Product Talk Microsoft Product Lead on Building AI-Powered Customer Service That Actually Works
Mar 25, 2026
Madhuri Somara, a Microsoft product leader building AI-powered customer service and case management solutions. She talks about automating routine work while keeping humans for judgment and empathy. She explains designing for resolution speed, surfacing transparent AI reasoning, and handling messy, high-stakes service environments.
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AI Manages End-to-End Case Flow
- Case management agent automates ticket creation, enrichment, third-party lookups, and follow-ups to reduce manual work.
- Madhuri describes an end-to-end flow: email → urgent case flagged → enrich with resources → carrier checks → customer follow-up and closure.
Assign Routine Work To AI And Heartwork To Humans
- Use AI for repetitive, predictable tasks and keep humans for messy, emotional, or high-stakes cases.
- Madhuri: AI handles boilerplate lookups and invoices while humans handle judgment and empathy — "AI handles the routine, humans handle the heart."
Agent Surprised Team By Handling Messy Case
- Madhuri tested the agent with a messy, conflicted case and expected failure but it found the next best action and flagged when a human should step in.
- The surprise moment showed the system could think ahead beyond expectations.