. However, everything works with “drag and drop,” and there’s no need for coding.

You can continuously test the setup in the window where you can interact with the bot to see if it’s functioning as intended.

Alternatively, you can give your bot inspiration from existing web content. Simply point the bot to your website, and it will extract common frequently asked questions (FAQs) and build suggested topics that you can review and publish.

Once you’re satisfied with the setup, the bot just needs to be published to the channel(s) you use. It can be your own website, Microsoft Teams, Facebook, or a mobile app.

AI for your AI – the future becomes even more streamlined

Building topics and responses is not advanced or technically heavy, but it can certainly be time-consuming. With the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence these days, Microsoft also provides AI tools to assist in the creation of virtual agents, such as Copilot, Microsoft’s ever-growing AI tool.

NOTE: This feature is currently only available in the US region and in English.

Instead of manual creation and editing, you can now describe what you want and let the AI build it for you. This significantly reduces the time required for creating and updating topics.

Using AI, the system understands your intentions and automatically generates a functional topic that includes various node types and dialogue responses.

When creating a topic, you simply describe it in plain, everyday language. You can include the questions the bot should ask, the messages it should display, and details about the specific functionality that should be implemented. For example, it could be “Collect user information like name, address, email, and phone number, and then repeat it back to the user.”

It’s also possible to update existing topics using Copilot, even if the topic was not created with Copilot initially.

The Future with AI and Generative bot building

However, it’s not just the building of topics that benefits from AI tools. With “generative bot building,” it is now possible (in limited preview) to use AI to find answers that are not even built into the virtual agent.

At some point, the virtual agent may run out of built-in answers, and the customer may need to be transferred to a human employee. But with the new generative response capabilities, the virtual agent can now potentially find an answer even if it’s not explicitly programmed into the topic.

Here’s how it works: during the setup of the virtual agent, it is given access to search for information on a domain, internal SharePoint documents, or similar sources. In essence, the virtual agent is allowed to search specific places to see if it can find answers to the customer’s questions.

Contact us to learn more or to schedule a free demo

Dataverse is another useful tool in the Dynamics 365 family, and we hope that this article has provided you with insight into the many possibilities with Dataverse.

Our team of experienced and dedicated consultants is always ready to help and guide you, so you can make the best decision. Whether you need advice or if you want a personal demonstration, we are ready to assist.

Contact us today using the form below, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

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