Carrier uses Microsoft 365 Copilot to standardize global HR support

Standardizing the human touch

Carrier Global Corporation, a company that provides climate and energy solutions, recently deployed a new AI tool to support its global human resources team. The company employs more than 200 Global People Services advisors who handle employee inquiries across various regions, including Asia, Europe, and the Americas. These advisors faced a challenge where they had detailed HR procedures but lacked a shared model for how to deliver those answers consistently.

Before the implementation of the new tool, advisors often struggled with unclear or sensitive requests. In many cases, they had to ask managers to review their drafted responses to ensure they were correct. This manual oversight process risked creating inconsistent experiences for employees and could lead to repeat follow-ups that missed service-level deadlines. The company wanted to find a way to provide faster and more accurate information without losing the personal connection required in HR.

To solve this, Carrier developed an AI agent called Here for You. The goal of the project was to create a service model that guides advisors through four specific stages of an interaction. These stages include connecting personally, confirming the employee's needs, owning the resolution, and closing the conversation with clarity. By using technology to support these behaviors, the company aims to ensure every colleague feels heard and valued during their interactions.

How the AI agent works

The Here for You agent was built using Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio. It is grounded in Microsoft SharePoint, which serves as the primary repository for the company's process knowledge. This grounding allows the AI to pull specific, accurate information from the company's internal documents to help advisors navigate complex HR situations. The tool is designed to act as a force multiplier, providing contextual guidance in just a few seconds.

When an advisor receives a request through the company's ServiceNow platform, they open the Here for You agent in Microsoft 365. The advisor enters the details of the request or a rough draft of a response into the agent. They can then ask the AI for specific types of help, such as a structured reply, a check on the tone of the message, or specific process information from the company's database.

Crucially, the AI does not make the final decision or send the message automatically. The advisor reviews and validates every output provided by the agent before adapting it to the specific circumstances of the employee. Once the human advisor is satisfied with the draft, they return the response through the ServiceNow system. This workflow ensures that the technology supports human judgment rather than replacing it entirely.

Impact on global operations

The deployment of Here for You has already become one of the most actively used agents at Carrier. It provides on-demand guidance for advisors who must communicate across different languages and cultures. For example, advisors supporting employees in China and Japan reported that the tool helped them generate clearer responses in their local languages. This has allowed advisors who previously needed peer reviews to respond to inquiries with more confidence on their own.

The company is using internal privacy, security, and access controls to ensure that the AI scales safely across the organization. These governance controls are built into Copilot Studio to protect sensitive employee data while the tool is in use. By providing a consistent framework, the company hopes to eliminate the variability that occurs when different advisors interpret the same HR policies in different ways.

The ultimate goal for the Global People Services team is to become "more tech and more human." As routine HR transactions become more automated, the company wants its advisors to spend more time on interactions that require high levels of empathy and ownership. The AI handles the retrieval of facts and the structuring of text, which frees up the human staff to focus on the emotional aspects of employee support.

Measuring success and next steps

Carrier is currently measuring the success of the Here for You agent based on the quality of the employee experience. Rather than just looking at how often the tool is used, the company is tracking whether employee satisfaction is increasing. Magda Warda, Executive Director of Global People Services, noted that the company is looking to see if employees feel better treated by the support they receive.

The company is also looking at the speed and accuracy of the responses provided by the HR team. By using the agent to provide instant guidance, the advisors can solve challenges with more speed. The company views the tool as a way to elevate the experience for both the employees receiving help and the HR support team members who are providing it.

Looking ahead, Carrier is working on improving the technical integration of the tool. While the agent currently requires advisors to work between Microsoft 365 and ServiceNow, the company intends to merge Here for You directly into the ServiceNow platform. This will streamline the workflow even further by allowing advisors to access the AI guidance directly within the system where they receive their initial employee requests.