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Thursday, 21 November 2019

Salesforce Dreamforce 2019: Update on Einstein and AI’s Role

Salesforce executives took the stage at Dreamforce 2019 to provide an update on Salesforce Einstein and the tremendous success it has been.

Marco Casalaina, Vice President Products, Einstein, opened it up by discussing how far AI has come in the business world. When Einstein’s capabilities first started coming to light in 2017, only one in five businesses were using any kind of AI. Fast-forward to 2019 and nearly half of companies have integrated AI in their operations. Despite AI’s increased usage, not all companies are seeing the benefits they would like. In fact, seven out of ten companies report little to no impact from deploying AI.

This is one of the ways in which Salesforce’s Einstein is designed to be different. It’s goal is to be simple, providing a voice interface to the data in Salesforce Customer 360. Einstein is already available in Sales, Service, Marketing and Commerce clouds. Soon, Einstein search will be taking over the Search bar, giving customers the ability to perform natural language searches using their voice.

Yakaira Núñez, Director User & Product Insights, AI & Analytics talked about the work her team has been doing.

“We’ve been focusing our work on voice ad nauseam.”

She also highlighted three areas of concern for customers.

1) Data Privacy and Security is of tantamount importance to customers, and Salesforce is committed to protecting that data.

2) Guidance, specifically the importance of voice guidance. Salesforce recognizes that voice-controlled systems aren’t always the easiest to use. As a result, they worked to make Einstein as easy as possible.

3) More diverse use cases, beyond just sales.

Núñez also showed off Einstein Voice Skills. Any admin or developer can use the tool to build custom voice apps. These voice apps can be deployed on the desktop, mobile or smart speakers.

Few would argue that AI represents a fundamental shift in technology, commerce and more. Companies like Salesforce are demonstrating how it can be a useful tool, providing new functionality and making customers’ lives easier.