Salesforce Unveils Einstein AI Across CRM Cloud

Published: September 19, 2016

Salesforce has introduced Einstein artificial intelligence (AI) across its CRM cloud to help its customers improve sales, predict customer behavior, enhance customer experience and automate tasks within Salesforce’s core platforms.

Einstein is an upgrade that will be automatically embedded across Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Community Cloud, Analytics Cloud, IoT Cloud and App Cloud, according to the company.

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“We’re democratizing AI so our customers get the benefit of AI without having to hire a data scientist,” John Ball, SVP and General Manager of Salesforce Einstein, said during a virtual press conference.

Many Einstein features will be included as part of existing licenses and additions, according to the company. Others will be available at an additional charge, with pricing to be announced as they become available.

Salesforce states that the Einstein upgrades will be automatically customized for individual customers and become more effective as their use of Salesforce continues. That’s because Einstein is powered by machine learning, a staple of AI that helps the technology become more effective by “learning” from the data it comes across.

Einstein’s machine learning models will leverage all data within the Salesforce platform — including data from its millions of customers; activity data from Chatter, email, calendar and e-commerce; and social data streams, according to the company.

Salesforce executives emphasized that the integration and use of Einstein should be seamless for its customers. “The best AI is when the user doesn’t necessarily notice it. Over time, the user will not think, ‘Oh, this is an AI-powered platform,’” Ball said.   

In addition to the release of Einstein, the company announced the Salesforce Research Group, a unit dedicated to researching AI in order to support the Einstein product and engineering teams.

These announcements are the culmination of a lot of recent buzz around the upcoming AI release from Salesforce at a time when AI in general is hot and quickly becoming a differentiator in a competitive market. (Some media outlets are pointing out that it’s no mistake that Salesforce timed its Einstein announcement to come right before the kickoff of competitor Oracle’s OpenWorld event.)

“AI generally — and Einstein in particular — will help marketers see into customer moments of truth, those times when a customer has a legitimate, if sometimes unstated, expectation of performance from a vendor, brand or product,” Denis Pombriant, Founder and Managing Principal of CRM analyst firm Beagle Research Group, LLC, told Demand Gen Report in an interview after the announcement. “This is the first and key step in building better engagement with customers. And engagement drives loyalty which drives advocacy which drives profits. It’s a big deal.”

Pombriant has written two books on the subject, “Solve for the Customer,” and “You Can’t Buy Customer Loyalty, But You Can Earn It.”

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