With research showing that managing email consumes more than 66% of a seller’s day, Microsoft has teed up a new AI product that helps salespeople compose emails. The software giant says Viva Sales will generate suggested email content for a variety of scenarios, such as replying to an inquiry or creating a proposal, complete with data specifically relevant to the recipient, such as pricing, promotions, and deadlines.
The tool uses Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service and GPT, the buzzy technology that employs “deep learning” to produce human-like text. By auto-suggesting customizable content, Microsoft VP Lori Lamkin says sellers can spend less time composing emails and searching for sales data from colleagues and databases and more time engaging with prospects.
The tool can remind sellers when it’s time to follow up with a prospect or customer and then auto-generate a preformatted email response with personalized text and next best actions, along with details such as product descriptions, proposals, and deadlines. When responding to an email, Viva Sales provides sellers suggested responses based upon preset options such as “make a proposal,” “reply to an inquiry,” or “suggest your own.” The seller then selects the option to suit their needs and a reply is generated for the seller to review, edit to their liking, and send. The reply uses data from Microsoft Graph, which provides access to people-centric data and insights in the Microsoft Cloud.
It’s not the only product of this sort. Outreach recently unveiled Smart Email Assist, an AI-driven tool that it says will enable B2B salespeople to send emails and improve overall efficiency. According to MediaPost, this product auto-generates relevant email copy based on the prior context of conversations between buyers and sellers.