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Microsoft Copilot for Sales Blog
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What’s New in Viva Sales – February 2023

davidshin's avatar
davidshin
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Feb 16, 2023

Microsoft Viva Sales is reimagining sales by embedding customer relationship management (CRM) context and artificial intelligence (AI) seamlessly into every salesperson’s flow of work, helping them focus time on what matters most: making meaningful connections, building trust, and moving deals forward.

 

This month, we’re bringing an exciting pair of new features that together make Viva Sales even more of an indispensable daily companion for sellers.

 

Communicate more effectively with AI-generated email replies

 

Traditionally, sellers have struggled to juggle the time and effort required to respond to customer emails with their other responsibilities. Now, harnessing the power of Azure OpenAI Service and GPT, sellers can improve the content and timeliness of their communications by automatically generating email replies. Available at the click of a button and accommodating a wide range of scenarios, these replies come personalized according to the combined data from CRM and Microsoft Graph and can be easily tweaked before sending.

 

Example of auto-generated response in Outlook

 

Generative AI in Viva Sales is now publicly available. To read more and watch the demo video, check out the dedicated blogpost—or to get started, enable suggested email replies in Outlook today.

 

Streamline customer discovery and understanding with Live People Cards

 

When you select or hover over a person’s name or picture in Outlook or Teams, you can find information related to them is available on their profile card. Coming soon, these profile cards will get enriched with sales-specific data from Viva Sales and CRM, helping sellers identify and understand their contacts. Offering a shortcut to key customer information, including CRM data, personal notes, and communication history, Live People Card enables sellers to quickly contextualize and develop a more informed approach to serving their customers, all without ever leaving the flow of work.

 

Viva Sales medium view in the Live People Card in Outlook

 

Viva Sales extended view in the Live People Card in Outlook

 

Live People Cards is scheduled for release at the end of this month. To learn more, check back on this post soon. Optionally, you may click “Subscribe” to receive an email update when it becomes available.

 

Conclusion

 

We are on a mission to make every salesperson on the planet more successful. By augmenting the flow of work with essential customer information and AI, Viva Sales empowers sellers to make better decisions, collaborate more effortlessly together, and build stronger relationships so that they can close more deals.

 

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? To get started with Viva Sales, reach out to your Microsoft sales team, or visit the Viva Sales webpage for more information.

 

Want to stay in the loop? Stay connected to the latest improvements before everybody else at https://aka.ms/vivasalesupdates. We would also love to hear from you on our community feedback forum.

 

Updated Jan 30, 2024
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  • wroot's avatar
    wroot
    Silver Contributor
    Feb 16, 2023

    Having AI generate a "chit chat pleasantries" feels off. When you later talk live with your customer and use completely different language it might feel awkward. Unless you completely replace people with AI 🙂

  • davidshin's avatar
    davidshin
    Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
    Feb 16, 2023

    Hi wroot, thanks for sharing! I'd love to hear more about your concerns. To clarify, are you worried that the tone of the AI-generated chit chat might not match your normal interaction with customers, leading to awkwardness? Or is there another aspect, such as word choice, level of formality, or something else that you've noticed while using this feature? Our goal is to make sure that these generated replies feel natural and effortless for both sellers and their customers, with as few adjustments as possible. To that end, can you provide a little more information here? 🙂

  • wroot's avatar
    wroot
    Silver Contributor
    Feb 16, 2023

    My comment on having awkward situation during subsequent live communication was just one of the more practical examples of this being problematic. But on a personal emotional level this feels completely off putting. People don't like talking to robots, especially being tricked to do so. This is tricking people to believe they are having nice conversation with their service provider. If they somehow learn that later or see similar phrases coming from different people it will leave a very bad taste for many customers. Google Duplex and its backlash comes to mind. And i don't understand why do you need to automate that much. I can see use in AI giving you a snippet of info about this customer's order, so you can paste it into your email or hitting OK button to quickly shoot a confirmation email. But not automating everything and especially social interactions. For me as IT person it is already looking creepy. I expect general public be even more horrified and disgusted with such developments.

  • davidshin's avatar
    davidshin
    Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
    Feb 16, 2023

    wroot thanks for elaborating! You're raising all the right questions and considerations. It's true that the use of AI in social interactions raises broader questions beyond just its application in Viva Sales. In sales specifically, my experience working in the field and collaborating with sellers has shown me that AI tools can address longstanding pain points for both sellers and their customers. For example, sellers who struggle to manage their inbox, sell in a second language, or work with an ever-changing array of products and people can all benefit from AI. Similarly, this benefit would extend to their customers who may traditionally be frustrated by a lack of a timely and complete response. But of course, there's a balance to be struck between the transactional and interpersonal aspects of sales, and we recognize that this is still in a nascent area of development. Again, your feedback means a lot, and we're committed to finding the right balance between technology and human interaction.