We read a lot about how artificial intelligence will change the world: self-driving cars, bots that text like humans, computers that can tell you, without a doubt, what a cat is. While this is interesting, a lingering question is: how will we actually use it? How will AI integrate into our daily lives? And, how will it integrate into our businesses?

We explore these questions in our new e-book, AI For CRM: A Field Guide to Everything You Need to Know. It’s a primer on AI: how greater processing power, better data models, and the insights gleaned from Big Data took computing in different directions. But it’s also the first step in a conversation about how AI will revolutionize the customer relationship, making customer relationship management (CRM) smarter than it’s ever been.

What does AI for CRM look like? Imagine being able to capture real-time signals, wherever they occur — from a customer’s social post to a prospect’s tweet. Then imagine being able to analyze every data point, pulling together data from Salesforce, external sources, and the Internet of Things to create a complete view of every customer. This, in turn, enables us to predict the next best sales, marketing, or service interaction for each customer, and then automate everything from routine tasks to real-time customer engagement. It’s a whole new way of connecting to your customers and prospects, with intelligence powering a new era of customer success.

AI has implications for every line of business. Sales will be able to anticipate opportunities and focus on the best leads. Customer service teams will deliver the next generation of proactive service, preventing machine failure or addressing FAQs in a customer community before they have a chance to become service cases. Marketers can build predictive journeys for every customer, personalizing experiences like never before. IT can embed intelligence everywhere, creating smarter apps for employees and customers.

In other words, AI will be integrated into the foundation of everything we do going forward. With Salesforce Einstein, we are solving all kinds of questions. Some will look familiar; some will be totally new:

• Are you selling the right product to the right customer at the right time?

• Are you servicing customers on the right channel by the right agent?

• Are you marketing on the right channel at the right time with the best content?

• Are you building apps that leverage the predictive power of AI?

These are exciting times. We foresee inboxes that organize themselves, calendars that plan meetings, deeper and richer insights into customers during service calls. We see every aspect of life — personal and professional — getting smarter.

Read on to gather the tools you’ll need for the AI-driven business of the future.