Executives in enterprise and public sector organisations rank customer experience and retention, then revenue growth and cost optimisation as their primary goals for AI investments. These areas were ranked as top priority (38, 26 and 17 per cent respectively) by more than four-fifths of the 2,500 executives surveyed for a recent Gartner webinar poll.
Large enterprises are now stepping out of their pilot phases of AI deployment and pinpointing exactly how they can achieve a return on their investments.
“Whether it’s accelerating time to value, improving seller productivity, or enabling more personalised customer experiences, the feedback is clear: AI is helping customers move faster and with greater confidence,” says Pamela Maynard, chief AI transformation officer for Microsoft customer and partner solutions.
Microsoft’s own experience with AI – now fully integrated into its Azure cloud offerings and solutions like Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 – is reshaping how it engages with customers. “Because we’re using these tools ourselves, we’re able to show up with empathy and credibility,” says Maynard. “AI is helping us scale customer engagements in a way that was never possible before. We’re already seeing this with our Autonomous Sales Agent, which can research leads, set up meetings, send emails and help close deals. We’re even assigning agents their own territories to unlock markets we simply couldn’t reach before. It’s a new business model for scale.”
This transformation reflects a broader market trend. McKinsey & Company’s 2025 The State of AI report notes that large enterprises are accelerating AI adoption by hiring new AI-related roles, retraining staff and embedding AI into customer-facing processes. Deloitte experts highlight that while AI’s role in customer service is still emerging, its potential is vast, with the market projected to reach $2.1 million by 2032, growing at 24 per cent annually since 2023.
There are possibilities at every stage of the customer journey. “Generative AI revolutionises the post-service stage by providing businesses with intelligent, proactive support,” writes Bob van den Berg, lead creative technologist at Deloitte Digital and Yuxin Fan, strategy consultant at Monitor Deloitte, in a Deloitte article titled ‘How Generative AI Will Change the Way We Do Customer Service’. Combined with the internet of things, AI can enable real-time monitoring, risk detection and personalised remediation, enhancing satisfaction while reducing support demand.
There are now examples of AI enhancing customer engagement in practice across the world. Over 21,000 employees at Grupo Bimbo, a Mexican multinational food company, have used Microsoft AI to create 7,000 power apps, 18,000 processes and 650 agents to automate low-value tasks and save the firm tens of millions annually in traditional development efforts and operational efficiencies. In Brazil, Bradesco Bank has integrated Azure’s generative AI into its virtual assistant, achieving an 82 per cent first-level resolution rate and an 89 per cent retention rate in its first week. Meanwhile in Canada, software firm Visma has adopted GitHub Copilot and Azure DevOps to develop code up to 50 per cent faster, improving customer retention and time to market.
Microsoft’s Pamela Maynard says AI is helping customers move faster and with greater confidence
For Microsoft, the results speak for themselves. Its own Azure call centre has reduced case resolution times by nearly 12 per cent with Microsoft Copilot, while a self-service agent has improved self-help success rates by up to 37 per cent.
“Early experiments are demonstrating productivity gains across front office and corporate functions,” says Maynard. “Now it’s about structuring portfolio roadmaps that tie use cases strongly to return of investment (ROI), embedding AI into process flows and work.”
In marketing, the shift is toward hyper-personalisation. “Generative AI can help brands deliver highly individual experiences at scale, leading to significantly higher engagement and conversions,” says Paul Longo, general manager of AI ads at Microsoft Advertising. Research from Microsoft Advertising also shows that incorporating overlooked data sources in campaign strategies can strengthen trust, brand loyalty and customer retention.
In finance, teams are using generative AI to reconcile data from multiple sources, streamline forecasting, and gain real-time insights into spend and performance. “We’re seeing early pilots accelerate close cycles and reduce manual effort, freeing teams to focus on strategic analysis,” says Maynard.
By relying on its own tools, Microsoft can test and refine them within its own operations and pass those experiences onto customers.
“It’s not just about testing features; it’s about living the transformation we’re asking our customers to make,” says Maynard.
A case in point is Microsoft’s rollout of Sales Chat in Microsoft 365 Copilot in spring 2025. Starting with a pilot of 60 sellers, the tool’s popularity spread purely through word of mouth, expanding to 900 users in just over a month before any official campaign. By consolidating scattered data, answering questions and helping generate pipeline, Sales Chat has become an indispensable tool for Microsoft’s own sales teams.
The success of the Sales Chat pilot reflects Microsoft’s wider approach to deploying AI internally by starting small, proving value quickly and scaling based on impact. “Tangible ROI often helps unlock people’s resistance to change,” says Maynard. “For example, when we first rolled out Microsoft 365 Copilot across our sales teams, we looked at the effect of high usage. In a pilot group, we saw a 9.4 per cent increase in revenue per seller and a 20 per cent increase in closed deals. Scaling that success involved maintaining at least 60 per cent daily active usage through change management, habit-building campaigns and a culture of experimentation. The ROI became our ‘why?’, and organisations succeed when they invest in both technology and people.”
