Microsoft Copilot has become an essential tool for organisations looking to boost productivity, creativity and streamline operations within their team. Microsoft have reported accumulating 400 million paid users driven by Copilot AI innovation. The adoption of Copilot introduces a variety of features to enhance workflows, create documents, analyse data and automate tasks. Many businesses are yet to discover the full potential of Copilot because they don’t know how to create effective prompts. As AI experts we understand the transformative potential for your business when correctly utilising Copilot.
The gap between adoption and utilisation
Many companies quickly adopt Copilot into their daily operations, but a gap often remains between simply using Copilot and leveraging it to its full potential, the gap is made from a lack of understanding about how to effectively communicate with AI. This is where perfecting your prompting skills comes into play. Post adoption many users are certainly capable of generating basic prompts and utilising Copilot as a personal AI assistant; however, this approach overlooks its full capability.
There’s always something new to learn and skills to develop. Copilot can handle complex queries and by giving it more detailed, intentional prompts you will get better results. While Microsoft Copilot has been widely adopted, there are still many users who haven’t fully integrated it into their daily workflows, creating a gap between adoption and utilisation. Microsoft’s admin centre reports that a significant number of users do not have a Copilot licence assigned. Businesses can close this gap and take full advantage of everything Copilot has to offer and avoid the potential frustration of Copilot “not doing enough”. Users who don’t fully utilise Copilot may miss out on the reported 70% increase in productivity and 68% improvement in work quality.
What is Copilot AI prompting?
Once you’ve perfected the skill of writing AI prompts, the possibilities are endless. A prompt is essentially a set of instructions Copilot uses to understand what you need. Vague prompts lead to vague results, while specific, clear instructions result in high-quality outputs. By mastering your prompting, you optimise the AI assistant to enhance productivity, gain insights, and maximise overall value. Below are different ways businesses can use Copilot and example prompts:
1 – Creation and editing
One of Copilots most widely used features is its ability to create and edit text and documents. Copilot can even help refine and personalise documents, you can even select a writing style; more creative, more balanced or more precise.
Example prompts:
- “Rephrase this summary and make it more concise with a more creative writing style”
- “Draft a project proposal for a new marketing strategy targeting social media engagement.”
- “Rewrite this email to be more formal while maintaining a friendly tone.”
2 – Data Analysis and Reporting
Copilot is a great resource for analysing data and generating reports, which can help your business when making data-driven decisions. However, general prompts such as “Analyse this data” will not deliver the depth of insights you want, without specific instructions.
Example prompts:
- “Analyse this sales data from the last quarter and generate a report that highlights key performance trends, focusing on regions with the highest growth.”
- “Create a visual report that compares this year’s employee engagement survey results with last year’s data.”
- “Identify anomalies in this financial dataset, particularly in the expenses category.”
3 – Project Management and Task Automation
When given precise, actionable prompts, Copilot can automate project updates, reminders, recap meetings and create task lists, which can significantly reduce manual work.
Example prompts:
- “Generate a weekly project update that summarises the progress of key tasks and any potential roadblocks.”
- “Create a to-do list based on my calendar schedule for this week”
- “Recap this meeting, summarising key takeaways and action items as separate sections, including who’s responsible for each”
4 – Customer Service and interaction
Delivering excellent customer service is crucial for a business to enhance retention and satisfaction, while also equipping your team with the tools to meet these expectations. Copilot AI helps to assist in customer service needs, providing real-time suggestions and information, enhancing efficiency and accuracy when responding to queries. It also provides insights into customer behaviour and preferences, creating a more personalised service.
Example prompts:
- “Create a customer feedback report that highlights common issues and suggests potential solutions.”
- “Generate a follow-up email template for customers after a product inquiry that includes personalised recommendations based on their previous activity.”
- “Analyse this set of customer complaints and categorise them by issue type and urgency.”
Top tip! Copilot can also help improve customer relationships and operational efficiency by automating and analysing routine interactions.
Optimising your Copilot AI success
Closing the gap between Copilot adoption and true utilisation requires businesses to re-evaluate how they interact with AI tools. The key lies in understanding that Copilot is only as effective as the prompts it receives.
The key elements to better prompting are:
Specificity – Specify what kind of information or actions your business wants, the AI can deliver sharper, more actionable results.
Layering – Copilot can handle multi-step tasks, such as first summarising data and then providing follow-up actions or recommendations.
Clarity – Breaking down requests into clear, concise steps guides Copilot to specific metrics that provide useful insights.
Iterative prompts – After generating initial responses, refining the next prompt based on the initial response can enhance results.
Context – Copilot works best when it understands the broader context behind the request.
Join our Copilot workshop
Our goal at Ingentive is to ensure you get the most out of your investment in AI. We offer a series of workshops and events to help you maximise your AI capability and achieve operational excellence.
Are you thinking about adopting Copilot? We suggest you join our Copilot Studio in-a-day workshop – Offering expert advice, guidance and practical hands-on experience.
At the end of the day, you will be able to:
- Build modern Copilot experiences for any scenario or use-case
- Easily create your own copilots
- Take action quickly with seamless integrations
- Build copilots using generative AI and specific responses for personalised conversations
Contact us today to learn more about Copilot AI and our workshops.
Want to learn more?
We are uniquely placed as a Microsoft FastTrack Ready Partner that are able to diagnose your organisation’s digital processes, using your use cases. From this understanding, we create tailor-made solutions that suit your business needs.
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