Salesforce Demonstrates The Power Of AI For CRM

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

New AI product Einstein has great potential for transforming the customer experience.

Salesforce has announced Salesforce Einstein, its new AI product, and even shared a virtual demo. There has been a lot of hype around this product and AI in general over the past several months, leaving many wondering what advancements in AI mean for the future of CRM/the customer experience.

"The strongest aspect of Einstein is that it is deeply embedded in the platform, it's just working automatically," says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, asserting that “With Salesforce Einstein, we are delivering the world’s smartest CRM. Einstein is now every customer’s data scientist, making it easy for everyone to take advantage of best-in-class AI capabilities in the context of their business.”

Additional features will be added around the time of Salesforce's annual Dreamforce developers’ conference in early October. The new AI capabilities are designed to help Salesforce clients better monetize their existing data to create actionable insights, according to News Factor. Einstein includes predictive scoring, automatic routing, and new research group abilities.

“Simply put, the computer learns from all your data and uses it to build a model, find patterns and predict the future," says John Ball, general manager for Einstein. "It detects patterns that aren't as easy for humans to detect."

So what are the implications of adding AI to CRM?

"With Salesforce’s launch of Einstein, AI is no longer a novelty, but poised to become a key part of mainstream business work flows. AI has gained widespread awareness thanks to the popularity of personal assistants and the investments of Silicon Valley heavyweights in technologies like Alexa and Siri. From better purchase recommendations, to smarter customer service that predicts what a consumer is actually trying to do, AI promises to fundamentally transform entire businesses and industries. Investments in AI are paving the way for a personalized world where every interaction matters, and every company can benefit," Scott Horn, CMO at [24]7, an AI-powered customer engagement solutions provider, told Innovative Retail Technologies in an email.

“Einstein is a sign of the true potential of AI — as a supplement to human intuition. By turning cold-calling into warm-calling, this is an opportunity for artificial intelligence to prove itself as a truly productive counterpart to the human mind. And the applications for this technology go well beyond sales. AI is bringing automation to customer service, which will bring major benefits to consumers. For the first time, businesses can now understand and act on consumer intent, meaning that consumers will no longer have to repeat information or be bombarded with irrelevant information. This technology will be commonplace in the next five years,” Horn asserted.