How do you build your first agent?

Required tools

• Copilot Studio — With permission to create and publish agents.
• Updated knowledge articles — The agent bases its answers on these. If they are outdated, the answers will be too.

Select scope

1. 1.Find the five most frequently asked questions

   Get them from the case statistics rather than from a brainstorming session. The customer service categorization gives you the answer in minutes, and these are the actual questions, not the ones you think will come up.

2. 2.Decide what it should not answer

   Write down the topics that should always be referred to a human: complaints, cancellations, and payment issues. This is just as important as what it should be able to handle.

Build and test

1. 3.Create topics for the precise answers

   For questions where the answer must be the same every time, create a topic with the exact answer. Free-form responses are for answers that vary.

2. 4.Connect the knowledge source

   Direct the agent to the articles intended for the target audience—not to everything you have. A customer-facing agent should not be able to reproduce internal procedures.

3. 5.Set up handover before publishing

   The agent must be able to hand off the conversation with the context intact. This must be in place from day one, not added after the first complaints.

4. 6.Try to get it to give an incorrect answer

   Ask ambiguous questions, out-of-scope questions, and questions designed to elicit internal information. Better that you find the weaknesses than a customer does.