Information technology / Enterprise software
Microsoft: Running the Employee Self-Service agent for employee IT, HR and campus services questions
- Company
- Microsoft
- Country
- United States
- Adoption stage
- In operation
- Source published
- Date basis
- The date the source was published. It can differ from the date adoption started.
- How the source was checked
- Read the full source text
The work problem
According to an article published on October 8, 2026 by Microsoft's internal IT organization, Microsoft opened the Employee Self-Service agent to more than 300,000 employees and contingent staff in the fall of 2025, but early adoption was lower than expected. When a problem came up, employees asked coworkers, searched documentation and tried their own fixes before opening the agent, and they were frustrated when the agent suggested fixes they had already tried.
Technology and data
According to an article published on May 7, 2026, the agent was built in Copilot Studio and answers from about 250,000 knowledge base articles vetted by the IT organization and 15 to 20 internal SharePoint sites with policies, guidelines and how-to information. The agent takes IT, HR and campus services questions in one place, shows content that matches each employee's location and language, and was rolled out in stages to more than 300,000 employees and vendors in 103 countries and regions. Employees can flag inaccurate answers directly in the agent. After analyzing employee interviews, feedback and conversations between employees and the agent with the design firm Designit, the company changed how the agent responds so that it acknowledges steps employees have already tried, states clearly what it cannot do and hands employees over to a human agent when needed.
Results
According to the October 8, 2026 article, Microsoft said the number of new IT support tickets fell 30% overall and the share of employees who start with the agent when they need support rose from 27% before the trust-building work to 50%. In the May 7, 2026 article, Trent Berghofer, a general manager at Microsoft Digital, set a long-term goal of reducing human-led support tickets by 40%.
Limits and open questions
The articles do not disclose the period or baseline used to measure the drop in tickets, or the results for HR and campus services questions.
Sources
- Building trust in AI-powered support at Microsoft: Our Employee Self-Service agent storymicrosoft.com, Accessed
- Transforming IT support across Microsoft with the Employee Self-Service Agentmicrosoft.com, Accessed
Compiled from public sources. These are not results from ATF Works customers.