Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service customers will lose access to Smart Assist before the close of 2025.
Smart Assist provides a panel on the agent desktop that offers contact center reps real-time contextual recommendations during a customer conversation.
These recommendations stem from relevant knowledge articles and similar cases.
Alongside advice for steering the interaction, Smart Assist also suggests and – on command – runs automated actions.
However, Microsoft now deems the feature surplus to requirements with the release of Copilot.
In a blog post announcing the move, Rushil Vora, Program Manager, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, wrote:
We recommend customer service organizations that are using Smart Assist capabilities turn on Copilot to enhance customer service rep productivity. We are continuously updating and enhancing Copilot to provide the best customer support.
Microsoft first warned Dynamics 365 Customer Service customers of its plans to shutter Smart Assist on January 21, 2025.
The enterprise tech giant highlighted several other key dates in its communications, including February 10, 2025.
From then, it will stop investing in Smart Assist and hide the panel from new environments.
Additionally, on June 2, 2025, Microsoft will no longer provide product support for Smart Assist.
Lastly, it will remove Smart Assist from all Dynamics 365 Customer Service environments on December 31, 2025.
Can Copilot Really Replace Smart Assist in Dynamics 365 Customer Service?
In Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Copilot auto-drafts customer responses in live chat, auto-composes emails, and auto-summarizes cases.
Yet, while Copilot takes knowledge and case suggestions one step further by crafting answers for agents to review, edit, and send, contact centers with a broad channel mix may miss Smart Assist’s capabilities.
Recognizing this, Microsoft suggests extending the base functionality of Copilot by leveraging its “ask-a-question” feature.
With this, Copilot can detect the context of a conversation and – with some guidance – present relevant knowledge articles across all digital channels.
Alternatively, contact centers can build a custom Smart Assist bot for knowledge base recommendations using the Azure Bot Service.
Yet, what about suggestions based on the previous cases? For these, Microsoft suggests deploying its Customer Knowledge Management Agent, which will reach general availability in April 2024.
The AI agent helps scan resolved cases to update knowledge base content. As such, the ask-a-question Copilot or custom bot may share case-based recommendations, too.
One final option is to leverage Copilot Studio and build a custom case plug-in using the Copilot Studio. However, this will likely prove more labor intensive.
Microsoft Is Reimagining Its Customer Service Proposition
Notably, Smart Assist in Dynamics 365 Customer Service is the second well-utilized contact center solution Microsoft has shuttered this month.
Indeed, the firm also announced it will retire the Dynamics 365 Unified Service Desk (USD), a solution that allows service teams to combine multiple apps on a unified agent desktop.
Moreover, in November, Microsoft said it would stop selling its Customer Service Hub (CSH) – a similar agent interface application – from February 2025.
In the case of both these depreciations, Microsoft directed existing customers to its Copilot-enabled Customer Service Workspace.
All these moves – across its customer service apps – suggest that Microsoft is building towards a single customer service environment that fits into the broader Dynamics 365 ecosystem.
With last year’s Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center launch, this idea gains momentum.
Across these core CCaaS, CRM, and workspace apps, it hopes to put Copilot to work so it leverages more service data, improves AI outcomes, and funnels insights into the broader environment.
The following slide, stripped from a Microsoft webinar last year, highlights this vision.
For brands wishing to embrace this vision, Microsoft also introduced Dynamics 365 Customer Service Premium in 2024.
The offering combines Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise with the Dynamics 365 Contact Center, enabling a connected ecosystem for CCaaS and CRM.
Available from $195 per user per month, the offering has Copilot run between the systems as Microsoft continues to drive the virtual assistant into all its applications.