mkdocs serve failed due to utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x96

Convert .docx to .md file and later that file is added into mkdocs docs folder.
After:
mkdocs serve
I got the following errors:

ERROR   -  Encoding error reading file: 80566.md
ERROR   -  Error reading page '80566.md': 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x96 in position 711: invalid start byte
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Program Files\Python313\Lib\site-packages\mkdocs\livereload\__init__.py", line 211, in _build_loop
    self.builder()
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
  File "C:\Program Files\Python313\Lib\site-packages\mkdocs\commands\serve.py", line 67, in builder
    build(config, serve_url=None if is_clean else serve_url, dirty=is_dirty)
    ~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Program Files\Python313\Lib\site-packages\mkdocs\commands\build.py", line 310, in build
    _populate_page(file.page, config, files, dirty)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Program Files\Python313\Lib\site-packages\mkdocs\commands\build.py", line 159, in _populate_page
    page.read_source(config)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Program Files\Python313\Lib\site-packages\mkdocs\structure\pages.py", line 212, in read_source
    source = self.file.content_string
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Program Files\Python313\Lib\site-packages\mkdocs\structure\files.py", line 462, in content_string
    return f.read()
           ~~~~~~^^
  File "<frozen codecs>", line 325, in decode
  File "C:\Program Files\Python313\Lib\encodings\utf_8_sig.py", line 69, in _buffer_decode
    return codecs.utf_8_decode(input, errors, final)
           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x96 in position 711: invalid start byte
ERROR   -  [08:17:18] An error happened during the rebuild. The server will appear stuck until build errors are resolved.

Start by inspecting the generated docs/80566.md file and the .docx-to-.md conversion step, then reproduce the failure with mkdocs serve. The issue is resolved when the generated Markdown is readable as UTF-8 and mkdocs serve completes without the encoding error.