On January 15, 2025, we announced the general availability of Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. This secure, no-cost AI chat solution, powered by GPT-4o, integrates advanced agents directly within the chat while providing robust IT controls, including enterprise data protection. Copilot Chat opens exciting opportunities for partners to deliver value to their customers and accelerate AI adoption across organizations. It empowers partners to enhance customer engagement and generate new revenue streams through tailored AI solutions.
Based on my conversations with partners and customers, it’s clear the opportunities with Copilot Chat are immense. I’m excited to share how you can use Copilot Chat to drive transformative success and greater impact with your customers.
Enable your customers and transform business processes with Copilot agents:
Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot provide customers with flexibility to cover the entire organization with a “Copilot for all” approach.
“The great thing about Copilot is that it is helping customers get more value out of their existing investments across the Microsoft stack. We have already conducted dozens of assessments and see this dramatically enhancing the benefits customers see from low code today.”
- Eric Beins, COO at JourneyTeam
Looking ahead, we anticipate most customers will adopt a mix of Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot. While Copilot Chat serves as a powerful on-ramp for an organization’s AI journey, Microsoft 365 Copilot continues to be our best-in-class personal assistant for work.
Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot set partners up to drive growth and deliver AI transformation to customers:
- Copilot for all: Deploying Copilot Chat today sets the stage for future opportunities with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot agents. Whether your customer is exploring web-grounded chat, building agents to transform business processes, or enhancing employee productivity, Copilot Chat with pay-as-you-go agents and Microsoft 365 Copilot can meet their needs.
- Keep customers secure: By addressing data security and compliance challenges, partners can build trust and safeguard customer data. Many customers are grappling with consumer AI tools that lack IT controls and may access users’ data to train models. Copilot Chat enables partners to activate all users seamlessly while ensuring enterprise-grade data protection.
- New revenue streams with agents: Copilot Chat, combined with pay-as-you-go agents, offers scalable monetization opportunities for partners. By developing and managing agents, partners unlock new revenue streams. With the agent pricing on a metered basis (pay-as-you-go), partners offering managed services are rewarded with Azure partner earned credits, driving additional value.
"This is the first time I've seen technology truly ignite human potential. Once we wrap the Copilot agents offering around the customer's data, the power is clear and the value immediate. I've never seen customers decide so quickly, especially in traditional sectors where approval by committee is the norm."
- Kristy Brown, Chief Microsoft Officer, Fusion5
The winning formula
To truly succeed in driving AI adoption and delivering value to your customers, it’s essential for partners to be deeply immersed in the solutions you offer, and the benefits that have accrued to your business. Partners who leverage their own experiences with Microsoft 365 Copilot and related offerings are best positioned to understand customer needs and effectively guide them through their transformation journey.
- Partner as customer zero: Simply stated, you are better equipped to help customers if your team is educated through their own internal use and experiences. Our most successful Copilot partners are those actively using Microsoft 365 Copilot themselves. Take advantage of your internal-use rights (IUR) and lead by example.
- Lead with Microsoft 365 Copilot: This remains our hero SKU, while Copilot Chat and agents ensure all employees benefit from AI, delivering value organization-wide. These solutions provide robust IT controls, enterprise-grade data protection and seamless access to agents directly within the chat, delivering value to the entire organization.
- Build agent offerings: Automating tasks and transforming business processes create high customer value and substantial ROI. For partners, this presents a significant revenue opportunity through tailored solutions.
- Secure customers: Security and data oversharing are top customer concerns. Keeping your customer’s data security and governance posture to ensure their protection, builds trust and safeguards sensitive information. For partners, this also presents a significant opportunity to offer value-added services such as data governance consultations, security audits, and managed security solutions, to address customer challenges comprehensively while driving additional revenue streams.
- Be the AI advisor: Copilot Chat creates new monetization opportunities by positioning partners as AI advisors. By leading the way in shaping your customers' business transformation strategies with AI, you can identify functional value propositions and key business needs, driving impactful outcomes and deepening customer relationships.
- Create ACM offers: Adoption and change management (ACM) offers are critical for maximizing AI’s impact, helping customers overcome challenges and driving widespread adoption.
- Leverage Microsoft resources: The most effective partners leverage Microsoft resources across the Microsoft Customer Engagement Lifecycle. Tools like Campaign in a Box (CiaB) help generate leads. Copilot Accelerate and/or CSP briefings enable partners to build customer intent. Promotions and incentives help to close deals to drive success at every stage of the sales process.
“We’re finding that our conversation is no longer just about low code. It’s about low code and Copilot and how companies can embrace the technologies and what is involved in building the right guardrails and foundations in order to enable their whole organization. We have moved from project-based consulting and development to serving as strategic advisors on how organizations should leverage these technologies to rethink processes from the ground up. We’re taking Power Platform and Copilot out of IT and into the business as a capability.”
- Jason Earnshaw, GM, Low Code Practice, ANS
Next steps
To help you get started with Copilot Chat, we have a range of resources:
We are excited about the opportunities that Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat brings and look forward to seeing how partners will innovate and grow with these new resources and capabilities. Together, we can unlock the full potential of AI and drive success for our customers.