Lumen Technologies is working with Microsoft to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot to enable greater efficiencies for its approximately 30,000 employees. The service provider is beta-testing Microsoft 365 Copilot as a part of the Early Access Program (EAP).
The company has already seen the benefits of equipping some of its teams with Microsoft’s large language model (LLM) AI solutions, with plans to deploy the tech more broadly.
Microsoft claims that Microsoft 365 Copilot can disrupt the telecoms industry by providing employees with a tool to help enhance creativity, productivity and skills with real-time intelligent assistance. It has the potential to improve employee productivity by automating tedious tasks and providing powerful tools for data analysis and decision-making. The platform includes features such as meeting summaries in Microsoft Teams and Copilot enhancements across Outlook, PowerPoint and other Microsoft 365 apps.
This platform is finding applicability across various teams within the company.
Customer service teams at Lumen use Copilot to surface relevant policies, summarize tickets, or access step-by-step repair instructions from manuals. Sales and customer experience teams use Copilot to add depth and context to customer communications and outline actions and next steps. Across the board, teams use Copilot to create presentations quickly and for new business proposals and statement-of-work creation.
Lumen is among the first companies to start working with Microsoft 365 Copilot as one of the EAP adopters. Microsoft 365 Copilot combines LLMs with data in the Microsoft Graph — calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings and other applications — and the Microsoft 365 apps to become what it claims to be an essential productivity tool.
“Microsoft 365 Copilot has the power to revolutionize how we work, enabling people to focus on what truly matters and drive their organizations forward,” said Deb Cupp, president of Americas Microsoft. “We are thrilled to deliver this technology to innovative companies like Lumen to help them achieve their goals.”
The work Lumen is doing with Microsoft reflects the telco’s ongoing efforts to develop new sales team training methods that leverage AI and cloud-based technologies. Kate Johnson, president and CEO, Lumen Technologies. “Giving our workforce the digital tools they need to deliver dramatically improved customer experiences with greater ease is an essential part of our company transformation. Our people see immediate productivity improvements with Copilot, allowing them to focus on more value-added daily activities.”
During Lumen’s second-quarter earnings call, the service provider told investors it was leveraging AI in its sales platform to drive more automated and informed seller activities. It also uses AI to create wind formulas to help its managers coach their salespeople.
A mid-market pilot where Lumen deployed these tools showed an 80% reduction in sales cycle time and an 85% shortened customer onboarding time. These tools also drove win rates in the business channel, increasing 160% since the start of the year and a 50% year-over-year increase in new global acquisitions for its grow products.
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Sean Buckley
Sean is responsible for establishing and executing the editorial strategies of Lightwave and Broadband Technology Report across their websites, email newsletters, events, and other information products.