Use cases

  • 4 minutes

Traditionally, some people consider an agent as something that organizations use to provide support to their customers. However, agents can be so much more. Organizations can also use agents to support their employees.

Internal support

The following scenarios outline some reasons why an organization would build an internal agent.

  • Consistent internal communication - Agents bring consistency. The information that agents provide to users, and steps or procedures that they use, are always the same.

  • Convenient and quick - Employees can access agents inside the applications that they use every day, such as Microsoft Teams.

  • Available all day, every day - More companies have employees that span multiple time zones. With agents, time zones don't matter because the agent is always available.

  • Act on behalf of the user for routine tasks - Often, agents can perform tasks, such as sending a communication or scheduling a meeting, that help save employees time.

  • Replace intranet or internal email for frequently accessed information - Organizations can build agents based on knowledge repositories. An agent provides employees access to items, such as FAQs, that are presented in a conversational experience.

For example, every organization hires employees. With more companies having remote workers, the onboarding process for new employees can be challenging. New employees could use an onboarding agent to ask questions about benefits, policies, and more. Other areas where an organization might use an agent to support internal scenarios could be IT support, change management, or internal process information.

The following image shows a real estate company that has created an embedded agent in Microsoft Teams to assist real estate agents with open houses.

Screenshot of a real estate helper agent.

Customer support

Increasingly, organizations use agents to support a wide variety of different customer scenarios. Because agents can include multiple topics, they're flexible enough to replace other forms of communication. For example, many organizations use web forms to capture information, such as lead generation. The lead generation form could be replaced with an agent. The agent could create a more personalized experience by identifying specific products that a customer might be interested in. It could capture the potential customer's information before sending details to the correct person. It represents a more effective way of identifying lead information.

A well-designed agent becomes a virtual member of your team. Other areas where an agent could be beneficial include:

  • Website search replacement - Organizations could use an agent to help customers find a person or information instead of using a website search.

  • Efficient routing - Organizations could use an agent to capture general details about a customer and then redirect inquiries to the correct person in the organization. For example, the agent could direct support requests, customer service agents, and sales-related items to your professional services staff.

After you've identified possible scenarios for an agent, you can start planning it.

For more information, see Microsoft Copilot Studio web app.