{"id":49717,"date":"2026-05-24T16:15:03","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T16:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/49717\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T16:15:03","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T16:15:03","slug":"staying-human-how-were-using-ai-to-transform-the-sales-experience-at-microsoft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/49717\/","title":{"rendered":"Staying human: How we\u2019re using AI to transform the sales experience at Microsoft"},"content":{"rendered":"

At first glance, AI transformation can look like a technology deployment project: New tools arrive, training programs launch, dashboards go live, and leaders focus on speed, scale, and rollout discipline.<\/p>\n

But in practice, the technical side of transformation is only part of the story. The missing piece is us humans.<\/p>\n

When we encounter these kinds of challenges internally at Microsoft, we think of ourselves as \u201cCustomer Zero.\u201d<\/a> We roll out our technology across our own organization first, learning what works and what doesn\u2019t in real time and at scale so we can pass our lessons on to you.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter an early wave of enthusiasm for Copilot, adoption declined. People questioned whether AI was relevant to their role, worried about what it might mean for their work, and disengaged when the change they experienced didn\u2019t match the change they imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel Bertrand, senior director, AI Transformation Office<\/p>\n

We learned valuable lessons about AI adoption and sustainable change when we deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot across our Microsoft Commercial organization, one of the company\u2019s largest sales and service organizations. What we observed led us to reset our strategy and build a more human-centered process for deploying and driving adoption of our AI technology.<\/p>\n

Driving AI adoption with role relevance and daily habits<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Engage with our experts!<\/p>\n

Customers or Microsoft account team representatives from Fortune 500 companies are welcome to request a virtual engagement<\/a> on this topic with experts from our Microsoft Digital team.<\/p>\n

Here on the Customer Zero team in Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS), our 60,000-employee strong sales organization, we saw that getting access to Copilot didn\u2019t automatically result in widespread AI adoption.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter an early wave of enthusiasm for Copilot, adoption declined,\u201d says Daniel Bertrand, a senior director on the AI Transformation Office team in MCAPS. \u201cPeople questioned whether AI was relevant to their role, worried about what it might mean for their work, and disengaged when the change they experienced didn\u2019t match the change they imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n

Initially, people used Copilot like a search engine and expected it to make work go away. When that didn\u2019t happen automatically, they didn\u2019t know how to approach prompting the AI, or how to create value with it. The gap between access and know\u2011how is where adoption slowed.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew from experience that people prefer to hear from\u2014and learn alongside\u2014those closest to their day-to-day work, to build trust and confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Susan Neece Robien, senior director of adoption and change, AI Transformation Office<\/p>\n

We reframed the problem from \u201cHow do we scale the technology?\u201d to, \u201cWhat does this change feel like for people doing the work every day?\u201d<\/p>\n

By talking to people in our larger organization about why they were reluctant to work with Copilot, we discovered the adoption barrier was less about the technology being available and more about whether people trusted it, understood how it fit their role, and felt confident enough to build new habits around it.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Adoption-in-a-Box\u2019 approach<\/p>\n

After these conversations, we changed our strategy across the board.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew from experience that people prefer to hear from\u2014and learn alongside\u2014those closest to their day\u2011to\u2011day work, to build trust and confidence,\u201d says Susan Neece Robien, a senior director of adoption and change on the AI Transformation Office team. \u201cThat led me to conceptualize Adoption\u2011in\u2011a\u2011Box\u2014a repeatable approach that combines behavior\u2011change guidance, peer influence, habit\u2011forming activities, and light gamification so people can experiment with AI in a non\u2011threatening way and build confidence over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

We rolled out the Adoption-in-a-Box concept across the team in the following ways:<\/p>\n

Emphasized visible leadership support: We circulated videos and \u201cday in the life\u201d PowerPoint 1-pagers of how our leaders were using Copilot.<\/p>\n

Formed a community of early adopters: They becamepeer champions for adoption, evangelizing best practices and leading workshops. <\/p>\n

Created a Role Hub: The hub contained practical, role-specific learning about how to use Copilot rather than doing high-level general trainings. <\/p>\n

Ran prompt campaigns: To get our team started with habitually using AI in their daily roles, we ran prompt campaigns to make prompt learning accessible and actionable. <\/p>\n

Created the Copilot Cup: We encouraged friendly competitions with leadership support. We also ran hackathons and prompt-based scavenger hunts to gamify learning about and using the AI for our team. <\/p>\n

Created ongoing measurement mechanisms: We stood up dashboards with monthly, weekly, and daily average usage reports. We also ran quarterly surveys to track sentiment around AI adoption on the team.<\/p>\n

After our initial success with Adoption-in-a-Box, we scaled it to adoption leads, who brought the model to life within their teams.<\/p>\n

When people feel safe in experimenting with AI and incorporating it into their day-to-day work, that\u2019s when it provides real value for the organization and the individual. We\u2019ve learned that sustainable, scalable AI transformation succeeds when we put people first. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Key takeaways<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re wondering how to encourage your own team to adopt new AI technology into their workflows, you can learn from our experience:<\/p>\n

Prioritize visible leadership participation. Leaders set the tone of any transformation, and AI adoption is no exception.<\/p>\n

Roll out for role relevance. Specificity is the key here: How does AI relate to each person\u2019s individual role? If the tool provides value and saves time, people will incorporate it into their workflow.<\/p>\n

Establishing habits is crucial. Sustainable adoption means people use the tool on a daily basis in the natural flow of their work. Give them low-friction opportunities to learn the ropes.<\/p>\n

Encourage peer-to-peer experimentation. Early adopters can be a valuable resource for showing others the way. Lowering the stakes by having a peer guide employees in a workshop or one-on-one can take the pressure off as they experiment with the tech.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Try it out<\/p>\n

Test drive an AI-assisted workflow of your own with Microsoft 365 Copilot to see how agentic AI can transform your team.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Related links<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We\u2019d like to hear from you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At first glance, AI transformation can look like a technology deployment project: New tools arrive, training programs launch,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[24,8167,20216,420,7829,1929,20217,545,8169,320,419,8172,7828,1777,9578],"class_list":["post-49717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-microsoft","tag-ai","tag-ai-deployment-and-adoption","tag-ai-transformation-office","tag-azure","tag-azure-ai","tag-change-management","tag-customer-zero","tag-digital-transformation","tag-employee-experience","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-365","tag-microsoft-365-copilot","tag-microsoft-ai","tag-network-security","tag-zero-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}