Viva Sales now suggests AI-generated, recipient-relevant email content to sellers

Microsoft is enhancing Viva Sales by incorporating some AI capabilities into it, allowing it to provide intelligent suggestions based on the needs of the sellers.

The companion application, which works with Dynamics and Salesforce CRM solutions, will no longer just provide simple recommendations and insights. According to Microsoft, it leveraged the power of Azure OpenAI Service and GPT to help be capable of composing intelligent email responses. According to Microsoft, with the new AI capability of the app, “sellers can free up even more time to focus on priorities.”

The responses that will be provided will cover different scenarios, including inquiry and proposal creation. And to ensure the quality of the content of the email responses, Microsoft said that the composition would be based on customer records and Office email software data.

“When responding to an email, Viva Sales provides sellers in-the-moment suggested responses based upon categories such as ‘make a proposal,’ ‘reply to an inquiry,’ or ‘suggest your own.’” explains Lori Lamkin, Corporate Vice President of Dynamics 365 Customer Experience Platform. “The seller simply selects the option to suit their needs and a reply is generated for the seller to review, edit to their liking, and send. The reply is enriched with the combined data from Microsoft Graph—which provides access to people-centric data and insights in the Microsoft Cloud, including Microsoft 365, Windows, and Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security, and the customer relationship management (CRM) system (Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Salesforce).”

Aside from Viva Sales, other Microsoft products are also expected to get AI integrations. This week, a report revealed that the software company is working on incorporating GPT-4 into Bing instead of the common ChatGPT version. According to people familiar with the matter, this will allow the search engine to provide faster AI-based responses that are more detailed and more human-like. This week, Microsoft also launched the ChatGPT-powered Teams Premium, which offers some intelligent features, including live translated captions, automatically generated meeting notes, recommended tasks, and personalized highlights.

The integration of OpenAI’s works into Microsoft’s services and products is the fruit of the giant’s investment in the AI research laboratory. In January, the Redmond company confirmed the third phase of its investment and called it “a multiyear, multibillion dollar investment.” According to Microsoft, it would allow both companies to “commercialize the resulting advanced AI technologies.”