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.
