The implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for customer service are staggering and truly limitless. But until now, most customer service leaders have been unable to put intelligence in action. They lacked the army of data scientists needed to make sense of the data. And even if they were able to find and hire the data scientists - then what? How to deploy it? How to integrate it with their existing customer service technology stack? The promise of intelligent service was intriguing and made for some awesome demos, but it wasn’t real enough, practical enough or market-ready enough for companies today.

Until now.  Today, we’re introducing Salesforce Einstein–easy-to-use artificial intelligence for CRM.  And with Service Cloud Einstein, companies of any size will be able to deploy a connected customer service experience that is predictive, automated and intelligent, bringing AI to the forefront of customer service like never before.

With Service Cloud Einstein, organizations of all sizes will be able to:

• Resolve customer service cases faster: New recommended case classification automatically defines cases based on user histories and trends. For instance, if a product has a known defect, those cases can be automatically routed with the instructions to agents on how to address the issue. This is a huge boost for agent productivity and efficiency. Additionally, customers reward companies who provide them with a fast, efficient experience with high customer satisfaction ratings (CSAT), Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and Customer Effort Scores (CES).  
• Deliver the right answers, with confidence: New recommended responses use case context and history to provide recommended answers, ensuring customers can quickly get the right answers to their questions. Routine inquiries can be automated, freeing agents to focus on fewer, more involved cases that benefit from the personal touch. Service Cloud EInstein also helps route the right skilled worker to the right interaction at the right time, making certain that customers get the help they need on the first interaction.
• Empower your team with insights about case resolution times: New predictive close time helps your support team route, escalate and prioritize work by predicting the time needed to resolve an issue. And because of machine learning, Einstein gets smarter over time, helping companies optimize their agent staffing, provide better customer service and drive up their CSAT, NPS and CES.

With Einstein, we are bringing together advanced AI capabilities–everything from machine learning, deep learning, predictive analytics, natural language processing and smart data discovery–to make Salesforce and our customers smarter.

What’s even more exciting are the future applications of Service Cloud Einstein, especially as we start to consider the impact of Einstein across the entire Salesforce Customer Success Platform. Consider this: a connected device–like a dishwasher–could self-diagnose that it needed routine maintenance from a field tech. The dishwasher is connected to Salesforce IoT Cloud, where it’s performance is monitored. When IoT Cloud identifies an issue, it triggers a case in Field Service Lightning and a dishwasher repair tech is dispatched automatically–without a customer or agent needing to be involved. That’s the future of service, and the amazing thing is that with Einstein and the Customer Success Platform, it’s possible today.

Over the last 5-10 years, we’ve seen a huge shift in the importance of customer service, and now the customer experience is the #1 differentiator for brands. With Service Cloud Einstein, we are providing companies of all sizes with an easy way to deploy intelligent service and leverage it as a true competitive differentiator.

Intelligence will turn today’s perception of customer service around completely, and we’re just getting started with Einstein. I’ve been doing this for over 15 years and can honestly say there’s never been a more exciting time to be in customer service. I can’t wait to see what trailblazing things our customers are going to do.

Read next:  How Artificial Intelligence Builds an Olympic-Caliber Sales Team

Rights of ALBERT EINSTEIN are used with permission of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Represented exclusively by Greenlight.