Nearly 80% of executives fear they are missing out on the advantages of generative AI, according to Salesforce’s Trends in AI for CRM report. While companies cannot afford to wait weeks and months to deploy generative AI, this FOMO poses a risk that organizations will move too hastily to implement technologies that are ill-suited for their businesses.
Because most CEOs, CIOs, and IT decision makers want a quick return on AI investments that are intended to augment employees, increase productivity, build deeper customer relationships, and drive higher margins, they need a partner with a deep understanding of their business who can provide AI functionalities that are flexible, scalable, and can be deployed quickly.
When seeking an AI partner, companies should focus on these four keys to success.
1. Trusted Enterprise-Grade Solutions
Consumer-facing generative AI chatbots are great at simple tasks like creating recipes or planning trip itineraries. But enterprise AI use cases require a deeper understanding of the job to be done. Salesforce delivers AI solutions that significantly lower barriers to entry for businesses in any industry that want to deploy generative AI across sales, service, marketing, commerce, and other disciplines.
Now, companies can use AI without having to train models or go through time-consuming integrations because they are already embedded in Salesforce’s CRM applications that employees use every day. Every solution is fortified by the Einstein Trust Layer, a robust set of features and guardrails that protect data privacy and security, promoting the responsible use of AI across the Salesforce ecosystem.
Now, companies can use AI without having to train models or go through time-consuming integrations because they are already embedded in Salesforce’s CRM applications that employees use every day.
The Trends in AI for CRM report found 56% of users find it difficult to get trusted output from generative AI. The Einstein Trust Layer addresses this with capabilities like dynamic grounding, data masking, and zero data retention that help customers unleash the power of generative AI without compromising safety or security standards.
2. A Data Foundation for Relevant and Efficient AI Outputs
The same Salesforce Trends report found 86% of technical decision makers believe that AI’s outputs are only as good as its data inputs.
Salesforce’s Data Cloud, which is deeply embedded within the Einstein 1 Platform, securely integrates, unifies, and harmonizes a company’s own data and metadata to deliver trusted, relevant, and actionable AI insights without the need for costly model training. Because customers already hold vast amounts of trusted data within their CRM platforms, Data Cloud is now processing approximately 250 trillion transactions per week. It’s helping companies unlock and take action on data trapped in silos around their organizations — without the extra work of building their own vector databases or creating many separate data integrations.
In addition, Salesforce’s Zero Copy Partner Network lets customers easily unify their external data — held in places like Snowflake or Databricks — with their Salesforce data, giving customers a secure and cost-effective way to connect and take action on all of their data through Salesforce applications.
3. Turnkey Solutions That Are Easy to Experiment With and Fast to Facilitate
More than half of employees analyzed for the Trends in AI for CRM Report said they aren’t waiting for their companies to establish rules or guidelines before trying AI tools at work.
To keep up with employees’ interest and enthusiasm for using AI in the workplace, CIOs and IT decision makers want to act swiftly. But they also want to experiment without getting locked into solutions that don’t support their business in the long term. Turnkey solutions that can be easily customized with no code or low code make it fast and easy to deploy AI without large upfront investments or burdensome maintenance costs.
Salesforce has several solutions for every industry that can help with this, such as Einstein Copilot Health Actions, which enables healthcare professionals to use natural language prompts to capture patient details from different sources, automate outreach, send referrals, and book appointments. Salesforce also offers Einstein Copilot Banking Actions, which enables bank service agents to automate tasks, such as triggering a fee reversal request or pulling a list of recent customer transactions — saving time and resources by reducing the need to hop between multiple systems and applications.
4. Choice and Flexibility When Choosing Models
Choice is essential when considering AI models, and one size does not fit all, which is why businesses should avoid being locked into a single model provider. Four out of five enterprise IT leaders using AI within their business said they’re already using multiple models, and nearly 70% expect to increase the number of models they use over the coming years, according to the Trends in AI for CRM report.
Salesforce is committed to helping its customers choose the model(s) that make the most sense for their businesses. That’s why the Einstein 1 Platform is open and flexible by design. And unlike other AI vendors, Salesforce makes it possible for customers to test and learn which models work best for specific use cases. In fact, Salesforce recently announced the world’s first CRM LLM benchmark to help businesses evaluate the rapidly growing number of LLMs so they can choose the right providers for their needs.
Salesforce is the only provider that combines these four keys to success to deliver effective, AI-driven results that significantly boost business performance and return on investment.
Looking ahead: Enabling autonomous AI agents
Salesforce is now building and releasing fully autonomous AI agents that work harmoniously across an entire organization, performing role-specific tasks that will make projects easier and help workers get jobs done faster and more efficiently.
Its first fully autonomous AI agent, Einstein Service Agent, resolves cases quickly and more accurately through an intelligent, conversational interface that mirrors natural language and human-like comprehension, is grounded in trusted customer and business data, and is fully integrated within the Einstein 1 Platform.
These kinds of agents will support all business sectors — including service, sales, marketing, and commerce — and will make conventional chatbots obsolete with their ability to efficiently understand and take action on a broad range of business tasks without preprogrammed scenarios.
Salesforce’s approach to enterprise AI ensures the long-term success of its customers. The company offers a set of solutions that are ready-to-use, trusted, and specifically designed for the enterprise. These technologies are powered by customer-specific data and offer flexibility in choosing models.
Salesforce’s approach to enterprise AI ensures the long-term success of its customers.
Such innovation isn’t just about keeping up with the competition. It’s about setting the pace for the future of AI in business.
Learn more:
- Read the Trends in AI for CRM deep-dive and report
- Learn about the Einstein Trust Layer and the Einstein 1 Platform
- Say hello to Salesforce Data Cloud
- Benchmark your LLM for CRM
