Highlights:

  • Microsoft Corp. launched new artificial intelligence features for Sales Viva, a cloud tool that it debuted last year to ease the job of commercial sales teams.
  • Microsoft’s GPT-3.5 integration, which was released recently, promises to minimize the need for human labor even more.

Microsoft Corp. launched new Artificial Intelligence (AI) features for Sales Viva, a cloud tool that it debuted last year to ease the job of commercial sales teams.

OpenAI LLC’s GPT-3.5 model drives the new AI functionalities. The model also forms the backbone of ChatGPT, the advanced AI chatbot that the business launched in December.

Microsoft 365, the productivity suite formerly known as Office, is offered in many versions, each of which has a unique set of software applications. Microsoft 365’s enterprise editions feature Viva, an employee engagement tool. This system allows employees to access corporate announcements, product manuals, and other internal information.

The AI technologies that Microsoft revealed recently are being rolled out for Viva Sales, a platform component aimed at targeting sales teams. For future reference, salespeople frequently save email interactions with consumers in their company’s customer relationship management software. Viva Sales automates storing emails to an organization’s CRM implementation, saving users time.

Microsoft’s GPT-3.5 integration, released lately, promises to minimize the need for human labor even more. Currently, in preview, the connection will enable salespeople to automatically produce responses to customer emails rather than manually composing them.

The new AI functions are accessible via a sidebar in the Microsoft Outlook email client’s interface. After activating the sidebar, salespeople may provide a quick text prompt describing the email response they desire to send. Viva Sales then creates the requested response using the GPT-3.5 model developed by OpenAI.

Lori Lamkin, the corporate vice president for the Dynamics 365 customer experience platform, stated, “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’. 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.”

Viva Sales may personalize each answer it generates using Microsoft 365 environment data. If a consumer enquires about a product’s pricing, the tool may automatically locate and add the price in its response. Viva Sales can also obtain data from the renowned CRM platform offered by Salesforce Inc.

Lamkin further said, “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.”

A few weeks after Microsoft announced an expansion of its relationship with OpenAI, the new ChatGPT-3.5 features are being added to Sales Viva. The extended partnership will result in a multibillion-dollar investment by Microsoft in the firm. In addition, the business plans to incorporate neural networks built by OpenAI into industrial and consumer products.

Multiple Microsoft products have already adopted OpenAI technology. The startup’s Codex neural network powers GitHub Copilot, a programming aid introduced by Microsoft’s GitHub subsidiary a year ago. Codex and further OpenAI models are also accessible via Azure.

Microsoft apparently aims to integrate the forthcoming OpenAI neural network GPT-4 into Bing. It is anticipated that Bing might utilize GPT-4 to respond to specific search queries and surface relevant information.