Microsoft rolls out AI agents to help businesses with everyday tasks

Microsoft is rolling out autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) agents that can work on behalf of an individual or team. It can also function to execute and orchestrate business processes. 

In a blogpost by Microsoft, the tech giant said that customers can now create autonomous agents with Copilot Studio. This will be in public preview next month. These agents draw on the context of work data and will be able to support businesses from IT help desk to employee onboarding. It can even act as a personal concierge for sales and service. 

In addition, Microsoft is introducing ten new autonomous agents in Dynamics 365. These agents are designed to help sales, service, finance and supply chain teams to drive business values.

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Of the ten autonomous agents, Microsoft has revealed a sales qualification agent, a supplier communications agent as well as a customer intent and customer knowledge management agent. The sales qualification agent will enable sellers to focus their time on highest priority sales opportunities while the agent research leads, help prioritise opportunities and guide customer outreach with personalised emails and responses. 

Meanwhile, the supplier communications agent enables customers to optimise their supply chain and minimise costly disruptions by autonomously tracking supplier performance, detecting delays and responding accordingly. This frees procurement teams from time consuming manual monitoring and firefighting, said Microsoft. 

Finally, customer intent and customer knowledge management agents will work hand in hand with a customer service representative by learning how to resolve customer issues and autonomously add knowledge-based articles to scale best practices across the care team. 

Microsoft added that it will create many more agents in the coming year. 

Interestingly, a recent study by email signature management platform Exclaimer revealed that most consumers (79%) may consider switching to a competitor brand due to the use of AI in communications, with 55% viewing AI-generated communications negatively. 

The study revealed that over half of respondents (55%) believe that AI-generated communications, whether obvious or not, come across negatively. Nearly one in five (18%) consumers believe that AI is somewhat noticeable in emails and that it negatively affects the quality of brand communication. 

The leading reason for this is that consumers see AI-driven emails as less “authentic”. 41% of respondents explained that AI-driven emails reduce the genuineness and transparency of brands. As a result, 27% expressed a lack of connection with brands that use AI in email communication.

Moreover, 88% of consumers said they will ignore suspected AI-generated marketing emails, while 51% are less likely to recommend brands that use AI in email communication. 

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