Enabling modern support at Microsoft with AI

We’re using agent-based AI capabilities supported by a continuous improvement (CI) mindset and a comprehensive approach to security to redefine how we meet the support needs of our employees here at Microsoft.

How are we doing this?

We—Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization—are using autonomous AI agents built on platforms such as Microsoft Copilot Studio to enhance the experiences our employees have at work, to improve their productivity, and to drive innovation across Microsoft.

“Autonomous agents are enabling us to transform how we provide support to our employees while also giving our support agents new tools and capabilities that they’re using to be more strategic and to uplevel the quality of their work,” says Trent Berghofer, general manager of the Microsoft Digital Modern Support team. “We think that this is a blueprint our customers and partners can follow and learn from.”  

Modernizing the support experience with AI-driven agents

We’re pivoting to using AI-driven agents as the primary way we deliver support to our employees. We’re using advances in LLMs and generative AI to create an intelligent support layer that can perceive context, understand intention, and take action to achieve goals. AI’s ability to make decisions in the early stages of the user support journey is reducing our resolution time by streamlining support ticket intake, routing and intent-gathering tasks.

Our agent-based design capitalizes on the strengths of AI orchestration to deliver streamlined, intelligent support experiences that enhance productivity for both employees and IT professionals. Specifically:

• Contextual understanding: AI agents retain and interpret prior interactions to deliver more relevant and accurate support. This memory-driven context allows them to anticipate needs and tailor responses, improving the quality of assistance over time.
• Workflow coordination: Agents autonomously plan and execute multi-step tasks, dynamically adjusting their approach based on real-time inputs. This enables seamless handling of complex support workflows with minimal human intervention.
• Authoritative sources: By integrating with trusted enterprise systems and APIs, agents ensure that actions and recommendations are grounded in reliable, up-to-date information, reducing errors and increasing confidence in outcomes.

“For an employee to stay productive, they need a simple, accessible, and transparent support experience,” says Silvina Olkies, a senior director of Global End User Support Services and Employee Experience in Microsoft Digital.

Olkies’ team has designed modern support services to meet our employees in the flow of their work with simple, accessible, and transparent experiences.

AI-based autonomous agents serve as the foundation for our innovative self-service solutions and automation.

“Our vision is for support to start and stay in Copilot,” Olkies says. “Employees should be able to resolve issues through AI-driven self-service or transition effortlessly to assisted support —without leaving the streamlined interface.” 

Microsoft 365 Copilot has quickly become our tool of choice to enhance modern work practices at Microsoft. Our employees use Microsoft 365 Copilot to find answers, work faster, communicate more effectively, and boost creativity. Copilot is a true personal AI assistant, demonstrating how AI can transform the way people work.

Copilot is a key enabler of agent-based services that make up our modern support model here at Microsoft Digital. We’re using it to deliver a more efficient, personalized, and proactive support experience while ensuring security and compliance across two major areas:

• Our Employee Self-Service (ESS) Agent powers the user support experience, enabling a seamless, transparent, and digital-first support model. AI-driven analytics identify patterns, anticipate needs, and optimize support operations proactively, all while maintaining security and protecting user data.
• AI and CI power IT operations and infrastructure management, equipping us with intelligent insights and automated workflows to enhance project management efficiency, streamline operational issue resolution, and ensure secure and compliant engagements with stakeholders.

CI is a foundational element of our support and operations strategy. With CI, we drive iterative enhancements in our tools and services through structured review cycles and embedded feedback mechanisms. The pace of our business and the technology we use to support it demands this level of agility in correcting issues, adding features, and evolving the way we operate as an organization.

We apply CI methodologies such as root cause analysis, process mapping, and trend monitoring to observe data from ESS Agent interactions, Copilot usage patterns, and survey sentiment. We use the insights from this analysis during sprint retrospectives and operational syncs, where corrective actions are defined, prioritized, and tracked.

Root cause analysis

In one of our tenants, we saw a high number of reopened and escalations tickets related to virtual machine initiation. After reviewing the tickets, we found that users were requesting VMs before their accounts were created, which prevented successful provisioning. We updated the onboarding process to ensure that account creation happens first. As a result, we reduced escalation and productivity churn by 54 percent and improved the overall support experience.

Process mapping

We continuously document processes to ensure a seamless onboarding experience for new services. Traditionally, product managers conduct brownbag sessions to educate support agents on tools and procedures. However, capturing and formalizing this knowledge into Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) is a time-intensive task, often requiring 6 to 8 hours of effort from our subject matter experts (SMEs).

To enhance efficiency and accuracy, we’re implementing an AI-powered solution that leverages generative AI to transform brownbag discussions into draft SOPs, reducing documentation time to approximately 2 hours or less, while maintaining high-quality standards. With AI-generated drafts supplemented by expert review, we anticipate improvements in both speed and precision, ensuring robust SOPs for product support.

Trend monitoring

To become more proactive in how we support services, we’ve introduced a demand management process that helps us identify and analyze trends in ticket volume and user requests. By using data to spot recurring issues and patterns, we provide structured feedback to Service Owners and Product Groups about defects, onboarding challenges, and service changes. This approach allows us to adapt quickly, reduce future volume, and influence improvements upstream, moving from reactive support to a more predictive and agile model.

This Kaizen-style approach to CI enables us to iterate quickly, using rapid experimentation and fail-fast mindset. As a result, we’re optimizing support workflows and creating sustained reduction in incident recurrence. Incorporating CI practices into our delivery rhythms helps us ensure that every AI-driven improvement is measurable, intentional, and aligned with evolving user needs.