Microsoft is also focusing on how AI initiatives can be designed to be approachable for people who aren’t necessarily inclined to be early adopters of the technology.
“We’re working to ensure that AI is not just for the digitally mature, but for every organisation, regardless of size or starting point,” says Maynard. “With Microsoft’s support, even industries once considered ‘late adopters’ of technology are now realising concrete gains from AI – whether it’s a city government saving millions in staff time or a small farming community getting expert advice via an AI chatbot.”
The city of San Francisco has deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat to nearly 30,000 employees – from nurses to social workers. This decision was taken following a six-month pilot that saw users saving up to five hours of time per week.
Tech manufacturer Lenovo has implemented AI-driven assistance in Dynamics 365 Customer Service with Copilot, reducing case handling time by 20 per cent and increasing agent productivity by 15 per cent. “By embedding Azure AI into their support workflow, Lenovo ensures customers get quick, accurate help, boosting their confidence and loyalty,” says Maynard.
It’s not just large organisations that are looking to unlock the benefits of AI. Smaller businesses are realising its potential too, often with the support of Microsoft partners.
“Partners bring deep industry expertise, local context and the ability to scale impact in ways we simply couldn’t do alone,” says Maynard. “Whether it’s co-innovating solutions, driving adoption or supporting change management, our partners are critical to helping customers realise the full value of AI. This is especially true in the small and medium-sized business (SMB) channel with over 500,000 partners globally, the reach of our partner ecosystem is unmatched in tapping into the opportunity of that market.”
These partnerships unlock economic potential. In the UK alone, SMBs adopting AI could deliver £78.1 billion in productivity gains by 2035, according to Microsoft and WPI Strategy’s report on Unlocking Regional Growth. Partners like Connection, Melissa and SAP are already enabling SMBs to overcome cost, skills and awareness barriers, delivering tailored AI-powered solutions. Maynard emphasises that deploying AI technology at scale requires careful attention to safety, ethics and governance.
“Billions of people depend on Microsoft every day from their doctor’s office to their flights and food supply,” she says. “There’s a lot of responsibility for us to do the right thing. Our AI tools are built with guardrails, transparency and governance at their core, helping customers embed security, privacy and responsible AI principles into their own solutions.”
McKinsey’s The state of AI report suggests companies are preparing accordingly, with 13 per cent hiring AI compliance specialists and six per cent hiring AI ethics specialists.
Looking ahead, Microsoft is expecting advances in agentic AI. “We’ve done a lot to scale AI as a personal assistant,” says Maynard. “What’s next is reasoning where the agent will retrieve data, analyse it and make recommendations just like a human colleague.”
Specialised agents like Researcher and Analyst in Microsoft 365 Copilot are already supporting complex decision-making, while AI agents will increasingly manage sales territories, supplier negotiations and marketing campaigns. New human roles, such as ‘agent managers’, will oversee strategy while AI runs day-to-day operations.
“Transformation plans that used to span five years are now happening in six months,” says Maynard. “Although we aren’t there yet, it’s a journey and we’re excited to see how AI has shortened innovation cycles. To continue our progress, it’ll be down to maintaining an experimentation mindset.”
Partner perspectives
We asked Microsoft partners how they are helping customers use Microsoft technologies to enhance customer experience and improve long-term retention
“At Action1, we help customers simplify product patching and endpoint management for Microsoft and third-party software, reducing administrative overhead and improving system stability,” says Gene Moody, field chief technology officer at Action. “By streamlining updates and security fixes, we enhance the reliability of Microsoft technologies alongside other enterprise systems.”
“At Avalara, we partner with Microsoft to integrate tax and compliance seamlessly into customers’ existing ecosystems, from Dynamics 365 to Azure,” says Vsu Subramanian, senior vice president of engineering at Avalara. “By leveraging Microsoft’s cloud and AI capabilities, we help businesses automate complex tax and compliance processes, reduce friction, and improve accuracy at scale.”
“AVEVA’s flagship products combine our deep domain expertise with Microsoft’s platform and cloud growth capabilities to deliver scalable, adaptable and interoperable solutions, such as CONNECT and AVEVA Operator Training Simulator,” says Jim Chappell, global head of AI and advanced analytics at AVEVA. “By harnessing internet of things and AI, we are driving a new era of industrial innovation, giving industrial teams tools to overcome disruption and unlock sustainable growth from anywhere.”
“We help customers harness Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft 365 Copilot to enhance customer experience and drive long-term retention,” says Chris Weinfurt, microsoft alliance manager, Synergy Technical. “By automating routine tasks like summarising emails, generating meeting notes and streamlining content creation, Copilot frees teams to focus on strategic, customer-facing work.
Discover more insights from these partners and others, including Barco, Calltower, CentrePal, Crestron, M-Files, Miro, Moody’s and OpenText Cybersecurity in the Autumn 2025 issue of Technology Record. Don’t miss out – subscribe for free today and get future issues delivered straight to your inbox.