The new generation ofartificial intelligence (AI) agents, exemplified by MicrosoftCopilot,allows fora native AI-drivencustomer experiencethat transformsthe way customer service is delivered from end to end. Organizations can now reimagine the entire service journey, achieve unprecedented efficiency, and provide consistently exceptional, fluid, and cohesive experiences, according to IT Max Global, a leading innovation and IT services provider serving both government and private sector clients.
With the UAE leading the way in AI readiness in the Middle East, IT MaxGlobal and Microsoft recently co-hosted a series of executive roundtables in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, focusing on the topic‘Reimagining Customer Engagement with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Copilot.’
According to Simon Khoury, Innovation Lead at IT Max Global, an AI-first customer service experiencedrives both quantitative and qualitative shifts for organizations. Quantitatively, companies with an AI-first strategy experienced increased efficienciesand more streamlined operations – hiring up to 89 percent fewer human service reps in 2024-2025, versus companies that did not use AI extensively.Meanwhile, the adoption of Agentic AI – autonomous AI agents with human-level language capabilities– improves the quality of the customer journey, delivering increased satisfaction.
Next-generationplatforms like Dynamics 365 Customer Service are purposelybuilt to leverage AI agents, enablingorganizations to create a personalized, high-impact experience without compromising service quality.
In this new paradigm, automated systems resolve most customer requests directly, while more complex issues are escalated to specialized support staff who are aided by contextual, real-time AI. This leads to a more effective and memorable service experience, while simultaneously improving employee job satisfaction and retention. It replaces the traditional systemwhere data is siloedand organizations are unable to properly route interactions between various fragmented channels and teams.
“Customer experiences can make or break an organization,”says Simon Khoury. “A fragmented customer service experience is inefficient, impersonal, and frustrating. Conversely, customers will reward you for successfully delivering a memorable service experience. This highlights the need to design an end-to-end, AI-first customer engagementjourney where every touchpoint is an opportunity to generate customer loyalty.However, this requires significant change and a whole new breed of implementation partners such as IT Max Global, with deep expertise across a range of disciplines.”
Microsoft: transforming customer engagement from within
Maureen Khoury, Strategy Director of Customer Service Business Applications at Microsoft,illustrated Microsoft’s multi-year journey to modernize its customer engagement, allowing it to reach more than a billion consumers across 120 countries. From disparate solutions across 16 different systems and 500 tools and vendors, Microsoft harnessed Dynamics 365 and Copilottocreate a unified customer care platform for itself. This gaveMicrosoft greater insight and firsthand experience that improved its abilityto transform the customer engagement of organizations across numerous sectors, including manufacturing, government, finance, electronics, and real estate.
Today, prominent industry analysts identify Microsoft as a leader in customer and field service solutions. Through Microsoft Dynamics 365, organizations gain a 360-degree view of customer data, whileCopilot’s AI functionality is embedded across a wide variety of service processes for over 40,000 organizations. These organizations benefited from improved customer engagement, including greatly reduced waiting and issue resolution times. Additionally, Microsoft enables seamless integrationof AI into existingworkflows,avoiding extended downtime and bringing increased workforce productivity and higher customer satisfaction.
“Customers in the UAE have rapidly increasing expectations for convenient, personalized customer experiences from any location and across their preferred communication channels,” Maureen Khoury says.“Regardless of industry, we are witnessing an era where organizations are facing this customer service mandate. The attendance and active engagement of senior business leaders during these executive roundtables is certainly a testament to this. We look forward to partnering with IT Max Global to help organizations in the UAE transform their customer journeys.”
The roundtable series was hosted across two days – the first at Saadiyat Rotana Abu Dhabi and the second at Ritz-Carlton, Dubai International Financial Centre. Simon Khoury and Maureen Khoury was joined by the panelists Inge Rademeyer, Experience Strategy Director at Memac Ogilvy, and Ankesh Agarwal, Director, Group Customer Experience at Majid Al Futtaim, and was moderated by Lorette Roos, Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft. Leading both the session and the panel discussions was Sabah Corm, Chief Operating Officer of IT Max Global.
IT Max Global and Microsoft regularly roll out updates to their AI-first customer engagement solutions. These enhancements will further improve organizations’ capability to provide personalized customer journeys and enable them to elevate their customer engagement to a whole new level.