Our combination of AI and CI is built on a foundation of security, in line with the Microsoft Secure Future Initiative (SFI). SFI ensures that three core security principles are built into everything we do at Microsoft:

• Secure by design. Security comes first when designing any product or service.
• Secure by default. Security protections are enabled and enforced by default, require no extra effort, and are not optional.
• Secure operations. Security controls and monitoring will continuously be improved to meet current and future threats.

Within our modern support model, we use AI to deliver intelligent insights, automation, and rapid impact. Embracing CI enables us to make disciplined and continuous advancements that drive long-term efficiency. Security remains our foundation, making sure we safeguard our data, maintain compliance, and ensure trust. Weaving AI, CI, and security together helps us streamline our workflows, reduce our operational burden, and enables us to proactively resolve issues while protecting our users and systems.

The modern support model

Providing transparent self-service with the Employee Self-Service Agent

Our Employee Self-Service (ESS) Agent is designed to improve the IT support experience. Using Copilot-based capabilities in Microsoft Teams, it is the gateway to self-service support for Microsoft employees, and a key part of our agentic AI approach.

Our ESS Agent consolidates multiple support channels into a single intelligent entry point that facilitates both self-help and seamless escalation when required. It empowers our employees with self-service capabilities for common IT needs, including:

• Quick answers to common technical issues, including password resets, device setup, connectivity troubleshooting, software updates, and installations.
• Ticket management allows employees to create requests, track status updates, and add comments or files to open tickets.
• Proactive self-help prompts for top IT actions, such as outage alerts, device compliance status, active ticket updates, connectivity troubleshooting, authentication support, and domain join assistance.

Reimagining support with Copilot

Our team is constantly improving the AI capabilities in the ESS Agent to make self-help suggestions better, boost automation, and simplify workflows so employees get faster, more accurate solutions. Our Customer Zero approach uses feedback from Microsoft employees to improve how the ESS Agent predicts user intent and helps to resolve issues.

If the AI-powered capabilities of the ESS Agent don’t provide a complete solution to an employee’s support issue, human-supported assistance is instantly available. The goal is that only the most critical and complex issues, requiring human input, reach the assisted support team.

The results so far are encouraging, and the numbers indicate that the ESS Agent is creating significant benefits for us, including:

• Self-help success rate increased by 36%.
• Successful self-service information discovery increased by 34%.
• User satisfaction ratings for IT support increased by 18%.

With employees using the ESS Agent in Microsoft Teams as the entry point and 95% of interactions starting in Copilot-based interfaces, the focus is on improving Copilot features to create an even better user experience.

Using AI to improve IT site operations and infrastructure management

We’re combining AI-driven capabilities, continuous improvement, and a comprehensive security framework to build effective IT operations and infrastructure management solutions that our modern support model revolves around.

 IT Operations uses a range of internally developed AI agents tailored to specific scenarios. These agents enhance operational decision-making, streamline communications, and strengthen the security and efficiency of IT service delivery at Microsoft.

AI-driven capabilities for IT professionals

Here are some key scenarios where AI is revolutionizing IT site operations and infrastructure management:

• Device and infrastructure management. We’re using agents to proactively manage endpoint devices, network infrastructure, and security compliance. For example, our engineering teams have developed three custom-built agents: Network Data Infrastructure, Device Care, and Network Spare Equipment Inventory. These agents optimize the processes for infrastructure deployments, resolving connectivity issues and service disruptions throughout our global infrastructure, while also helping to keep our devices healthy and reliable.
• Insights for IT operations and strategic decision-making. AI-powered analytics enhance sentiment analysis, track service metrics, and drive proactive issue resolution. We’ve developed the Insight Foundation agent to help our IT operations teams analyze trends, interpret self-service survey results, and enable data-driven inquiries.
• Streamlined stakeholder engagement. We’re developing AI-powered automation to consolidate key datasets for IT and corporate function partners, offering tailored insights on service health and program roadmaps. Business stakeholders will get seamless access to our service health and roadmap information tailored to specific roles and business functions to support timely planning and prioritization activities.

Our aspiration is that agent-based AI will autonomously drive strategic investment planning, seamless infrastructure deployment, and self-healing operations—maximizing efficiency, accelerating value, and ensuring a resilient digital workplace with minimal human intervention.

“As we continue our journey, agent-based AI is helping us rethink how we plan, build, and run our infrastructure,” says Simon Price, senior director of IT field management at Microsoft Digital. “From smarter investments to self-healing operations, it’s all about creating a resilient digital workplace that runs smoother, faster, and with less manual effort.”   

Creating a connected future with modern support at scale

Our AI-powered modern support model is already delivering tangible business impact. Our self-service IT support resolution has increased by 36%, demonstrating the impact of automation and AI on IT support. Additionally, faster agent response times, powered by real-time telemetry, and reduced IT ticket volumes further highlight this transformation.

As our support team continues to refine the AI agent-driven modern support approach, they’re committed to increasing user satisfaction and ensuring we realize increasing value from AI-driven tools.

Our team is also growing our investment in self-service solutions and continuing to modernize IT support by prioritizing AI-driven automation and predictive analytics, including investigating new ways to use Copilot capabilities for real-time insights and remediation. We’re reimagining support for the AI era. The modern support experience—built on AI-driven agents, CI, and security—ensures Microsoft employees are empowered by fast, seamless, and intelligent IT assistance and IT operations.

The future of IT support is here and at Microsoft Digital, we’re making it happen today.