how we did it
“Each company will take a slightly different approach,” says Nathalie D’Hers, corporate vice president of Microsoft Digital, who oversaw internal deployments for more than 200,000 employees. “For us, we focused first on roles where we felt we could benefit a lot,” she said.
It made sense for the sales team to approach first. Ultimately, sales teams need to know the ins and outs of a product to convey its value to customers. But beyond that, we've found that salespeople are uniquely positioned to benefit from Copilot, whether it's reducing email triage to prioritize leads or gathering relevant information ahead of customer meetings. Initial results show that salespeople save 90 minutes per week. 83% of them felt more productive. 67% said the time savings allowed them to spend more time with customers.
Next was customer service and support. Nine months ago, they simultaneously rolled out Copilot to more than 40,000 support professionals, allowing the entire organization to quickly become familiar with the technology. They set four goals: Reduced time to expertise for agents, simplified access to knowledge, fewer repetitive administrative tasks (freeing people to focus on their core priority: customer support), and reduced volume of inquiries coming in every day.
It's been a year since we learned it, but we're starting to discover what Copilot can unlock for individual employees and the company as a whole. Most days it can feel like we are on a rocket ship. To be more specific, it's like taking a spaceship when we build a rocket.
The investment paid off. A study last year by the Office of the Chief Economist of nearly 10,000 Microsoft support agents found that, on average, across teams saw a 12% reduction in case handling time and a 10% improvement in case resolution speed.
And once HR gained access, the department retooled an AI-powered employee resource called Ask HR to speed up response times to more complex questions about benefits, payroll, and other HR topics. With HR service advisors using Copilot, employees can now get faster, more accurate answers to questions that previously took days to compile and respond to.
“Our HR services professionals can handle employee inquiries more efficiently,” said Kathleen Hogan, executive vice president and chief human resources officer at Microsoft. “So far, Copilot has reduced our initial response time by 26%,” she said.
From there, we used what we learned from early adopters to guide the rollout for the rest of the company.
How You Can Too
Put Copilot where it's most useful. Clearly identify your goals, no matter which department or role you are targeting before Rollouts help leaders and employees determine what works and what doesn't from the beginning. It also helps you set appropriate benchmarks for success, whether it's response time, more effective meetings, or other metrics. If you need guidance, explore the Copilot scenario library, which includes suggested use cases and key performance indicators to help you decide how Copilot can help your organization.
Go for the easy win. Drive functional-level transformation while using AI to improve even simple tasks. Gaining confidence and competence early on (e.g. asking Copilot to summarize a meeting) will help users maintain a healthy growth mindset when they hit the inevitable roadblocks.
Give it to your whole team. Deploying Copilot to your entire team at once is critical to fostering peer-to-peer learning, even for small teams. This multiplies the impact of the technology by encouraging sharing and learning among group members. Organizations can also identify patterns to identify what works (or what doesn't).
Track your impact. To understand how AI is changing workplace behavior, you need a way to measure AI usage. Platforms like the Copilot dashboard can help you plan and measure impact.