Salesforce Einstein: How this new AI platform will transform your CRM

Salesforce is stepping into the rich world of artificial intelligence, with the launch of Salesforce Einstein into its CRM system.

Salesforce Einstein will integrate AI capabilities such as machine learning, deep learning, predictive analytics, natural language processing and smart data recovery, all of which makes Einstein 'the world's smartest CRM', the company says. Salesforce will be offering the new AI capabilities so that customers may make new AI-powered apps using clicks or code, making existing apps smarter or just allowing smarter and personalised customer experiences - without the huge time or resource burdens organisations would face if they tried to do it on their own.

The company says that specialised predictive models require massive investment in data science, infrastructure and DevOps to keep machine learning processes running, as well as complex integrations, which is something most organisations also cannot afford to do. As a result, customer relationships can't be turned into competitive advantages, the company states.

This is where Salesforce Einstein comes in, which will be customised for every single customer and integrated into every Salesforce Cloud. Customers will be able to access all data and metadata through within the Salesforce platform. Salesforce data can include a continuous flow of Chatter, email, eCommerce, calendar, social media streams and IoT signals.

Through machine learning, eventually Einstein's intelligence will be able to provide insights, future behaviour prediction and even task automation, the company says.

The Einstein platform will be applied to a number of different areas, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Analytics Cloud and IoT Cloud and Community Cloud.

Sales Cloud Einstein

• Predictive Lead Scoring uses lead source techniques to analyse lead data such as standard fields like industry, job title, custom fields, web click and email leads, enabling Einstein's machine learning functions to improve the predictive score so sales staff can hone in on the most important leads.
• Opportunity Insights analyses CRM data and customer interaction such as inbound emails. These will allow organisations to identify buying signals earlier, track alerts when deals are trending up or down, and even advise sales staff on how to improve their chances of closing a deal.
• Automated activity capture can analyse all emails and calendar appointments so sales staff don't have to worry about manual data entry.

Service Cloud Einstein

• Resolving issues will become faster with Recommended Case Classification, which will be able to fill in key case fields such as reason, type and associated product, based on history and trends.
• Recommended Responses can prioritise suggestions to service agents based on case context, history and previous communications, improving productivity.
• Predictive Close Time will be able to predict the length of time needed to solve a case, based on similar case times. This will allow for better prioritisation.

Marketing Cloud Einstein

• Predictive Scoring can analyse and score how likely it will be for customers to engage with an email, unsubscribe or make a purchase.
• Predictive Audiences can build audience segment profiles that show common predicted behaviours, so marketers can tailor audiences and segments for conversion.
• Automated Send-time Optimisation concentrates on customer behaviour observation and delivering messages when subscribers are most likely to engage with content, for better email marketing ROI.

Commerce Cloud Einstein

• Product Recommendations will be able to use customer data to form personalised recommendations throughout every customer's personal buying journey across both mobile and in-store interactions.
• Predictive Soft allows personalised sorting of website search results, increasing relevance and tailored options
• Commerce Insights will form insights from data across products, orders and customer data to help retailers understand the purchase process and allow better retail planning. 

Analytics Cloud Einstein

• Predictive Wave Apps identifies future patterns for business processes, including type, significance and future actions without the need for other algorithms or models.
• Smart Data Discovery can help users quickly find and explains insights from millions of data combinations.
• Automated Analytics - Storytelling can allocate automation and priority to next insights, through charts, widgets and natural language support. 

IoT Cloud Einstein

• Predictive Device Scoring can use data from IoT devices to score data and predict suggested actions.
• Recommend Best Next Action can use streaming IoT data to recommend the best next actions.
• Automated IoT Rules Optimisation will update and optimise governance of IoT data.

Community Cloud Einstein

• Recommended Experts, Articles and Topics provides optimised and relevant experts, posts, articles, experts and topic pages aligned with their interests .
• Automated Service Escalation will automatically create a case in Service Cloud when customer posts aren't responded to in a timely fashion, or if specified words such as 'broken' are detected.  
• Newsfeed insights will present the most relevant and useful information in every feed.