Salesforce is not letting the grass grow under its feet, with the launch of Einstein. This is being promoted as AI for everyone, although the main focus is of course leveraging more money from customers. The platform provides a set of services which can be integrated into Salesforce’s CRM applications. Techniques such as machine learning, natural language processing, deep learning and predictive analytics are all exploited to make tasks such as recommending the next best action to take with a customer, and revealing insights about customer behavior.
Salesforce Einstein appears in all the company’s cloud offerings. The aim of course is to pre-empt the customer and seize whatever opportunities are about to present themselves. Predictive lead scoring is a central capability, automatically highlighting the most promising leads, and even suggesting the next best action to take with the leads on an individual basis.
In Salesforce’s Customer Service app Einstein allows cases to be automatically classified. So if a product is known to have a particular problem associated with it, the case can be automatically routed to folks who deal with it. Recommended responses also allow answers to be more accurately generated, and predictive close times make sure outstanding issues are dealt with quickly.
Perhaps the most powerful application of Einstein is in the Marketing and Analytics Platform with predictive scoring assessing the likelihood that customers will engage via email, unsubscribe from a list or make a web purchase. Predictive Audiences support the creation of segments that display the same behavior, and Automated Send-time optimization allows marketeers to send emails when customers are most likely to respond.
Appropriate AI type functionality has also been included in Salesforce’s IoT cloud and App cloud. Altogether this is an impressive list of functionality, and will challenge other companies who offer similar predictive capabilities (InsideSales for example). As a business that never hides it light under a bushel, Salesforce Einstein is a very catchy name. Maybe one day it will come up with the theory of everything that evaded Einstein and more recently Stephen Hawking. But even Salesforce wouldn’t go as far as claiming that – would it?