Exercise 2, Task 2: Use Copilot in Word and Writing Coach to create a dealer facing response template

Tailwind Traders has been receiving an increasing number of product-quality inquiries from its B2B dealer network. Some dealers provide rich detail—photos, videos, purchase documentation—while others submit vague or incomplete information, leading to extended troubleshooting cycles and inconsistent communication. Recently, several dealers expressed frustration over response quality. Some replies were too technical, others lacked clear next steps, and many didn’t follow a consistent tone or structure.

As Tailwind’s Customer Service Manager, you’re tasked with improving the overall professionalism and clarity of outbound communications. To improve consistency, your leadership team wants you to establish a standardized written-response template that all support agents must use when replying to dealers. This template must:

  • Reflect Tailwind’s confident and trusted brand voice
  • Capture all the information needed to properly evaluate a product-quality concern
  • Clearly outline the actions Tailwind took, and next steps the dealer must follow
  • Work well as a repeatable, clean format for email, Word attachments, or internal documentation

Since Copilot in Word specializes in generating and transforming content, you plan to use it to create a reusable communication template. Because you want to create a polished document, you then plan to use Copilot’s Writing Coach agent, which specializes in coaching and improving your writing. You want to use Writing Coach to strengthen tone, improve clarity, refine grammar and structure, and ensure the template is dealer‑appropriate and ready for real‑world use. You can then share this new resource across support, operations, and product teams, ultimately improving the quality and speed of Tailwind’s customer resolutions.

Using Copilot in Word

Copilot in Word can behave in two different ways, depending on whether Edit with Copilot is enabled. Understanding this distinction is important, because it affects whether Copilot can automatically apply changes to your document or just provide suggestions for you to use.

When Edit with Copilot is enabled, Copilot acts as an in-document author and editor. You can ask Copilot to create a document from scratch, rewrite sections, add summaries, or refine language—and it can apply those changes directly to the document, typically with your confirmation. In this experience, Copilot behaves like a collaborative writing partner that can both generate and revise content without requiring manual copy and paste. This is commonly the experience when prompting Copilot from within a Word document, such as using the drafting prompt above a blank document or the prompt field in the Copilot pane.

When Edit with Copilot is disabled, Copilot behaves more like Copilot Chat. It can still research topics, summarize information, and draft text, but it doesn’t automatically modify the document. Instead, responses appear in the Copilot pane, and you decide what—if anything—gets added to the document. This approach is useful when you want Copilot to act as a research assistant or idea generator while maintaining full control over what content is inserted.

This task uses the Edit with Copilot functionality.

Perform the following steps to complete this task:

  1. In your Microsoft Edge browser, go to the Microsoft 365 home page, select Apps in the navigation pane, and then select Word from the Apps menu.

  2. In Word for the web, create a blank document.

  3. On the Home tab ribbon, select Copilot. In the Copilot pane, verify the Edit with Copilot icon appears in the prompt field next to the plus (+) sign. If you don’t see it, select the plus sign and then select Edit with Copilot in the drop-down menu. The icon should now appear in the prompt field.

  4. In the prompt field in the Copilot pane, ask Copilot to create a customer support template. Submit the following prompt:

[!NOTE] For this first prompt, we’ve provided the text so you can see what an effective prompt looks like when it incorporates the four key elements discussed in the Introduction unit. You must write all remaining prompts in this exercise, but in doing so, you can use this prompt as a model to emulate._

I’m the Customer Service Manager for Tailwind Traders. In order for Tailwind to raise the overall professionalism, clarity, and consistency of its outbound communications, please create a standardized written-response template that all Customer Support agents can use when replying to dealers. This template must:

  • Reflect Tailwind’s confident and trusted brand voice.
  • Capture all the information needed to properly evaluate a product-quality concern.
  • Clearly outline the actions Tailwind took, as well as next steps the dealer must follow.
  • Work well as a repeatable, clean format for email, Word attachments, or internal documentation.

The template should include the following sections: Issue Summary, Product Details, Troubleshooting Actions Taken, Required Dealer Follow‑Up, Expected Timeline.

  1. Review the first draft of the template. While it looks like a good starting point, you feel it should include a few more sections that can capture everything a rep or dealer needs to move a case forward. Ask Copilot to add the following sections to the template, each with clear field labels:

    • Dealer and case metadata. Dealer Name, Dealer ID, Case ID, Priority, Severity, Date Opened, Date of Reply

    • Intake details. Original Dealer Request summary, Attachments provided (Photo/Video/Proof of Purchase), Channel, Contact Person

    • Reproduction steps. Environment, Product version/firmware, Steps tried, Reproduction result (Yes/No)

    • Risk and impact assessment. Safety impact, Customer impact, Business priority

    • Resolution status. Current status, Root cause (if known), Temporary workaround, Final fix ETA

    • Escalation path. When to escalate, Who to escalate to, Service Level Agreement (SLA) for response

    • Communication log. Date, who contacted, summary of each interaction

    • Next checkpoint. Commit dates, responsible owner

  2. Review the second draft of the template. You feel that it looks better because it captures all the relevant information needed for a case. However, from a structural standpoint, you would like to insert a structured table and checklists for consistency purposes. Doing so would make the template operationally fillable by support reps during live work.

    Ask Copilot to insert a two-column table in the “Product Details” section that contains these rows: Product line, Model/SKU, Serial Number, Production batch/Lot, Purchase date, and Warranty status.

  3. Review the updated draft to ensure the table is correct. If there’s any issues with it, ask Copilot to make the necessary corrections.

  4. When everything looks good, ask Copilot to add a checklist at the end of the “Required Dealer Follow Up” section that provides checkboxes for each of the following items: Provide serial number photo, Provide proof of purchase, Run diagnostic steps (attach logs), Confirm shipping address (if replacement), and Acknowledge Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) terms.

  5. Review the results. You should now be on the final version that you’re satisfied with. In the remaining steps, you plan to use Copilot’s Writing Coach agent to polish the template’s tone, clarity, grammar, and so on. Make note of the file name that appears above the menu bar, since you plan to use this file in the remaining steps in this task.

  6. Open Microsoft 365 and in the navigation pane, under the Agents section, select All agents. In the Agent Store, under the Your agents section, select See more. In the expanded list of Your agents, select Writing Coach.

  7. In the Writing Coach agent, attach the Dealer Support Template file from your OneDrive, which you created using Word in the prior steps. Ask the Writing Coach agent to rewrite the attached file with a more concise, confident tone suitable for B2B communication.

  8. Review the results. Note the text the agent displayed at the end of its response, which describes what it did and why the changes are better for B2B communication.

  9. While the update looks good, you’re concerned that with so much data, a dealer might have trouble following the logical sequence of information. Ask the Writing Coach agent to improve the logical flow of the template so that dealers can easily follow the issue summary, actions taken, and required next steps.

  10. Review the document. Note the text the agent displayed at the end of its response, which indicates why the revised flow improves communication.

  11. Finally, ask the agent what other changes it would suggest to improve this template.

  12. Review the changes the agent suggested. Feel free to ask the agent to create a redesigned version that includes one or two of these suggested improvements.

  13. Once you’re done, in a real-world scenario, you would select the Copy Response icon that appears below the final version of the document that you want to use. You would then paste the content into a Word document for use by your organization. Feel free to do that now if you wish to keep a copy of the final template that you created.