Benefits of Microsoft 365 Copilot for Building FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions, or FAQs, are an essential part of any website or product documentation. They provide quick answers to common queries from customers and users, helping address their needs efficiently. However, creating comprehensive yet concise FAQs can be a time-consuming task. This is where AI writing assistants like Copilot can help streamline the FAQ-building process.

In this guide to building FAQs using Copilot, we will discuss how Copilot can play a key role in FAQ creation. We will look at the different stages of FAQ development and how Copilot can assist at each step. By leveraging Copilot’s capabilities, businesses can develop thorough yet readable FAQs with minimal effort.

Let’s get started!

How to Build FAQs with Microsoft 365 Copilot?

The first step in using Copilot for FAQ creation is identifying the common questions users may have. This involves brainstorming topics based on past queries, product research, and user behavior analysis. Copilot can aid this brainstorming process in several ways.

One approach is to have Copilot summarize key points from existing documentation, support threads, or customer feedback. It can extract the most frequently discussed topics and questions to serve as a starting point for the FAQ outline. Copilot is also helpful in expanding on initial ideas by providing related questions, edge cases, or variations to consider covering.

Its language understanding abilities allow formulate questions in a natural way from a topic or description. For example, if provided “Payment options”, Copilot can suggest questions like “What payment methods do you accept?”, “When will I be charged?”, etc. This expands the scope of the FAQ without much effort.

Drafting FAQ Entries

Once the topics are finalized, the next step is drafting detailed answers for each question. Here, Copilot truly shines by automating a significant portion of the writing work. It can take a question and topic as a prompt to generate well-written, grammatically correct responses.

Some key advantages of using Copilot for drafting include:

• Speed and Efficiency: It allows rapidly creating initial drafts for all questions in a fraction of the time it would take a human.
• Consistency: Copilot maintains a consistent writing style and tone across all entries. This results in a more cohesive FAQ.
• Comprehensiveness: Its language models have been trained on massive datasets, allowing it to cover topics at a level of depth that may be difficult for a single human.
• Iterability: Drafts can be easily edited and improved through iterative feedback to Copilot. It incorporates changes seamlessly in subsequent responses.

Of course, the initial Copilot outputs would need human review for accuracy, clarity, and formatting. But it handles the bulk of content creation work upfront.

Organizing and Structuring

Once the draft entries are ready, they need to be organized logically and presented in a reader-friendly structure. Copilot is helpful here as well through its understanding of language and ability to analyze content.

It can suggest grouping related questions under suitable headers and sub-headers. For example, it may propose having an “Ordering” section with sub-topics like “Placing an order”, “Payment methods”, “Shipping and delivery”, etc.

Copilot can also analyze the drafts to identify information that is repeated across multiple answers. It will recommend extracting such repetitive details into a separate definition section or glossary for brevity.

Finally, its grasp of language flow allows ordering questions in a logical sequence, like moving more basic queries towards the top for better usability. Such structuring helps create a cohesive, easy-to-navigate FAQ document.

Editing and Formatting

Even after drafting and structuring support with Copilot, the FAQ will need human review for final editing and formatting. Here, Microsoft Copilot continues to be helpful by flagging any issues like:

• Inaccuracies or inconsistencies in content
• Ambiguous or unclear phrasing
• Missing details, links, or references
• Typographical, grammatical, or spelling errors

It also formats the final document automatically with a consistent style, headers, indentation, etc. based on predefined templates. This saves time spent on manual formatting and cross-checking.

Maintaining the FAQs

An FAQ is a living document that needs periodic updates as the product or user queries evolve. Microsoft Copilot facilitates easy maintenance of the FAQ.

It can monitor sources like support tickets, social media, and reviews for new questions. It will also notify about questions whose answers may need review due to product changes over time.

Copilot seamlessly incorporates any edits or additions and restructures the FAQ automatically to accommodate the updates. This keeps the FAQ fresh with minimal effort on an ongoing basis.

Conclusion

Streamlining FAQ creation with Copilot for Microsoft 365 aids in all the steps from ideation to publishing to maintenance. It automates much of the content creation and formatting work. This frees up human resources to focus on strategic tasks like user research and high-level reviews. Businesses can develop thorough, reader-friendly FAQs to support their customers cost-effectively with Copilot’s assistance. Its capabilities make FAQ building an iterative yet effortless process.