Microsoft bundles Copilot for Sales and Service: What this means for your business

Microsoft has restructured how AI is delivered within its productivity suite. Previously Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service were premium add-ons requiring separate licences. Now, both are included in the standard Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription. According to the official Microsoft 365 blog, these role-based agents are available through the Copilot Agent Store at no extra costs for existing Copilot licence holders.

This presents opportunities everywhere – from accessibility and productivity to value creation and strategic direction. In this article, we break down what’s changed, what it means for your organisation, and how to activate these powerful new capabilities to drive measurable returns across your sales and service operations.

Focus areas:

1. Understand the Agent Store model
2. What’s included
3. Copilot for Sales and Service capabilities
4. Insights from our Workspace Consultant
5. What you need to know to get started
6. The strategic takeaway

Understanding the Agent Store model

Microsoft’s Agent Store is a centralised, curated marketplace inside Microsoft 365 Copilot to browse, install, and pin agents

How it works:

• Users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence have access. For current pricing and regional availability, see Microsoft’s official pricing page
• The Agent store lists specialised Copilot agents for Sales, Service, and Finance

This mirrors Microsoft’s Agent Store approach with agents such as Researcher, which are discoverable and pin‑able in the Store.

What’s changed?

Until recently, Copilot for Sales and Service were sold as separate SKUs, each requiring an additional investment on top of your existing Copilot licence. If your organisation wanted role-based AI, you had to pay extra for each agent. That model has been retired, enabling full access to Sales, Service, and Finance agents by default with no additional licensing required within your licence. Simply install them from the Agent Store, configure them to your CRM, and activate the intelligence you already own.

The capabilities now included

• For Sales teams: Query CRM data through natural conversation in Outlook. For example, ask ‘What's the latest with the Contoso account?’ and receive synthesised information from CRM records, recent email exchanges, and relevant company intelligence – all without opening your CRM in a separate tab
• For Service teams: Generate ticket summaries automatically. Draft customer responses using your Knowledge Base content. Provide contextual assistance without agents switching between multiple applications or searching through documentation
• Meeting intelligence: Copilot provides context‑rich preparation and post‑meeting summaries in Outlook/Teams (e.g., opportunity details, recent communications, case context), reducing manual effort.
• CRM integration: In the flow of work sellers can ask Copilot to update CRM records, reducing context switching.

These capabilities integrate seamlessly into familiar interfaces like Outlook, Teams, and the Copilot experience, allowing you to unlock advanced functionality without the need to adopt and learn new tools.

The expert perspective: Chris Freeman

Our own Workspace Consultant Chris Freeman has a clear perspective on this change: ‘Microsoft’s latest move isn’t just a feature release – it’s a strategic signal. By embedding role-based AI directly into Microsoft 365 Copilot, rather than offering it as a premium add-on, they’re prioritising long-term market leadership over short-term revenue. This shift positions Copilot as the default AI infrastructure for modern organisations, where it deeply integrates into everyday workflows. From logging CRM data and resolving service tickets to supporting finance tasks, Copilot becomes indispensable. And when a tool becomes indispensable, switching away from it isn’t just inconvenient – it’s commercially unviable.

‘By including AI-powered CRM assistance within a subscription that many organisations already hold, Microsoft sets a new standard for value and accessibility. Once embedded into workflows like CRM updates, customer interactions, and service ticket management, switching to alternatives may become costly.

‘The real transformation, however, lies in removing friction from processes that have resisted improvement for years. Take CRM data entry – one of the most persistent bottlenecks in sales operations. When Copilot can prompt, ‘Would you like me to update this deal based on your last meeting?’, it turns a task once time-consuming into something that happens naturally in the flow of work.

‘For service teams, the impact is measurable. For example, if artificial intelligence enables an agent to process 20 cases per day instead of 15, while maintaining the same or higher quality, this represents a 33% increase in capacity. At scale, such improvement can have a transformative impact.

Chris’s pro tip: The organisations seeing the greatest impact from AI aren’t necessarily those with the most advanced tech, they’re the ones that start where the pain is most acute. Deploy AI where friction is highest to reveal its impact.

Activation: What you need to know

These tools won’t activate automatically.

Admins install and configure the Sales, Service, and Finance solutions via the Agent Store (rolled out beginning October 2025). With this update, it’s no longer about buying tools, instead you’re enabling capabilities that are already built into your environment.

Direct from Microsoft: official documentation

• Moving Sales, Service & Finance to the Frontier with Microsoft 365 Copilot
• Microsoft 365 Copilot for Service
• Get Started with Knowledge Agent (Microsoft Learn)
• Microsoft 365 Copilot Documentation

The pragmatic implementation approach

1. Begin with excellence, not volume

Deploy Copilot for Sales and Service first to your highest-performing sales professionals and most experienced service agents. These individuals will rapidly differentiate genuine productivity gains from marketing promises, and their feedback will be credible when building the internal case for broader adoption.

2. Establish baseline metrics before deployment

Without quantified baselines, evaluation takes place on perception rather than evidence. Here are some metrics you could be measuring:

• Time allocated to administrative tasks
• CRM data completeness and accuracy
• Customer response times
• Satisfaction scores

3. Understand the security model

Microsoft's documentation indicates these agents operate within existing permission boundaries, where Copilot can only access information the user account could manually retrieve. There are no elevated permissions or security backdoors. Organisations concerned about data exposure should verify this through controlled testing in their specific environment.

4. Training becomes essential, not optional

AI capabilities delivered through familiar interfaces create a discovery problem, i.e., users may not realise new functionality exists unless explicitly informed. Effective enablement should address where agents are located within Teams, how to formulate effective questions, which actions can be delegated to AI versus requiring human judgement, and appropriate verification protocols for AI-generated outputs.

The strategic takeaway

With this new bundling of Copilot for Sales and Service now included as part of the standard Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, the focus shifts from evaluating AI investments to unlocking the value of tools already available. Organisations that activate these capabilities early may gain a measurable edge in efficiency and service delivery – whilst others continue to assess their readiness.

As these agents become embedded into everyday workflows, improvements in productivity, data accuracy, and customer experience will follow naturally. Sales cycles can become more efficient, service delivery can scale more effectively, and CRM data quality can be improved through natural workflow integration rather than manual enforcement. For your organisation, the infrastructure is likely already in place; what matters now is ensuring the right governance, adoption, and enablement to realise these benefits fully and sustainably.

Quick recap: What’s now included with Microsoft 365 Copilot

• Included Agents: Role-based Copilot agents for Sales, Service, and Finance available through the Agent Store as included capabilities
• No extra licensing: Available immediately to existing Copilot license holders
• Native integration: Works within Outlook, Teams, and other Microsoft 365 apps
• Admin setup required: Agents must be installed and configured to your CRM (a one-time setup)