In the era of AI, the potential to transform and elevate the employee experience is immense, and top-of-mind for HR and IT professionals. To meet this need, we are excited to introduce the Employee Self-Service Agent, a groundbreaking feature within Microsoft 365 Copilot designed to expedite and streamline HR and IT-related tasks, providing faster resolutions and a more intuitive user experience.
From business chat, users can retrieve benefits and payroll information, start a leave of absence, request a new laptop with IT and even get assistance for Microsoft 365 products and services, all in one place.
The agent is customizable in Copilot Studio, where admins can use a variety of tools and data sources including pre-configured templates, workflows, authoritative knowledge sources from Sharepoint, and Microsoft-built connectors to HR and IT systems of record, like Workday, SAP and ServiceNow; and a library of tailored responses to sensitive topics. This new agent is available in private preview now.
Empowering the Workforce in the Era of AI
Even with the emergence of GenAI in the workplace, employees continue to struggle to find the right resources and take action on key HR and IT support issues. A recent study reveals that 76% of employees struggle to quickly access company resources and guidelines (Microsoft Research 2024).
Employees often find themselves navigating through multiple workspaces and systems or needing human intervention to get information and execute tasks like accessing their benefits, requesting parental leave, fixing their laptop and running diagnostics on Microsoft 365 products and services. This causes frustration and wasted time for employees, and too much admin time and cost.
And HR leaders hear this concern loud and clear. According to Gartner®, "The top three use cases respondents said that they are prioritizing include: 1. HR Service Delivery: Employee-facing chatbot (43%) 2. HR Operations: Administrative tasks, policies, document generation (42%). IT leaders have a similar perspective, listing virtual assistant for internal operations as a top AI use case (IBM AI in Action Report 2024).
To address this challenge, the Employee Self-Service Agent retrieves the right policy and resources from an organization’s knowledge sources including the Microsoft Graph (Sharepoint, Teams, Outlook) and integrates personalized data from HR and IT service providers such as Workday, and ServiceNow via Microsoft-built connectors, creating a single, reliable starting point for employees to resolve their most frequent queries.
The Employee Self-Service Agent is the next evolutionary leap in employee services delivery. First came robust, searchable internal sites, then HR bots returning detailed responses to manually curated questions. Today, the full promise of employee self-service, powered by AI, begins.
And employees at Microsoft are already benefiting, with a 25% increase in accuracy on HR-related responses and a 36% increase in self-help success rate for IT issues. We’re excited to bring this innovation to market, in private preview now with customers like Chevron and available more broadly in early 2025.
“Launching the Employee Self-Service Agent is a key element of our ongoing partnership and co-innovation with Microsoft. This initiative forms part of our efforts to seamlessly integrate our HR systems and enhance the employee experience by enabling faster and more effective task completion.” – Rhonda Morris, Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, Chevron
Capabilities and Benefits
The right answers at the right time: The Employee Self-Service Agent delivers precise answers promptly by offering authoritative guidance from connected sources. It includes preconfigured, editable responses tailored to individual employees' needs. Scenarios covered include looking up company PTO policies, filing a reimbursement, checking rewards, and starting an LOA request.
Take action in one place: Employees can perform essential HR and IT tasks directly from the agent. Individual contributors can update HR profiles, check ticket statuses, and request leaves of absence; managers can submit transfer requests and update team information. And this all happens directly within the Employee Self-Service Agent interface in Microsoft 365 Copilot business chat.
Improve business processes and reduce administrative costs: By using the Employee Self-Service Agent, businesses can see significant improvements in efficiency and productivity. At Microsoft, we are already seeing employees 25% more likely to get an accurate response and 49% less likely to create a support ticket than using existing systems.
Further customize and enhance your agent in Copilot Studio
The Employee Self-Service Agent is an out-of-the-box agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot business chat that will deliver specialized experience for employee services-related questions to start. The Employee Self-Service Agent will analyze your Microsoft Graph and existing connectors for advanced knowledge retrieval and generate six prompts with no admin configuration needed.
If an employee asks a question about a sensitive topic like discrimination or harassment, the agent will direct the employee to a deeper connection point, like a live agent.
You can further customize these responses in Copilot Studio, where admins have a dedicated admin page to make tweaks as needed.
Admins can also discover, install and customize the Employee Self-Service Agent with additional knowledge sources in Copilot Studio, curating more accurate content and specific answers to popular questions using pre-built workflows as a foundation, so employees begin to see even more depth and organization-specific responses.
Finally, admins can enable action-taking with the Employee Self-Service Agent by turning on connections to HCM, IT, and other third-party providers and customizing pre-built templates, so that employees can get the right answers at the right time, and take action, all in Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Key Scenarios for Employees
The Employee Self-Service Agent delivers authoritative and timely guidance, improving the overall efficiency and satisfaction of the workforce. Key scenarios include:
- Quick Access to Company Policies: Employees can rapidly find and understand company policies from authorized sources, based on company policies and their specific context (for example, geographic location), eliminating the need for extensive searches.
- HR and IT Ticket Status: Employees can easily create and check the status of their HR or IT tickets within the same platform, streamlining the follow-up process. At Microsoft, employees with access to Employee Self-Service Agent in M365 Copilot saw a 36% increase in IT self-help success rate when compared to current support channels.
- Personalized Data Retrieval: Employees can access personalized data such as financial benefits, payroll information, PTO, and LOA status, all in one place (and always confined, private, and secure to the individual employee).
- Leave Requests: The agent empowers employees to request leaves of absence or parental leave directly within its frame
- Transfer Requests and Team Updates: People managers can submit transfer requests and update team information based on organizational changes.
- IT Self-Help for Microsoft Products: Employees can rely on the agent to look up specific information, provide contextual insights, run diagnostics, and troubleshoot issues on their behalf.
- Prompts for Proper Guidance: The agent provides intelligent options for the next steps or questions, guiding employees through the process seamlessly.
- Stay in One Place: With connected apps and templates for common self-help scenarios, employees can get answers and take related actions without switching between platforms.
Key Scenarios for HR and IT Administrators
From an admin perspective, the Employee Self-Service Agent reduces the workload associated with common HR and IT tasks, improves efficiency, and maximizes the benefits of existing investments. Key scenarios include:
- Ensure Accurate Information Retrieval: Employees receive the right answers at the right time with out-of-the-box prompts and verbatim responses.
- Reduce Workload and Reallocate Costs: The agent reduces the volume of HR and IT tickets, freeing up agents from administrative tasks, and allowing teams to focus on more strategic initiatives.
- Simplified, Secure Experience: The agent provides a simplified, secure experience across third-party apps and the Microsoft Graph.
- Driving Adoption of Existing Investments: Fully leverages the benefits and technology available to employees, driving adoption and maximizing investments.
Learn More and Join Private Preview
The Employee Self-Service Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot marks a significant leap forward in how organizations can empower their workforce and streamline HR and IT-related tasks.
We invite you to explore Employee Self-Service Agent by signing up for our upcoming webinar on December 12 at 8AM PT and joining our private preview here.
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