How to Set Up Verbatim Knowledge Responses in Dynamics 365

I am a big fan of the agent, or copilot (whatever you want to call it) that lives in the sidecar in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. The little helper we all know and love, who assists Customer Service Reps by taking content from knowledge articles and turning it into conversational responses to help resolve issues faster. Whether that is during a phone or chat conversation or when they are working on a case. However, if the knowledge in the system is incorrect, the responses offered to the CSR will be incorrect too. This is where the Knowledge Management Agent comes in. It can create new knowledge articles or updates existing ones, based on how an issue was resolved. This will help organizations keep their knowledge up to date and accurate.
That is one problem solved. But what about situations where we don’t want Copilot to summarize information from the knowledge article? What if we need the information in the knowledge article to be communicated to the CSR exactly how its written in the article? Because let’s be honest, not every piece of knowledge should be summarized. For example, a CSR could be providing customers with a warranty policy or working for a financial services company communicating regulatory language to their customers. The information in the knowledge articles was probably reviewed by legal teams, compliance teams, and/or subject matter experts. The exact wording in those articles matters! The last thing you want the Copilot to do in these types of situations is to take the language used in that knowledge article and make it ‘friendlier’ and accidentally change the meaning! This is where the new verbatim knowledge response in Dynamics 365 Customer Service comes in. I think this is one of those features that seems small at first but solves a very real problem.

Where is the value?

I think this functionality is very important to regulated industries. If you work in healthcare, insurance, banking, government, or any industry where customer communication has strict requirements, you already know that this is a big issue. Usually in industries like that there is a very specific way something must be communicated to customers. AI is amazing at summarizing information, but there are moments where that is not what we need. Accuracy is. The same applies to safety instructions. If a customer is troubleshooting equipment, the difference between a summarized response and the approved procedure could have a major impact: safety. Another great example is customer scripts. Many organizations spend a lot of time creating approved messaging for their customer service reps. Maybe it is a refund explanation, a contract statement, or a required notification. With verbatim responses in Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Contact Center, those carefully crafted messages can stay exactly the way they were intended.

How does it work?

Before I get into this I want to mention that it’s important to understand that this feature is related to knowledge articles in D365. If you’re using Copilot Studio for knowledge handling, this feature will not work.
This functionality gives organization more control over how Copilot in D365 handles the content in knowledge articles. Copilot is still doing what it does best: searching your knowledge sources and finding the most relevant information. The difference is that we now have more control over what happens after that knowledge is found and before it’s relayed to the CSR.
There are two options when configuring verbatim responses. Within knowledge articles, we can identify certain sections where the wording in those sections needs to be returned to the CSR exactly how it is written in the section. The second option is to mark the entire article as verbatim. This means that all the text in the article will be returned to CSR exactly as it is written, no summarization of any part of the article.

Configuration

This is a feature that needs to be enabled before it can be used. You can enable the feature by accessing the Copilot Service Admin App. Once the app loads, you’ll need to navigate to ‘Productivity’ on the sitemap. From there you’ll need to click ‘Manage’ for Copilot Settings. Under ‘Agents within Copilot’ click settings for the Customer Support agent. This will open a window where you’ll see a checkbox for ‘Deterministic Response’. Check the box next to it to enable the feature, then click ‘save’ on the bottom of the page and that’s it!
Keep in mind that the setup for the verbatim responses is on a per-article basis. Open the Customer Workspace app and navigate to knowledge articles. From here you can create a new article or open an existing knowledge article that has content you want to mark as verbatim. Let’s discuss how to mark a certain section in a knowledge article as verbatim first. Once you open the knowledge article, click above or below the content that needs to remain unchanged. On the designer command bar, click on the ‘Do not summarize’ button. The button is on the right of the question mark button. This will add a new section to the knowledge article with text that reads: ‘Content in this section will remain exactly as entered. It will not be summarized, rewritten, or altered by AI.’ The section has borders which allows us to see where it starts and ends. Cut and paste the text from the article into the verbatim section and save and/or publish the article.

The second option available as part of this feature is to mark the entire article as verbatim. We can do this by entering the text ‘doNotSummarize‘ in the keywords section of the article. This is helpful when the whole article contains approved wording that needs to remain untouched. Once the article(s) is saved and published, Copilot will recognize that instruction when CSR’s ask questions related to that knowledge. The important thing to remember is that this is not an ‘all or nothing’ approach.
Obviously you don’t have to make every knowledge article verbatim. I would recommend being selective. Your troubleshooting guides, how-to articles, and FAQs are usually where you want Copilot to use it’s AI capabilities and create a quick, easy-to-understand answer. But compliance statements, safety instructions, policies, and approved messaging are the perfect candidates for verbatim responses. This gives organizations the best of both worlds: AI-powered assistance with the governance and control that enterprise customers need.

CSR Experience

When a customer service representative receives a Copilot response that includes a sectional verbatim knowledge response, the experience looks slightly different than a standard Copilot response. Instead of seeing a summarized response, the CSR will see the exact text from the knowledge article displayed in the Copilot side car. Copilot also adds a Verbatim header above the response so the agent knows that the content shows exactly how it exists in the knowledge source. CSR will see a message that reads: ‘The information below is provided directly from the discovered knowledge document without modification. Check Sources to view the full content.‘

This is an important distinction because it gives the customer service representative confidence that the response has not been generated or altered by AI. They can use the information provided knowing it matches the approved content created by their organization. The CSR can still access the source article directly from the Copilot side car if they need additional context or want to review the complete knowledge document before responding to the customer.

The response a CSR sees when an entire knowledge article has been marked as verbatim is slightly different.
From the CSR perspective, this creates a seamless experience. They still get the convenience of Copilot finding the right information, but with the added benefit that critical content like policies, compliance statements, and approved customer messaging is being provided exactly as it was intended by the organization. Copilot will display a notification to the CSR letting them know that the information must be used exactly as written in the source article. The message reads: ‘This information is flagged ‘Do not paraphrase’ by your organization due to company policy or compliance reasons. Please refer to the answer exactly as it’s written in the source(s).‘ Below this message is a link to the original knowledge article so the CSR can quickly access the full source content.
Verbatim knowledge responses give organizations another layer of control by allowing Copilot to assist CSR’s while still respecting knowledge that shouldn’t be changed. I would love to hear your thoughts on this feature! Do you see areas in your organization where having Copilot return approved content exactly as written would be valuable? Or do you think most knowledge articles should continue to take advantage of AI-generated summaries? I hope you enjoyed this article! Be sure to check in again soon or subscribe here to never miss another post!