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Salesforce has announced the unveiling of Service Cloud Einstein, a new customer service platform which includes a beefed-up AI engine and aims to add intelligence ‘to every service interaction’.
The platform, which is a mix of the firm’s current Einstein AI tool and Service Cloud, will be fully connected to CRM data across sales, commerce, and marketing departments, and offers a variety of features. Einstein Supervisor is a mix of several products, from Salesforce’s Omnichannel Supervisor and the Service Wave analytics app, which gives managers real-time data and can predict customer satisfaction, to Einstein Case Management, which can escalate cases in real time and include relevant information, such as knowledge articles and videos, immediately on tap.
Salesforce uses as an example of the former an appliance manufacturer, who finds an increase in calls about a specific product model. Using the data, and finding out all the issues come from products that were put together in one three month period at the same factory, other customers can be warned, potentially staving off a larger problem.
The other primary feature of the platform is intelligent mobile service, which aims to enable employees to provide personalised service anywhere if they are on iOS or Android.
The company cited an Accenture study which found that for almost four in five IT business executives, AI will ‘help accelerate technology adoption throughout their organisations’ and that it is ‘poised to enable companies to improve the experience and outcome for every critical customer interaction.’
“AI stands to dramatically improve how customer service organisations operate and connect with customers – the biggest hurdle for companies is just how…they get started,” said R. ‘Ray’ Wang, principal analyst and founder of Constellation Research in a statement. “By building AI directly into a service application, customer service organisations can start infusing AI into everything they do and start augmenting their customer experience capabilities.”
A report from Bluewolf last month – an IBM company but also a Salesforce partner – argued that data integration was still a challenge despite more organisations using the Salesforce portfolio. More than three quarters (77%) of UK businesses polled said they could access Salesforce ‘anywhere, any time’, up 10% on the global average.
The rise of artificial intelligence in marketing has been covered in chapter and verse by this publication in recent weeks. The natural question is usually ‘will this affect my job?’ Given the Salesforce example, some creative thinking is also required to make the most of the insights provided, but as Jennifer Steckel Elliott, VP sales and marketing at Flybits, observed: “As a marketer, it’s your job to ask the right questions and evolve with the technology.
“Contextual computing, AI, and machine learning will give you more time to do the strategic and implementation part of your job better, while also creating a quicker, more customer-friendly process.”
Einstein Supervisor and Intelligent Mobile Service are generally available today, from $75 and $150 per user per month respectively, while Case Management will be available as a pilot later this year.
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Yes..I am a fan of that “Einstein”, Its more AI centric as I worked and experienced!!