Ep 38 - Agents in Contact Centre with Tricia Sinclair

Feb 7, 2026

Tricia Sinclair, Microsoft MVP and Avanade’s Global Lead for Contact Center & Customer Service, explains Copilot case and intent agents. She covers automating email triage, piloting agents internally, data and cost challenges, Agent Hub governance, integrations across Microsoft, and the ethical need to augment—not replace—human service. The conversation previews real-time voice agents and future adoption trends.

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ADVICE

Start Internally Before Customer Rollout

Pilot agents internally first so human agents can validate outputs and provide feedback.
Use internal deployments to tune models before exposing agents to external customers.

ADVICE

Prepare Conversation Data First

Assess and prepare your conversation and case data, importing it into Dataverse in the required format.
Use the FastTrack conversation importer to accelerate training and reporting setup.

ADVICE

Design For Cost And ROI Upfront

Evaluate your existing intents and decide whether to manually create them or auto-harvest with the system.
Model design and expected conversation volume drive consumption costs and ROI calculations.

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In this episode of The Copilot Connection, hosts Zoe Wilson and Kevin McDonnell are joined by Tricia Sinclair (Microsoft MVP and Avanade’s Global Lead for Contact Center & Customer Service) to explore the evolving role of AI in customer service and contact centres. They discuss how new Copilot AI agents like Case Management Agents and Intent Agents can automate processes such as email triage and understanding customer inquiries, and why many organizations are piloting these tools internally before rolling them out to customers. The conversation dives into adoption challenges – from ensuring quality data and training models to navigating consumption-based costs – and highlights governance solutions like the new Agent Hub for monitoring and controlling AI deployments. Tricia also shares insights on integrating these Copilot capabilities across the broader Microsoft ecosystem (with hints at what’s coming next) and emphasizes the bigger picture: using AI to augment, not replace human agents. The episode wraps up with a thoughtful discussion on the ethical and workforce implications of AI in contact centres, including the importance of maintaining human empathy, addressing potential biases, and keeping customer trust front and centre.

Key topics covered:

Case Management & Intent Agents – Automating case triage and identifying customer intent using AI.
Internal vs. External Deployment – Strategies for introducing Copilot agents on internal service desks before customer-facing use.
Adoption Challenges & Costs – Data readiness, model training, consumption-based pricing, and ensuring ROI for AI solutions.
Agent Hub & Governance – Using Microsoft’s Agent Hub to track, manage, and govern Copilot AI agent usage and performance.
Integration with Microsoft Platforms – How Copilot agents tie into the wider Microsoft stack and upcoming cross-platform capabilities.
AI’s Impact & Ethics – The balance between AI and human agents, potential job impacts, and the need for fairness, empathy, and transparency in AI-driven customer service.

p.s. decided to try Researcher agent looking at previous summaries to generate this summary. Let us know what you think!